Exergaming - Let's get physical

Let's get physical

Mar 8th 2007
From The Economist print edition


Video games: “Exergaming”, which combines on-screen action with physical exercise, shows that gamers need not be couch potatoes

IN THE heart of Silicon Valley, not far from Google's headquarters, a new gym aimed at a teenage clientele opened its doors last September. As befits its location, it is an unusually high-tech establishment. As well as the weights and cardiovascular exercise gear, Overtime Fitness has “exergaming” equipment that combines video games with physical exercise. One controller allows ordinary Xbox games to be played using full-body movements: players exert pressure on a padded metal bar, rather than pushing buttons on a plastic controller. With another system, players stand in front of a screen and wear a belt equipped with motion sensors, controlling on-screen action with real-world movements.

The gym's founder is Patrick Ferrell, a veteran of the video-games industry and the man behind both GamePro magazine and E3, a long-running gaming tradeshow. As a volunteer sports coach and the father of three teenagers, Mr Ferrell thinks the combination of gaming and exercise has huge potential. “It breaks up the monotony of exercise,” he says.


The origins of exergaming can be traced back to 1989, when Nintendo released two accessories for its Nintendo Entertainment System. The Power Pad was a large plastic platform that plugged into the console and contained 12 pressure sensors on which gamers could step or jump to play sports games such as “World Class Track Meet”. The Power Glove was a glove-like controller that translated various gestures into on-screen movements. Neither sold well.

Then in 1998 Konami, another Japanese games company, released an arcade game called “Dance Dance Revolution” in which players had to dance on an electronic platform, placing their feet as instructed in pre-determined patterns. The game proved very popular and over 90 versions of it have been produced, including versions for home video-game consoles. Playing the game is so physically demanding that it is now being taken seriously as a means of keeping fit.

A study by researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, published in the journal Pediatrics in December, found that exergaming more than doubled players' energy expenditure compared with sedentary gaming, and suggested that it “might be considered for obesity prevention and treatment”. In another study researchers at West Virginia University found that children who played “Dance Dance Revolution” showed “significant improvement in arterial function and fitness levels”.

It is no surprise to find one of the game's many imitators, “In the Groove 2”, in the gaming corner at Overtime Fitness. And nearby is another of Konami's pioneering exergames: “MoCap Boxing”, launched in 2001, in which players shadow-box against an on-screen opponent. (The player's movements are detected using infra-red “motion capture” sensors, which give the game its name.)

In the past few months a similar boxing game has made its way into millions of living rooms, following the introduction of the Wii, Nintendo's latest games console. “Wii Boxing”, like other Wii games, does away with button-pushing and instead incorporates physical movements directly into the gameplay, using the Wii's motion-sensitive wireless controllers. Holding a controller in each hand, players throw punches into the air to control the on-screen action. Similarly, the Wii's tennis, bowling, golf and baseball games require players to act out the physical movements involved in each of those sports, though they do not require as much physical exertion as the boxing game. Some Wii users claim to have lost weight simply through regular playing of its sports games, without otherwise changing their routines.

Michael Pachter, a video-games analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, predicts that the Wii will spawn a whole new generation of fitness and calisthenics games, going far beyond existing titles that use dance mats or video cameras (such as the EyeToy, which works with PlayStation consoles) to detect players' actions. The Wii's controller, which can detect far more subtle and complex movements, could be used to record and analyse them too, he suggests.

Not everyone is convinced that the Wii, or gaming set-ups like those found at Overtime Fitness, can have long-term benefits. Susan Zieff, an associate professor of kinesiology at San Francisco State University, says that limited movement and “sporadic kinds of jumping” are no substitute for a real workout. Still, some exercise must be better than none at all.

Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.