No Game, No Pain?: Towards a Mobile Exergame for Rehabilitation

Exergames are considered useful to facilitate specific exercises in rehabilitation. This context, however, raises questions regarding pain management: How do we have to consider pain sensations in game design? Beside some rules to avoid overexertion, these important aspects have rather been neglected in prior research. Within this contribution we address these questions and present an example of a mobile exergame for thrombosis prophylaxis. In a pilot study, 40 healthy young adults rated their subjective pain sensation on a numeric rating scale before and after having completed one of two versions of the exergame (counting of exercise repetitions only vs. controlling a beach ball through exercise repetitions). Beside possible effects of gender and level of fitness on pain reports, we focus on limitations that should be addressed in future research.