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A growing trend
Motivating people to be more active through video games is a familiar concept to Keith Rumjahn, 34, the CEO of OliveX, which has developed several popular mobile fitness-motivating games. For example, one of the company’s games is 22 pushups, which challenges users to perform 22 pushups each day for 22 days.

Rumjahn, a Canadian based in Hong Kong, told Healthline that he started in the app world when he created a basketball-coaching app around seven years ago. A volunteer basketball coach at the time, he said that he realized “fundamental movement and fitness is more important than technique.”

He thought that he could make fitness accessible through his app-based games, expanding beyond just basketball.

He says that gamifying fitness centers on two key questions: “What if fitness was as addicting as games?” and “What if fitness was as fun as games?”

“Gamification is definitely a growing trend and spreading to other areas,” he added. “It’s growing beyond fitness and into sports. For example, I wrote a book about using game-based basketball training instead of traditional drills where 10 people stand in line and take turns shooting. This is because the best way to imitate a game or real life is through games… there are more people watching eSports than any other sports. The next generation will all play games so it’s natural for them to experience the same in work and fitness.”