A Survey of Active Video Game Literature From Theory to Technological Application

Childhood obesity is a major phenomenon that has been dramatically spread in different countries. This prevalence draws the attention of researchers to find the reasons that help increase this problem. One of the main contributing factors for increasing the children and adolescent weight is the sedentary nature of their life. With the advent of technology these days, many children and adolescents are engaged in different seated activities and drawing them away from physical activities. Hence, finding a way to attract and motivate children and adolescents to exercise needs to look at the activities they most prefer. Playing video games is one of the favorite activities for children. However, this activity is defined as a seated activity that helps increase the sedentary behavior. Literature revealed that time spent in playing video games is linked to children’s obesity and the decreasing levels of physical activity. From this finding, the idea of converting this passive activity to active one has been developed. The new form of games called active video games (AVG) promises innovation for active life style. The new generation of video games which require players’ physical interaction provides the opportunity for children to play their favorite leisure activity and exercising in the same time. Before one can effectively conduct research into this realm to provide innovative and useful AVG’s a very diverse number of disciplines and fields need to be surveyed. This paper represents a comprehensive literature review conducted over a number of areas that include video games, engagement, active video games, and available technologies for AVG development. Keywords-Active Video Games; Childhood Obesity; Kinect