According to the latest Pentagon figures, more than one-third of the roughly 31.2 million Americans aged 17 to 24 are unqualified for military service because of physical and medical issues, mostly due to obesity. CardioActive is working with The United States Army in association with The Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) to help solve this problem. Together with our advisor, Mike Christel, and our client contact, Dr. Thomas B. Talbot, CardioActive is searching out a way to make exercise something 17-24-year-olds will want to do using an active video game (AVG).
It was suggested to us by both Mike and Brett, that we should take the first part of the semester as an experimental period. We did research and experimentation into existing AVG trends and determined what is was we wanted to contribute to the genre that was both new and innovative. Then, we created demos to discover how certain body movements worked with hardware, what types of body movements tended to raise the heart rate most, and what was fun and healthy about certain activities. We also researched past studies about what motivates people to exercise. The findings can be viewed on the Research and Design page of our website.
By the end of the semester, we developed a game called Webz of War for the 17-24 male and female demographic. It is cooperative in nature, and uses the Wii Balance Board, the Kinect, and a heart rate monitor to drive parts of gameplay. Participants navigate through a subway system infected with robot spiders while riding hover boards (Wii Balance Boards), and increasing the damage they can inflict on the spiders based on their heart rate.
CONCEPT DESIGN – WEBZ OF WAR
Our team is very excited about the concept for Webz of War–A world fraught with danger, but at the same time an exciting adventure. Following are some of the artifacts we’ve collected and generated to help guide the aesthetic of our game.
CONCEPT ART / REFERENCE IMAGES
CONCEPT ANIMATIONS / REFERENCE VIDEOS
MUSIC EXERPTS
DESIGN DOCUMENTS