The Market Structure and Characteristics of Electronic Games

A multi-billion dollar industry, electronic games have been experiencing strong and rapid growth in recent times. The world of games is not only exciting due to the magnificent growth of the industry however, but due to a host of other factors. This chapter explores electronic games, providing an analysis of the industry, key motivators for game play, the game medium and academic research concerning the effects of play. It also reviews the emerging relationship games share with sport, recognizing that they can replicate sports, facilitate sports participation and be played as a sport. These are complex relationships that have not yet been comprehensively studied. The current chapter serves to draw academic attention to the area and presents ideas for future research.

Dynamics and Simulation of General Human and Humanoid Motion in Sports

This chapter relates biomechanics to robotics. The mathematical models are derived to cover the kinematics and dynamics of virtually any motion of a human or a humanoid robot. Benefits for humanoid robots are seen in fully dynamic control and a general simulator for the purpose of system designing and motion planning. Biomechanics in sports and medicine can use these as a tool for mathematical analysis of motion and disorders. Better results in sports and improved diagnostics are foreseen. This work is a step towards the biologically-inspired robot control needed for a diversity of tasks expected in humanoids, and robotic assistive devices helping people to overcome disabilities or augment their physical potentials. This text deals mainly with examples coming from sports in order to justify this aspect of research.

Digital Sport

Recent advances in computing technology have contributed to a new trend that merges digital gaming with physical sports activities and combines the advantages of both; such as contributing a health benefit and supporting distributed participants. This chapter describes prominent examples, and their underlying theoretical concepts and perspectives. In particular, it presents a design prototype, “Jogging over a Distance,” which offers social joggers the opportunity to run together, although being in two different locations. This approach demonstrates the potential for the merging of computer gaming technology with sports activities, to offer combined effects that have traditionally been limited to each respective domain. Future work on enhancing existing sports and gaming activities will support novel experiences previously not possible. This exciting new field has the potential to enhance users’ lives by making positive health contributions.

Computer Supported Collaborative Sports

Augmenting existing sports experiences with computing technology is increasingly gaining attention due to its potential for performance enhancement. However, most of these approaches focus on existing single-user activities. The authors are presenting the newly emerging field of Computer Supported Collaborative Sports (CSCS) to draw attention to the social aspect of sport and its potential to support novel experiences for players that are not available in traditional sports environments. They discuss important dimensions in the design space of CSCS by detailing two example applications and lay out further research directions for the design of collaborative technologies in computer augmented sports.

Technology to Monitor and Enhance the Performance of a Tennis Player

Tennis is a popular game played and viewed by millions of people around the world. There is a large impetus for players to improve their game and technology is becoming an important tool in doing this. This chapter discusses the current technology used in tennis and also discusses the biomechanics of the various strokes, so that the application of the technology can be better understood. Since the serve is a crucial part of a player’s game, this chapter focuses on the serve, but still discusses the other tennisstrokes. The chapter is divided into 2 parts: the biomechanics of the strokes and the technology used to monitor tennis. The technology section details some of the major tools to monitor and analyze the tennis swing, including high speed digital cameras, marker-based optical systems, and inertial sensors. Examples are provided of how these technologies can be applied. Finally, a small discussion is presented, which gives an idea of future directions in tennis monitoring.

The Effect of Arousal on Adolescent's Short-Term Memory of Brand Placements in Sports Advergames

The authors’ study examined factors affecting Mexican adolescent’s memory of brand placements contained in advergames. Specifically, two concerns were investigated: (1) the effect of high/moderate arousal on adolescent’s short-term recognition, and (2) the effect of high/moderate arousal on brand confusion. Analyses indicated that high arousal advergames corresponded to both higher hit scores (better recognition) and lower false alarms (less confusion) than moderate arousal advergames. The findings revealed more accurate short-term memory when subjects were exposed to a high arousal condition than to a moderate arousal condition. Advertisers wishing to target adolescents could strengthen the recognition of their products and brands by relying on fast pace or competitive game genres.

Video-Based Motion Capture for Measuring Human Movement

Through the advancement of electronics technologies, human motion analysis applications span many domains. Existing commercially available magnetic, mechanical and optical systems for motion capture and analyses are far from being able to operate in natural scenarios and environments. The current shortcoming of requiring the subject to wear sensors and markers on the body has prompted development directed towards a marker-less setup using computer vision approaches. However, there are still many challenges and problems in computer vision methods such as inconsistency of illumination, occlusion and lack of understanding and representation of its operating scenario. The authors present a videobased marker-less motion capture method that has the potential to operate in natural scenarios such as occlusive and cluttered scenes. In specific applications in sports biomechanics and education, which are stimulated by the usage of interactive digital media and augmented reality, accurate and reliable capture of human motion are essential.

Technologies for Monitoring Human Player Activity Within a Competition

Monitoring of player activity within a competition is currently a reality within some high performance sporting teams, and the demand and level of sophistication for this information will continue to grow as players and coaches seek this knowledge. This new found scientific wisdom can guide the training and preparation of the athlete, with the aim of improving performance and reducing the likelihood of injuries. To date this information has been collected manually, which is time consuming and expensive. The challenges are to validate the accuracy of these systems and once this criterion is satisfied to expedite the analysis process to enable as close to real time feedback as possible. Outside of the coach and player arena there is growing demand from the other associated parties, such as the host broadcast media, referees and the spectator, all of whom are seeking new knowledge on “what is happening” during the play.

A General-Purpose Taxonomy of Computer-Augmented Sports Systems

The area of computer-augmented sports is large and complex and spans several disciplines. This chapter presents a general-purpose taxonomy of computer-augmented sports systems, which is intended to assist researchers and designers working in this domain. Allowing systems to be classified with regard to form as well as function, the taxonomy is intended to have several uses, including serving as a clear map to aid in the understanding of the domain and as a tool to help researchers analyse the state-of-the-art by characteristics of systems. The taxonomy also offers a common vocabulary to the multidisciplinary teams that work in computer-augmented sports and can be used to identify sparsely populated regions of the domain as promising areas for future research. The authors present and demonstrate the use of the taxonomy using four example systems selected from an extensive review.

In-Game Advertising

This chapter reports a recent research study involving a sports video game which sought to provide an overview on the use of in-game advertising, consumer attitudes towards the practice, and an empirical test to assess its effectiveness in terms of brand recall and recognition. Intervening variables such as attitude towards advertising in general and in-game advertising in particular, brand familiarity, and experience with gaming was also considered. A sample of 32 participants was asked to engage in video game play of a relatively new sports game and complete a series of measures examining attitudes, recall and recognition of in-game advertising. Findings supported all hypotheses with the exception of the hypothesis predicting a positive relationship between attitude toward in-game advertising and advertising effectiveness in terms of recall and recognition. User factors such as age, game experience, game likeability, and item specific factors such as characteristics of the display panel and relevance of the product to the game were found to play an important role in improving advertising effectiveness. Contrary to earlier studies, attitude towards in-game advertising was lower than expected, especially amongst the experienced game players.