Misión Korex: A Gamified System to Promote Physical Activity in Childhood Contexts

Misión Korex is a design-led proposal for a gamified system that promotes physical activity among early primary school students aged 6 to 8 in Chile, where childhood obesity and inactivity are pressing public health concerns. The paper reports that only 16.5% of Chilean children aged 5 to 17 are physically active and 48.4% are inactive, and that most schools lack practical tools to meet the 60-minute daily activity requirement set by Law 21.778. The system responds by embedding movement into everyday moments such as transitions, breaks, and commuting, using three interdependent components: a screenless accelerometer wearable, a school-based Energy Portal for periodic data synchronisation, and a collective narrative in which students accumulate energy to confront a shared threat, "The Shadow."

The work is grounded in game-based learning, gamification, the MDA framework, social innovation, positive design, and systemic design, with a stated emphasis on intrinsic rather than purely extrinsic motivation. Its development followed a mixed-methods, iterative process comprising participatory workshops with schoolchildren, teacher interviews, rapid prototyping, and co-design sessions with eleven specialists across physical education, health, design, public policy, and technology transfer. Workshops identified visible progress, collective achievement, and narrative immersion as recurrent motivational drivers, which shaped the system's core mechanics.

The paper's findings are developmental rather than empirical. It reports a pilot-ready intervention and internal coherence between narrative, mechanics, and dynamics, but does not yet present effectiveness data. The planned validation pilot at a public school in Conchalí, Santiago, will combine behavioural mapping, pre- and post-intervention surveys, directed storytelling interviews, and objective wearable data. The authors position the project as a contribution that extends game-based learning into health and behaviour change, while identifying empirical validation and longitudinal adherence evaluation as necessary future work.