Base Idea -
This might end up being a fairly watered down and broad topic for this game idea please be understanding as 1. I am new here, and 2. this is just a concept I would more or less like to see created. That being said please feel free to go into as much bashing as you like over the topic idea as i've read up on similar ones in the past where you guys have brought up some great points in regards to fitness tracking games.
About a month or a month and a half ago I discovered the fitbit one. Fitbit for those of you that don't know is a lightweight tool that acts as a personal pedometer that tracks steps, stairs climbed, calories burned, activity level, and when attached to the aria will track your weight and bmi. The fitbit holds a lot of information in a tiny little device and through the use of a public rest api you can pull out the users information and build on top of it.
Where am I going with this?
What I'd like to eventually do with this is figure out a way to use the rest api's from these different trackers available to build a small little mini game. Something that will encourage users to do a little bit more than just run and see their results on a graph. (Please don't think I'm going to try wasting my time on a giant MMO or some big exploration game) I'm not silly and I know that 90% of the users of these tools will not have any need for an investment in a video game. What I would like to do is builds small fighting simulator where your player is your workout. (Think of it as a robot fighting league of sorts)
You will workout during the day and then using those points you accumulate from the fitbit you can spend them to accumulate points in the video game to level up your character and unlock various equipment to make purchases in the game. I want to start this game using the fitbit but I'm open to once its complete spreading the game out to other markets through other public api's.
How will my player level up?
the fitbit assigns goals the user must complete throughout the day to reach certain milestones. For example you are expected to reach 10,000 steps, 5 miles, and 10 flights of stairs to hit your goals early on in the software but you can always change this later in time to harder and less reachable goals. What we want to do to help the user reach their goals and initiate a more goal oriented plan to the game. The idea is to limit what the user can gain training wise to match their goals for the day. So if you hit 10k steps on rookie level you only get 100% for the day) This will hopefully help deter cheating as well throughout the game as there is no incentive to run 55 miles in a day and climb 99 flgihts of stairs. =\. What we will do is start slowly adding on to your daily routine as your player levels up. So level 1 will need to walk 10k steps while level 10 might want to try and hit 15k steps. (The numbers are not laid out yet but the idea is there).
For hitting milestones as wel,l such as 50k steps logged in your career. you get special points. These can be used to help unlock certain types of equipment. However to reach this eq you still need to use your regular points which will be capped off nightly so while you might be able to unlock the newest sword or armor you can not use it until your player reaches said points to make the purchases.
Ok, so I get the player but whats the game do?
The idea right now will use a simulator based in C# underneath an asp.net webpage to send the players information down to the simulator as well as the opponent you chose and simulates a fight. When finished it will upload the results to the database and allow the user to watch the match and see how they panned out. Your player can compete in as much as 5-10 fights a day and you will be working to move up your current league to more advanced fighting ones. These will be seperated both by level and by winning percentage. Leagues will consist of x amount of players all from the same current level. When you level up you move into the next ranks to compete with players of higher training and more standardized eq until you hit a max level and compete with the big boys of the league.
The idea is to separate users based on their device of choice so we might look at having a manual league for users that want to play for free but might not be as accurate where you must input your activities daily as you do them. Then a league where we use the fitbit information for a more accurate and exciting game environment.
We might also consider putting in tactics for the users to determine how offensive they are, defensive, and how they react to certain situations to give the users a bit more feel of control to their player.
Who am I?
The thing said if you wanted to be taken seriously you needed to put information down about yourself and those working with you. Right now I've got myself a recent graduate in software engineering with about 6 years experience coding in C# along with 2 other people in a similar situation. The idea for this game would be more to get people incentive to work outside of the house to play a game and not find themselves stuck in a rut of sitting down all day to accomplish what they want to do. I believe that while this game would have a niche market and probably have some issues becoming a big money grabber I look at it more for a way to convince myself to workout rather than a tool to make me money. I would love to hear any comments or concerns you see with this. I'd rather fix any problems up front then deal with them in the long run.
