Playing for Wellness

It can be tough to fit wellness goals into a to-do list governed lifestyle. Grading, teaching, meetings, research—all of those demand priority, and often my best intentions to exercise or rest get pushed further and further down the list by more pressing concerns. To make sure I don’t spend every waking hour in front of my computer or classroom, I’ve been relying on games that offer the alluring potential to play my way to wellness without leaving the living room.

Exergames like the Wii Fit Plus, with the Wii “balance board” used to detect the player’s weight, motion, and balance, add achievements, points, and mini-games to otherwise familiar gym activities. The Kinect, with programs like Your Shape Fitness Evolved and UFC Personal Trainer, offers more variety thanks to full motion recognition and exercise classes with some “instructor feedback” that doesn’t require finding the time to travel to a gym.  The tracking of achievements and time and effort also can turn the console into a site for fitness competition, and pushing data out to social networks can be a start on replacing a gym companion.

But after I step away from the console, the feedback ends. Can a game be used to do more than just track exercise? That’s what Jane McGonigal’s SuperBetter is perhaps answering right now. The system is built from her own steps in recovering from a concussion: she used a game both to hurdle her personal obstacles and forge her support network, as she documented on her blog. SuperBetter is currently in closed beta—although Jane McGonigal has in the past tweeted early access codes.

I’ve started playing with the SuperBetter beta, and I can see the potential for its mission and quest system to serve as a highly personalized (and whimsical) version of a health and fitness tracking tool, with collaborative elements designed to encourage working with allies and overcoming the “bad guys” in your path. It’s definitely a different and creative way to articulate goals and turn the tracking of successes and failures into an ongoing narrative that links to every aspect of wellness, as it asks the player to take on a “secret identity” and embrace setting their own quests. With a beautifully designed interface, SuperBetter also makes it easy to recast mundane steps along the way to wellness into part of a larger story.

Another compelling aspect of SuperBetter is the incorporation of links to research supporting outcomes: for instance, a mission to set your “epic win”—defined as “a goal that’s realistic, challenging, and energizing”—is backed by a number of studies on the value of personal goal-setting that the player can then read and evaluate for themselves. For players who take a page from Nels and “act like a child“, SuperBetter can be a new way to approach old milestones.

Do you use games or play as part of your wellness? How do you fit your “epic wins” into a busy semester? Let us know in the comments!

[Creative Commons-licensed flickr photo by GlobalismPictures]