'Gamifying' my Exercise...

Apologies for the lack of posts lately but work has become... stimulating. I'm currently in the process of drafting a manuscript about one project as well as developing a protocol for another, and therefore it feels as though my reading/writing time is best reserved for work-related purposes at the moment. That being said, I'm taking this Saturday morning to hammer out a quick blog post about a neat 'toy' that I've been trying out.

'Gamification' is a quite modern concept of adding reward systems, such as those implemented in table-top and video games, to non-game activities as an incentive to enhance interest in them. For example, when I was in elementary school, a local library posted a notice board indicating the number of books that each kid had read, turning reading into a competition for bragging rights. It's fairly easy to see how the advent of social media allows the potential to turn such 'leaderboards' into large-scale activities.

It is with this intent that I purchased an app on my iPhone called Zombies, Run!, which is quite clever and, I think, has the potential to kick off something quite huge:

The idea behind Zombies, Run! is quite simple: It's essentially a classic radio play centered around your role as a runner supporting a small town holding out in a zombie apocalypse. Each segment of the play is divided into jogging missions of about 1/2 hour during which you hear voice acted, narrative scenes interspersed among a playlist of the music you have on your device. The first scene sets up your mission and subsequent interstitials reveal more of an unfolding story (you may be asked to run through a 'forest' in order to lure zombies away from the town with home base relaying instructions and updates as to your progress over the course of the mission, for example).

The narrative is coupled to a game mechanic, the GPS on your phone measures your total distance and speed (direction and position aren't taken into account for obvious safety reasons). As you jog, you automatically 'find' and 'pick up' supplies for the town. The longer you jog, the more supplies you find. In between missions, you choose how to distribute these supplies to the various areas of the town (Armoury, Recreational Facilities, Housing, Medical Tents, etc.) in order to cause it to grow, unlocking more missions and extra bonuses. 

Here's a shot of the 'game' screen showing your town's status, population, and allowing you to divvy up supplies as well as read 'codex' entries about the various characters, locations, and events related to the narrative.

As we all know, if your goal is to stay fit, your perception of progress only comes in infrequent milestones. The idea here is that you get immediate feedback regarding your exercise progress, thus incentivizing you to keep it up. I'd run regardless, but it is a cool perk.

There's one other optional feature to the game that simulates something more akin to interval training. You can enable 'zombie chases', wherein you'll peridocically receive audio cues indicating that fast zombie are on your tail and that you need to pick up the pace. They're tough to avoid (getting caught makes you drop supplies) and are intended for people jogging in open, unobstructed environments such as a track. I turned them off when I was caught by a zombie horde because I refused to ignore a red light in Palo Alto...

I've only run three missions so far, but I can already say that I'm quite taken with the concept. The radio drama is of high quality and the interstitals add some unique flavor to each jog. My only concern is that I have no sense of the depth of the town-building segment and can't evaluate whether it's just a gimmick or something legitimately addictive. Regardless, the app lays the groundwork for an explosion in gamification of various activities. Some already gamified things, such as checking into burger joints in Foursquare are of dubious social utility; but as economists advocate, behavior is all about incentives, and positively reinforcing exercise seems like an awesome idea.