Having Fun and Getting Fit: An Overview of Exergames

With the arrival of Eye Toy for Playstation 2, the widely popular Nintendo Wii, and the upcoming release of Project Natal for Xbox, the term exergaming - the use of video games as a form of exercise - has started gaining popularity. But how effective are these games? Can you really get fit by playing, let's say, Wii Sports?

It's been a while since I've embarked on a quest to find the best exergame aka geek friendly exercise, and throughout the course of my journey I've tried out many different games (mainly on Playstation 2 and Nintendo Wii), so I thought I'd do a little overview of what you can expect to gain from different types of exergames.

Casual Exergames: Lots of Fun with Friends

Examples: Wii Sports, Mario Cart Wii

Most Wii games fall into this category and I would also include games supposedly more focused on exercise, like Wii Sports. These games count on a limited amount of moves, and you don't even have to invest a lot of effort into the right moves to make it through the game. The focus is on fun rather than burning calories and these games usually won't hold your attention for long.

So, don't be fooled by the Sports in the title; these games won't really prepare you for any real sport, but the plus side is that they really are a lot of fun to play when you're having friends over!

Medium Intensity Exergames: Balancing Fun and Exercise

Examples: Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), Eye Toy Kinetic, We Cheer, Wii Fit

The games in this category can be quite demanding, especially if played on higher difficult levels, although they sometimes don't get your whole body moving (for instance, We Cheer is mostly a good exercise for your arms). But be prepared to spend a lot of time navigating menus, choosing exercises, songs and what not. Also, be prepared to invest some time in making sure your moves are detected properly, which can be quite frustrating and can spoil your immersion in the game. However, if everything works fine, these games provide a lot of fun and some exercise, but a lot of time is lost on pointless tasks (and if you're out of luck, a cumbersome navigation through menus).

The bottom line is: if you invest enough energy in these games, they can make you sweat, but you have to play these games a whole lot (read: at least an hour per session) before getting any real results.

High Intensity Exergames: Emphasizing Exercise

Examples: My Fitness Coach (Wii)

Interestingly enough, the highest intensity exergame I found for the Wii doesn't even use the motion sensing abilities of the Wiimote or the Wii Balance Board. It's just a continuos exercise routine that really gets you moving around. It's up to you to make sure you're doing the right thing, but if you're interested in getting fit, you should have the motivation for that anyway. What I like about My Fitness Coach is that you only have to choose the duration and daily focus of your workout, and everything else is done for you. No wasting time on menus, you're just asked to assess the difficulty of the workout after completing major sections, so that the next workouts can be adjusted accordingly. A great feature is also that you are asked to do a Physical Challenge every 10 workouts, so you can really track how your workout affects different parts of your body.

All in all, My Fitness Coach is a real exercise that will can have real effects on your fitness level if you decide to stick with it. And it's a nice way to get prepared for more difficult forms of exercise if you're starting from scratch.

Leaving the Game Consoles: Nothing Beats the Real Deal

Examples: Nike+

Not surprisingly, at the end of my exergame journey I came to the conclusion that nothing beats the real deal: going out and running. But as a true geek I wasn't prepared to settle for a workout without gadgets, so I decided to give Nike+ iPod Sports Kit a try. While it's not a true exergame, it's a great gadget that can keep you motivated and provides real-time feedback during your runs. After every run, I love to see how the latest run compares to previous ones, compete in different online challenges with or against other runners and set personal goals to beat.

As you can see from my profile, I haven't been using Nike+ for long, but I find it very easy to decide to go for a run after seeing how close I am to a goal or how other runners are beating my distance. Nike+ brings elements of games to real exercise and that I think is the winning combination.

Exergames: Easy Start and a Filler Activity

So, what exactly is the role of exergames then? Are they worth it?

If you're looking for something that will help you to get up from the couch, I'd suggest starting with some of the Medium Intensity Exergames I listed and then progress to Higher Intensity or outdoor activities. Having fun can really make you appreciate exercise and I found less intensive games like Wii Fit to be a great way to get used to regular workouts, but you'll probably soon feel the desire to progress to something more demanding (especially if you want visible results).

Apart from providing an easy start, exergames can also provide you with an exercise option on days when you feel like taking a little break, but still want to workout. For example, my current workout routine includes Nike+ running around 3 times a week and My Fitness Coach in between to strengthen specific body muscles. And when I just feel like having fun, a dose of We Cheer can also provide some light exercise.

To sum it up: exergames do have some positive effects, but don't rely on exergames alone to get fit. I can certainly recommend using them as a fun way to encourage and maintain regular exercise - but don't forget that there are also gadgets like Nike+ that can make serious outdoor activity more enjoyable.

My Wii experience

Wiiii, a Wii has finally made it to our living room! And after a few days of Wii Sports I can share my first impressions and reflections on how the Wii can be used in education. I know a lot has already been written, so for those of you who might not yet know what is a Wii I suggest reading Nintendo Wii: first impressions - a great post that in my opinion nicely describes what a Wii is and how you can play with it. Also, you might want to read A Wii post on educational gaming, just to warm up ;-)

Ok, let me now describe my personal Wii experience. The first word that came to my mind after using Wii was: intuitive! The new motion-sensitive controllers are in my opinion amazing and playing the games feels so natural. You just use the controller as if it was a tennis racket or a baseball bat and that's it. Before I got the Wii, I was a bit afraid that playing Wii Sports would soon get boring, but it just doesn't. It feels like a real game and it is a totally engaging and addictive game (also, the muscle ache the day after was 100% real - I was never really ware of all the upper-body muscles you can train with playing those sports before I tried Wii Sports :-/).

Apart from providing great physical exercise (by the way - you can quite easily loose some wight with the Wii - don't take my word for it, read the Wii Sports Experiment, Results!), the Wii can also connect to the Internet and can be used to socialize with your Wii friends. You can in fact use a Wii version of the Opera browser, check out the Wii news and weather channel, or use the Message Board to send and receive messages and keep track of your progress. The really fun thing is that each Wii player can build his/her own Mii - a virtual character that can be used in games or that you can let travel to your friends' Wiis (look at the picture below - it's my Mii!). Isn't that cute? ;-) But also, it's a fun way to interact with your friends - you can in fact even save your Mii to your own Wii Mote (the Wii controller) and when you visit a friend, you can transfer your Mii to his/her Wii :-)

The Miis are sure a cute feature, but as an Internet addict I must say that I enjoy the web browser much more. The Wii browser is still a Trial version and I think there is still a lot of room for improvement (like encoding settings - right now the browser can't display certain specific characters of my language), but at a first glance it looks ok. You can zoom in or out on web pages, which is really useful because of the low resolution of TV screens. The browser has Flash support, and there are already web sites with flash games that can be easily played on the Wii (Google Wii flash games). You can also watch YouTube or Google Videos with no problems. Browsing with the Wii Mote is over all very intuitive and easy to learn. When you need to type a web address or fill out a form you use an on-screen keyboard - you can't type as fast as on a real keyboard, but you get some help in the form of word suggestions and I really like the fact that it provides a subtle tactile feedback (the remote vibrates slightly when you move over a letter).

Now a few weak points I noticed so far. Firstly, a quite annoying problem with the keyboard interface: it isn't good for editing fields with existing text - let's say a wiki page or blog post - because it doesn't show the content of the field, but just lets you type in new words. I hope that gets solved in future versions. And on the subject of the Wii Opera browser: I came across the post Using the Wii Opera browser for educational purposes today and I was really surprised to see that kids find playing flash games with the Wii Mote so engaging. Surely, flash games are only mini educational games (for more on the subject read Marc Prensky's article In Educational Games, Complexity Matters), but I really think that the physical involvement that the Wii provides is an engaging form of not just playing games but also learning. Here I must point out that the Wii is a new player in the gaming industry and still has room for improvement and even more room for new games. I think that in a few years we could be seeing really interesting games that will know how to fully use the potential of Wii's specific controllers and that will also provide great, engaging, and meaningful learning experiences.

Moving on - why is there now RSS reader on the Wii? It has a great news channel, a browser, so why didn't they include an RSS reader? I sure hope they'll be adding it soon - either as part of the browser or as a separate channel.

And at last - the interface design is quite simple, but I think it could be made even more simple (bear in mind that I am a Mac user and have quite high standards as far as the UI simplicity is concerned ;-) ). A more annoying thing is that switching between Wii applications is a bit slow. I know it's a console, but from my perspective you have to wait a bit too much just to switch from the weather channel to the news channel for example. Waiting for a dozen of seconds is not such a problem when you're waiting for a game that you'll be playing for hours, but when you have to wait just to see the weather or check the mail... it is annoying. So I hope they'll improve that somehow in the future as well.

So - what's my final verdict? I am totally impressed by the Wii - it's fun and engaging, and I see a lot of potential in it, but for serious educational use I think we'll have to wait for a year or two to get better games and to improve some of the features and of course add new ones. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to my new gym - my living room and Wii Sports' fitness (I've got to get my fitness age down! I don't even want to tell you the results I got yesterday! It's really time for us geeks to get a move ;-) )