Simplifying Integration of Custom Controllers in Exergames

Abstract: Despite of the established evidence in favor of exergames for physical rehabilitation their use is limited in Pakistan. In our user study with game developers (N=62), majority (67.7%) of the participants believed that exergames' popularity will increase if cheap alternatives of body tracking devices are available. Perhaps, custom controllers can be used as an affordable alternate input source in exergames but the lack of hardware programming knowledge and shortage of experience in the embedded programming attribute to the little involvement of game developers (11.3% of the participants) in the area of exergames. This paper presents a library for the integration of Arduino based (open-source and low-cost) tailored controllers to be used as input source in Unity3D (most preferred game development engine by 88.7% participants) based exergames. The interface to the library proposes a flexible and easy structure for programming and serve as a template application for a range of exergames.