Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Natural Sciences

Second Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Loveland, Rohan

Second Advisor

Schalles, Matthew

Area of Concentration

Computer Science and Psychology

Abstract

Physical inactivity is a significant public health concern, and motivation has been identified as a key barrier to regular exercise. This thesis investigates exergames, video games that require physical activity to play, as a means of increasing exercise motivation and physical activity. Chapter 1 describes the Exertron 5000, a custom exergame system developed in Godot, a free and open source node and scene-based game engine. The system uses a lightweight wearable interface to track physical activity to control the game. Movement data is processed through a multi-stage filtering and smoothing pipeline to extract pedaling speed. The exergame is an asteroids-like arcade game in which the pedaling speed of an exercise bike controls the player’s spaceship. Chapter 2 describes a within-subjects study in which 16 college students completed sessions on both the Exertron 5000 and a standard exercise bike, with exercise motivation measured using the Exercise Motivation Scale within the Self-Determination Theory framework, which distinguishes between intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation. The exergame was associated with significantly higher enjoyment of the exercise experience compared to the standard bike, and approached significance for time spent exercising. No significant effect of the exergame on exercise motivation within SDT was found. Higher amotivation was associated with less time spent exercising across both conditions, with this relationship being weaker in the exergame condition. These findings suggest that exergames show promise as a health intervention for increasing physical activity, particularly for individuals who lack motivation to exercise.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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