Metactics

Challenge: Over the past decade, we’ve seen an increasing use of gamification in mobile applications to increase the engagement and fun of athletes in individual training and sports. Gamified applications such as Fitbit, adidas Running, Nike+, Fitocracy, Strava, to name a few, inspire crowds of athletes to exercise regularly. However, there is a lack of knowledge and concepts on how to gamify traditional team sports such as football, basketball, baseball, or floorball and their training. Thus, in cooperation with adidas AG we gave students participating in the lecture Designing Gamified Systems the following challenge:

Design and investigate a novel digital gamification solution for your favorite team sports in order to increase the athlete’s individual or social training experience, their training performance, and the social dynamics (e.g., cohesion and team identity) within a sports team.

Five project teams worked on this challenge and developed impressive concepts and prototypes within two months, which were then presented to adidas AG executives.

Date: Summer semester 2022

Results: 

Metactics

Team: Sylvia Reiß, Anna Hirschbeck, Simon Merk, Nico Hambauer

Abstract:

Metactics is a Virtual Reality (VR) approach enabling teams to train their tactical basketball skills anytime from anywhere. Gamers can complete challenges with increasing strategic demands together and learn how to play smart. Thereby, they will be assisted by a virtual team mascot, named Foxy, who will guide them through the game and introduce them to various strategies. In essence, we employ gamification theory to make tactic training in basketball intrinsically more fun and effective. Teams can practice together in the Metaverse, learn new strategic moves and improve their cognitive skills and capability to “think ahead”. Besides the virtual training we provide a social environment in form of a virtual club house. Here teams can hang out enjoy time together and thereby strengthen team cohesion and identity. During the game, players can gain virtual coins, which can be used to acquire virtual goods for their personal avatar or the collective club house.