Social Exergames in Health and Wellness: A Systematic Review of Trends, Effectiveness, Challenges, and Directions for Future Research

Exergames are becoming increasingly popular and have shown potential for motivating physical activity. Past research suggests that social (multiplayer) exergames offer players an engaging experience and good aerobic exercises. Our systematic review summarizes existing work and identifies gaps, trends, and patterns on social exergame research in the domain of health and wellness. A search was conducted in the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, and PubMed. After screening 2272 records, we identified 73 studies from 2013 to 2023 that meet the inclusion criteria. Our results reveal that step tracking is the most commonly implemented measure of physical activity in social exergames, and that competition, rewards, and cooperation are the most common features used for designing the games. Our results also show that the effectiveness of social exergames is intricately linked to a combination of factors, including group size, player matching, and game features. The main contribution of this paper is (1) an analysis of features and group dynamics employed for designing social exergames, and (2) how game features affect the games' outcome (both positive and negative) uncovering challenges and opportunities to advance future research in this area. Our findings in the current review provides insights for the design and implementation of social exergaming helping users to experience more socially satisfying game experiences thereby increasing the motivation for exercise, as well as gaining social benefits.