General Design Doc

The Problem To Be Solved

The basic problem is this: for some people, exercise is not inherently-rewarding, or not inherently-rewarding enough, for them to choose to do it as often as they might like.

This game sets out to solve this problem by introducing one or more reward mechanisms.

(Note: it is necessary, but not sufficient, to track a player's exercise. Without reward mechanisms, it ceases to be a game and is merely a place to log exertion.)

Considerations for Reward Mechanics

The reward should be sufficiently-rewarding, as it were.

A variety of time-scales, both short-term and long-term rewards, is desirable.

There's a very real risk of rewarding dangerous behaviour that must be kept in mind.

Possible Reward Mechanisms

Among them might be:

• XP: The traditional rpg reward; gaining XP results in higher levels. What it means to be a particular level is up in the air. The most noteworthy characteristic of XP is that it never decreases; it only goes up.

• Gold: A generic term for in-game currency. Presumably there will exist in-game things to 'spend' gold on. Unlike XP, gold might increase or decrease. Total net worth is likely to never decrease, but it's theoretically possible.

• Content: A sort-of 'second tier' reward; this would be, for example, unlocking a new quest at level 7.
  • In turn, completing quests could lead to further XP and gold.

• Social reinforcements: Basically, anything that comes out of playing the game non-solo.
  • These could include things in several other categories here: shared quests, purchasable items that you can show off to other players, etc.
  • Plus the usual badges and points and meaningless trifles

• Status: Analogous to the STR/DEX/INT/CHA/etc. kind of stats in traditional RPG's. Probably increased by leveling up. Possibly tied to different types of exercises somehow?
  • Could affect how XP is scored for those exercises or how quests are resolved.

What Players Do

So, what do the players actually do? What does playing the game look like?

At the most basic level, a player will perform some sort of physical activity or exercise.

• Who or what defines those activities is currently undecided.
• Whether the activity is assigned to the player beforehand is unknown.
• Some not-quite-physical-activities might potentially be included; things like dietary choices, or maybe "didn't smoke today", or whatnot.

Then the player will report his activity to the game. (Only for today? A window of reporting?) (Also, what data will be collected?)

Then the game engine, somehow, engages the reward mechanism, somehow.

Quests

Let's hypothesize that occasionally the game can present certain optional challenges to the player. What sorts of challenges would be good or bad (mechanically)?

• Log an exercise of any type you've never done before.
• Log an exercise of type X and intensity Y, where X is something you've done often before and intensity Y is within a range that is probably reasonable based on your past work with it.
• Log an exercise of some sort every day for X days.
• Log a cumulative amount of exercise of a type you've done often before, totally some amount (e.g. "run a total of 10 miles", which you're free to spread out over as many days as it takes).
• Get your friends to join you in together logging a cumulative amount of exercise of some type
• Personal goals: you decide that you want to gradually improve at a particular activity, so you input a quest yourself based on that (probably following one of the formulas above) -- maybe even a series of them?