Would you be interested in playing a digital game based on weight loss? If yes what elements would you care about most?

Sure, I’d be interested, but I need more details. How can a game based on weight loss work? Gameshows like “Biggest Loser” work, but I don’t understand how it could be made digital and individual. You mean like WiiFit?

Can you give a hypothetical game description?

I can’t even be bothered to do a food diary, even with those super easy iPhone apps. And how would a game help me lose weight? Shouldn’t I be spending that time exercising?

With me, I’d want a STRONG electric shock whenever I failed to lose.

There are many games that already exist with this premise. If you are interested in making such a product, I highly recommend you check out what already exists today. My #1 favorite such game is Ubisoft’s My Weight Loss Coach, which is grounded in reality and promotes something as simple (yet effective) as walking.

Yes, but only if it was different from other similar products. Innovative and creative.

The idea is based on creating a digital image of how you would look like if you carried on with the existing dietary and exercising regimen. You would also be shown an image of what you could look like. The ‘game’ is then to come up with a diet and workout routine for yourself with the help of programmed options available to you. The faster you get there the more you win. We are still thinking through the actual workflow but there could be elements such as competition within a social community where people are trying to sabotage your progress by luring into an unhealthy proposition.

But “faster” weight loss isn’t always healthier… the recommended rate is 1–2 pounds per week.

Yes thats a great insight and we would have to caliberate that in our system and make sure that people dont kill themselves

Been there, done that. Yourself Fitness, WiiFit.

Yourself Fitness is the best, in my opinion.

Six unique fitness environments – Keep your workouts fresh by doing them in the Empress’ Dojo, the Alpine Retreat, an Island Paradise, the Urban Oasis, the Desert Springs Resort or a Meditation Garden
Over 500 unique exercises to choose from – work through sessions with Yoga, Pilates, Cardio Fitness, Strength Training and more
Customized meal planning with over 4,500 recipes, preparation instructions and shopping lists to make eating right more simple
Dynamic fitness routines respond to your progress and commitment level
Maya helps you integrate the fitness equipment you already own into your workout

This is one reviewer’s experience with the game, her’s is similar to mine:

I am a WAHM of one 14 month old; I gaining a LOT of weight during my pregnancy (no thanks to the women who kept saying “You’re too small!” as they shoved cake and chips in my face!) and I’ve had a heck of a time getting it off (even though I eat VERY healthy). I used to be VERY active and loved running and/or going to the gym, but we can’t afford a gym membership (or a babysitter on a daily basis so I could actually GO to the gym and I’m too tired after my husband gets home to go to the gym anyway) OR one of those outrageously expensive jogging strollers (for those prices, they should get better ratings!). I’ve tried baby & mom yoga (a book)- that didn’t work for me. I purchased a DVD on Amazon, Pilates for Everyone I think it was called- that was better than the yoga book, but I found that the gap between the beginner and intermediate workouts was WAY too wide for me (the beginner workouts got too easy and the intermediate workouts, yeah, I couldn’t even make it through the first five minutes of one). This is the BEST thing I’ve found so far and I am LOVING it! :-)

So let me break it down.
Things I LOVE about this:
1. Custimization- you enter your weight, target weight (if you need to), resting/active BPM, flexibility, etc, even the excersize equipment you already own and it will tell you what your MAIN goal should be (mine being weight loss, obviously). You enter days of the week you can work out and how much time you can spend working out on those days.
2. Tempo- It doesn’t seem to be repetitive at all, like my Pilates DVD was, it never got boring.
3. Scroll bar- There’s a scroll bar on the bottom of the screen as you do a work out that tells you what you’re doing and shows you what is up next as well. For example, it shows a picture of two free-weights before the next segment if you need to use them during the next excersize. And there is a clock counting down the time (which I REALLY need, I need to be able to see that the time is going DOWN and I’m making progress) and it tells you the level of difficulty of the exersize that you’re doing- both under the time and on the scroll bar- one line for level one, two bars for level two, you get it.
4. Tutorial- You can pause and review the tutorial at ANY time, as needed.
5. The Personal Instructor- She virtual and she doesn’t look like freaking Barbi, THANK GOODNESS! :) (In fact, she looks a lot like me BEFORE I had my daughter :) )
6. Reinforcement- Before you start your workout for the day, you can change what the personal instructor has chosen for you (if she recomends cardio, and you aren’t feeling up to it, you can change it to some other area of focus). She asks you how you’re feeling both before you start your workout and in between at intermitent points so if you need MORE positive reinforcement, she will do more “rooting”. :-)
7. Recipes and meal plans and shopping lists, oh my! – I don’t use these, I’m vegetarian, no sugar, and I’m decreasing my intake of dairy products so I have my own healthy recipes customized to fit MY life and budget, BUT these are a great idea and I may actually flip through the 4500 (gasp!) recipes for something new.
8. She KNOWS if you missed a day! Yup, I guess if you miss a day, it will show up on your “progress”, which may annoy some people, but I feel guilty VERY easily so if I miss a day I’d feel guilty because not only would I know, the virtual Personal Instructor would know it too, so she’d remind me of it. And that would work to my advantage so I wouldn’t skip a day unless I was really sick or something.
9. The “LEVELS” – I think this is so cool. Like most other video games, the more time you spend doing it, the more levels open up to reward you. In this case, the “levels” are the spaces where your personal trainer works out (yeah, I’d like to work out in a field surrounded by green grass and waterfalls for REAL!) but it makes for a nice change of scenery.
10. Calories – At the end of your work out, it tells you how many calories you’ve burned! That is SO important for me because I need to see improvement.
11. Workouts – I get bored easily, and my target is weightloss so when the personal trainer recomends I do cardio, it’s not just cardio- in my cardio workouts there are some cardio weight training exersizes too, which is nice so I don’t get bored! There are also water breaks after strenuous steps and stretch breaks after each cardio weight set and the workout time includes stretching at the end. ALSO even though my main goal is weight loss, the personal trainer doesn’t suggest that I do just cardio for every single workout. For example, if I do a 30 minute workout, the first 10–15 minutes will be cardio, and the remaining workout could be upper/lower body strength, flexibility, core body strength, etc. So I end up with a very well-rounded week of workouts.
12. The “camera angle” changes throughout the workout so you can see what it should look like from different angles and it changes the back drop behind the personal trainer too, so it’s not boring.
13. In addition to the daily workouts, you can also chose “Meditation Garden” and do a roughly 20 minute yoga session. I’ve been doing this at the end of the day before bed after my daughter is asleep and it’s WONDERFUL! It’s so great to have yoga in this “game” too! It’s like having everything I need in one place!

Things that I would improve:
1. Ok, this is silly, but it’d be fun to change her body type or even her weight, and her clothes/hair color/eye color, etc. But that’s more play and less workout and I guess that’s really not the point of the “game”. :-) That’s just the child in me.
2. During the cardio, while you’re doing any type of work with reps and weights, I wish that the number of reps would count down on the screen as you are doing them with the personal trainer, because again, I like to see results.
3. I think this is mainly geared towards women, for the very fact that the personal trainer is a woman. But my husband is going to use this as well (for improving his core strength) and he said he’d rather have a male personal trainer than female.
4. When I was setting up my customized section, after I plugged in my height and weight, the personal instructor instructed me that I was over the weight range for my height. Now maybe this is just me being uber-sensitive, but DUH! I’d rather just have it just state at the end that my target goal is weight loss so I will be doing a lot of cardio in my customized workouts.
5. Although I don’t have a problem with this because my husband already had an x-box, it would be more versitile if they came out with one that can be played on regular DVD players OR one that can be played on BOTH an x-box AND a DVD player (and for the x-box, they could just have you use the x-box remote that plays movies instead of the controller).
6. Although I LOVE the Meditation Garden yoga sessions, I would like to know how many Calories I’ve burned at the end of each session- the “game” only tells you how many Calories you’ve burned at the end of each “Workout” session.

I was a little apprehensive about this at first, I’ll admit, I thought it was a silly idea, but I LOVE it now! Once I got into it and started the workout, it was fun and not boring at all! This is perfect if you are a mom (or a dad, I know some dads stay at home or work at home too)/ hate the gym/ don’t have $ for the gym AND a personal trainer AND a nutritionist/ get bored easily/ need positive reinforcement/ need a schedule/ need something different in each workout/ need custimization… ENJOY! :-)

Thanks so much Squirbel, this is super awesome. your insights are really really useful.
So you mentioned that you wre apprehensive initially but now you love it. What got u hooked on to it initially then? What I mean is that one can address the issue of commitment or stickiness of a game like this by all these features and improvising the experience real time but how do you get people to sign up in the first place. Weight loss is something that is desirable but not that easy to sign up for. What elements do you think would have made you get more excited and basically cross the chasm in the start