HeartBeat: An Outdoor Pervasive Game for Children

This paper reports the design of a pervasive game for children to demonstrate the design vision of Head-Up games, a genre of pervasive games that puts outdoors play center stage, combining the benefits of traditional outdoor games with the opportunities for richer experiences and innovation offered by new media. The design of the game, called HeartBeat, explores the use of physiological sensing and more specifically heart rate measurement as input to the game and as an approach to enhance the Pervasive gaming experience. Evaluation with 32 children outdoors showed how the game promotes physical activity and social interaction between children in ways one would expect from traditional outdoor games.