Interesting blog post from Muzzylane – a software company leading in serious games design and development – on Zamzee: Gamifying Physical Activity.

An excerpt from the post: “Incorporating games or game-like elements as motivators for physical activity for kids has a lot of promise as well. At least, that’s the thinking behind a program like Zamzee. Zamzee is an online rewards program that incentivizes physical activity. In effect, it’s a technology aid that tries to “gamify” physical activity for teens.” This meter can record how much the kids are moving around and they can keep track of their own progress online.

The author provides very interesting comment at the end on the issue of extrinsic incentives that might have taken away the intrinsic motivation of doing a physical exercise. Definitely a point worth taking. Extrinsic rewards are certainly good at motivating and starting a desired behavior change. But then again, ‘how much is too much?’.