The history of exergames: promotion of exercise and active living through body interaction

Exergames have become an important allied for many professionals of health field: physiotherapist, physical education teachers, physicians and many others. This new generation of video games has this special name because it combines exercise (with the prefix “exer”) and games. Also, exergames can be used as a resource to support the development of motor skills, promotion of an active living and healthy lifestyle, sports skills learning or simply as a tool to increase caloric expenditure. Indeed, the entertainment features presented as in any other digital game can hold a very important role to make the users more active during their leisure activities, instead of sedentary lifestyle, commonly perceived in the modern society. Within this innovation perspective for video games, this study aims to present the evolution of different interfaces, prototypes and patterns where exergames were designed with the focus on an Active Living development against the typical sedentary style of the former video games in the past. Through the conception of promotion of Exercise in this type of digital games, this paper will also show as results, how conceptions were invented since the decade of 1980 until the current era of exergames.