(We originally posted this on July 23, 2020. You can read more of our original ideas in our archive.)
Problem: Working out is not fun.
Solution: A business that is designed to gamify workouts by using people’s existing tech infrastructure (phones or laptops) to record how they are doing workouts to deliver mini-games of fun workout activities. I noticed this first on TikTok: they are constantly creating new filters, features, and games for users to play. One of them (which generated over 2 billion views globally) was the #ElectricityGame. In it, users would get into a pushup position and control a pixelated ball with the vertical position of their nose to try to avoid touching the walls of the minigame. The simple game was extremely popular and effective for engaging people in micro-exercise (i.e. doing pushups for a couple minutes as they tried to win the game).
What’s unique about this business is that it’s form-factor agnostic: unlike Mirror (acquired by Lululemon for $500 million), the games and software that this company creates would be designed to run on any platform whether it’s a phone, laptop, or smartwatch. These minigame workouts could thus turn any device into a workout device all by using existing hardware like a phone camera, gyroscope, or microphone.
Broadly, the literature of game design in fitness is not very well developed. Personally, I enjoyed reading these three papers and patents: (1) Adaption of Graphics and Gameplay in Fitness Games by Exploiting Motion and Physiological Sensors, (2) Systems and methods for fitness and video games (patent), and (3) Prevalence of Behavior Changing Strategies in Fitness Video Games: Theory-Based Content Analysis. One paragraph that stood out was the following:
Obesity and lack of physical fitness are increasingly common in adults as well as children and can negatively affect health. Regular physical activity, such as jogging or training in a fitness center, is recommended by physiologists to fight obesity and improve one’s fitness, but usually requires considerable motivation. Recently, researchers as well as companies have proposed a few fitness games, i.e. videogames where users play by performing physical exercises, in which game elements (such as graphics and gameplay) are used to encourage people to exercise regularly. This paper proposes a fitness game system which aims at combining arcade-style game graphics, physiological sensors (e.g. heart rate monitor, 3D accelerometer), and an adaptation engine. The adaptation engine considers personal information provided by the user (e.g., age and gender), her current heart rate and movements, and information collected during previous game sessions to adjust the required intensity of physical exercises through context-aware and user-adaptive dynamic adaptations of graphics and gameplay. Besides describing the general system, the paper presents two implemented games and a preliminary user evaluation, which also led us to introduce in the system a 3D virtual human.
The area is nascent, with lots of potential: it’s $94 billion globally, research is still developing, and consumer habits are changing.
Monetization: Subscription, perhaps if you win a game for the week you move up to the top of the leaderboard.
Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)