I don’t think any other game genres implement physical exercise more than rhythm games. This genre has people dancing and jumping around in places like arcades or at home through games like Just Dance and Beat Saber. Exercise games like Wii Sports are also physical, but I don’t think most of these exercise games are as effective due to their music and lack of difficulty.
In most rhythm games, the player gets to choose a song. Normally the player is passionate about this song, and the songs of these physical rhythm games are designed to draw the player more into the game. Exercise game music tends to be a bit more ambient. Though ambient music can put the player in a trance, for me, these games make it more about focusing on yourself rather than the game, which is where these games lose me a bit. It makes sense for these games to make the player slowly make repetitive motions to exercise. However, I think turning something into a game is to make it more digestible, enjoyable, and engaging, and in my opinion, most of these games lack engagement.
Beat Saber works very well as a game because it forces the player to engage with it. From the start, the player encounters fast-moving boxes moving toward them. The VR aspect of these boxes makes it more intense because it’s not only more isolating from reality, but viewing an object actually come at you instead of across the screen creates a unique, more stress-inducing effect. They not only have to keep up with hitting two boxes at once but also keep in mind the direction they must hit while listening to fast-paced music. These elements of Beat Saber give so much coming at the player. To win, they must be fully engaged in the game, making it difficult yet successful.
Physical exercise/movement games must be difficult for them to be engaging. If they weren’t, it’d make players more into spectators, like how people mindlessly throw a ball back and forth to one another. If these games were done the same way as a non-physical one, what is the reason to play a game in a physical space rather than on a screen?
I really like the distinction you make between rhythm and exercise games having different levels of immersion, where you focus on yourself in the latter but the game itself in the former. I wonder where games like Kinect Adventures! for XBox 360 would fall, because they don’t have a rhythmic aspect but they seem more engaging than pure exercise games like Wii Fit because the exercises you do are a bit more fun and exotic. Also, if I remember correctly the music was a bit more exciting in Kinect Adventures! than in Wii Fit, so that would exemplify your point of more engaging games having more interesting music.
I agree with your take on Beat Saber, and I really enjoyed the short time I had playing with it during the difficult video games night! I think an interesting thing about Beat Saber when compared to say, Wii Sports, is that the engagement that you speak of has a mandatory time sink. While some games in Wii Sports force the player to be constantly engaged and reactive (like Wii Tennis), other games, like Wii Bowling, gives the player the opportunity to move at their own pace and take things slower. When you play any rhythm game, from Guitar Hero to Beat Saber, you are expecting to zone-in on the game for the duration of the song that you pick. It’s such a reactive genre, and the player is motivated by the enjoyment of the song and the satisfaction of playing the game correctly that it motivates them to keep focused for the entirety of the song.
When I was playing Beat Saber, though, I kept thinking about questions of accessibility – personally, I have a condition that makes standing for even a slightly extended amount of time progressively more and more painful, and there are also obstacles in the game that require the player to quickly step side to side and duck down to avoid them. As I was playing this game, I started wondering what the play experience would be like for a player who can’t complete those sort of movements, or a player like me, who, to play the game for an extended period of time, would probably have to sit down. I’m new to the game, so I’m not sure what type of accessibility options there are, but it made me think about physical accessibility as a whole in the rhythm game genre, considering many of games of the genre require a greater physical element than other genres, as you mentioned.