Gimmickry, or How Exergaming Went Mainstream
August 25, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

I've been thinking about exercise games lately, primarily due to an onslaught of new games, devices, and initiatives. For example, we've got Footgaming, a sort of promotional blog for a student fitness program called Generation Fit. The group hopes to support casual and educational play with a peripheral called FootPOWR. Judy Shasek, the program's proponent, argues that physical activity contributes to both fitness and academic success. Then there's Wii Sqweeze (pictured at top right), from Interaction Laboratories. The device promises isometric upper body exercise via shoulder abduction and adduction, wrought via a two-handled pumping interface with attached wiimote. There's reason ...

Undersea Irony
July 11, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The Spongebob Pedometer is, well, a Spongebob-shaped pedometer. It promises that its users can "keep In shape by counting steps." But the best part is this marketing tagline: "Get your lazy computer, video game kids back into exercise. The Spongebob Squarepants pedometer will keep track of their daily activity." Not, uhm, your lazy television kids though, right? (thanks to Ben) ...

Wii Fit: Exercise or Simulation
July 10, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Over on Game Critics, part of their ongoing series on Wii Fit suggests the question, is this exercise through a game, or just a simulation of exercise. The counterpoint might be: how does it really differ from any other pop-exercise regime, in book or video form, for example. ...

Simulating disease is nothing to sneeze at
June 23, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Liz Losh mentions and critiques a new Facebook app called Patient Zero, from VisualDXHealth. It takes the concept of viral spread literally rather than figuratively, allowing users to create a new virus, "power it up," and spread it to friends. Seems like a decent idea at first blush. The problem, as Liz points out, is the implementation. Viruses are created, and immunities are granted, by answering quiz questions, no doubt a hat-tip to some idiot stakeholder at the sponsor who wanted to assure "knowledge transfer" by bludgeoning people with textbook learning. Despite the whole ideavirus metaphor, representations of actual infective ...

Pedometer Pets
June 2, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Here's an interesting example of a mobile exergame. Arukotch is a tamagotchi-like virtual pet embedded in a pedometer. The "pet" is a "shy girl waiting for a proposal from a cute boy." The more steps you take, the more "healthy and beautiful" she becomes. Items like cell phones and gifts also reveal themselves as you walk more. These items can aid in obtaining, you know, a cute boy. Arukotch has been around for a few years, although I can't tell if it's still being produced. The concept is sort of insipid, but the coupling of movement to gameplay is more ...

Ubisoft to Publish Smoking Cessation Game for DS
May 29, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

According to our friends at Kotaku, Ubisoft is bringing a videogame version of Allen Carr's popular Easy Way to Stop Smoking book/method to Nintendo DS this fall. The press release says very little about the game, and really very little in general, but clearly they are borrowing a page from Nintendo, who brought Dr. Ryuta Kawashima's book Train Your Brain: 60 Days to a Better Brain to the DS as the popular title Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! ...

Making Room for Wii Fit
May 20, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

At the end of the chapter on exercise in Persuasive Games, I briefly discussed the problems exercise games pose to home use. A student and a colleague did a study and wrote an ACM article about how people negotiate space and play with big controllers like those used for DDR and Guitar Hero. With the release of Wii Fit, these issues are coming to the fore once again. GameCritics.com is running a poll asking people if they have enough room to play Wii Fit (Yes, No, Yes if I move furniture). The results are ongoing, and based on only a ...

Register for Games for Health 2008
March 13, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

It seems like just last year the idea of games for health was still a marginal one. There were DDR rigs in schools, sure, and some therapeutic uses, but it was an uphill battle. Now we have Wii Fit and the Wii Balance Board forthcoming in the West and even a pedometer for Nintendo DS. All that in mind, this is a great year to attend the Games for Health Conference 2008, which takes place at the Baltimore Convention Center May 8-9. According to the orgainizers, the confernece will cover exergaming, medical simulation, interactive messaging, health behavior change, medical informatics, ...

GDC 2008: Wii Fit, Creating a Brand New Interface for the Home Console
February 20, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

(Takao Sawano on Wii Fit) Wii Fit was released in Japan Dec 1, 2007. This title was first shown at last year's E3 and you may already be familiar with it. Just to make sure, here are some commercials currently being aired on Japanese television. The ads included a demonstration of a height/weight tool, a calisthenics game, a yoga game, a party dancing kind of game. The Japanese version of Wii Fit. sold over 1.4 million copies since the release two months ago. European release is planned for April, North America for May. There are two major components: the Wii ...

Wii Fit Sits Still
January 24, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Recently I wrote an article about meditation and games, suggesting that most existing attempts to relax through gameplay are broken. Among alternatives, I pointed to Guru Meditation, an Atari VCS game I had made to be used with the Amiga Joyboard. To play, the player sits still on the device. Today, Kotaku posts a video of what appears to be one of the minigames from Wii Fit, which appears to boast exactly the same mechanic, as at least one Kotaku commenter noted. Of course, it's hard for me to claim originality here, since I borrowed the idea from the original ...

Fat Monday
January 14, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

As mentioned last week, today Fatworld lives. Trailer below. Press release here. ...

Prepare to Fatten
January 11, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The same week McDonald's is blaming videogames for obesity, we're preparing to release a videogame about that topic. On Monday January 14, Fatworld will be released. It's a game about the politics of nutrition created at my studio, Persuasive Games, published by ITVS Interactive, and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting . We don't blame McDonald's for it, at least we don't believe it's that simple. The whole idea behind the game is to complicate the issue. As we explain in our creator's statement, Fatworld explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S.. The game’s ...

Spoof Research: Wii Not Active Enough Exercise
December 24, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Were you lucky enough to find a Wii console to put under the tree this year? Were you planning to engorge yourself at Christmas dinner tomorrow and then work off all that excess with a family session on Wii Sports? Well, it's not gonna work, according to a study in the British Medical Journal. As summarized in a BBC article last week, Wii play increased energy output by 60kcal, a "trivial" figure according to the report. Researchers did acknowledge that playing such games "stimulated positive activity behaviours," which perhaps would encourage more frequent, more intense activity of the kind necessary ...

Changemakers - vote for Fatworld
October 29, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

It seems that http://www.persuasivegames.com/games/game.aspx?ga">Fatworld has been nominated as a finalist in the "Changemakers's Why Games Matter" health games competition. They chose 14 finalists, which seems like a lot to me, and now the community can vote for their favorites. The top three will be announced as winners on November 8. So, my dear readers, why not go vote for us? ...

Games for Health Contest
July 22, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Ashoka Changemakers and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have announced a new contest searching for games that promote health and health care. Eligibility is broad (existing games, research about games, conceptual game designs that are past the programming stage of development, public or private initiatives for game-based approaches to health and health care, etc.), and three $5,000 cash prizes will be awarded ...

The Prehistory of Wii Fit
July 15, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Among the many stories from last week's E3, one of the most widely covered was Wii Fit, an exercise game controlled via a pressure sensitive balance board. You play by shifting weight on the board. While the final activities to be included in the game are still uncertain, reports suggest that they will include yoga, step aerobics, calisthenics, and soccer. The concept and implementation looks fantastic. But what nobody seems to have noticed is that the idea is 25 years old. ...

Fatworld in Wired
June 27, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

It seems like I've been talking about this game everywhere for a long time, but I don't think I've said anything about it here. Persuasive Games has been working on a game about the politics of nutrition, called Fatworld. It's been funded by PBS and the iTVS, and it will be released this fall. The game is much larger than our usual fare. I've put up a simple preview page that describes more about the gameplay over on the Persuasive Games website. This month's Wired magazine ran a page or so about the game in the magazine (p. 74), which ...

Konami does Yoga
June 19, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

A couple recent exergame related happenings to relate. First, Konami has announced Groove Motion DDR. It's the DDR you know and love, with six additional programs like yoga and martial-arts exercises. In addition to the familiar mat, the game also sports a motion sensor the player wears around his or her waist. Konami runs (and has, for some time) fitness clubs in Japan, and that is the initial destination for these products. No telling if they'll make it to the broader market or to the Stats or Europe. Second, again from Konami, a new DS game called Doko Demo Yoga. ...

Doctor: Too much Wii causes 'Wiiitis'
June 7, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

A Wii-playing doctor has suggested 'wiiitis' as the name for a sports injury-like strain similar to tennis elbow. The treatment? Ibuprofen and a Wii-free week. ...

No touching at this dance
May 7, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

The folks over at Applied Sciences have designed a prototype for a pressureless Dance Dance Revolution controller. Instead of activating the directional arrows by pressing buttons, the player does so by interrupting lasers beamed across the device. A different pattern of interruptions corresponds with a specific button press. The prototype uses a USB interface and, as the creators point out, it could theoretically be used to play any game that uses directional keys. Gizmodo lavished praise upon the gadget, but I'm not so sure. While the photo at right is compelling, you can't actually see the lasers while the thing ...

You can never have too many guitar peripherals
April 17, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I'm fascinated by physical interface peripherals of all kinds. In particular, I'm very interested in how peripherals influence players' perceptions of their living space. A new article from the Reuters wire explores this topic: Game accessories strain relationships, decor. The basic premise is that peripherals like Guitar Hero axes and bongos and the like take up a lot of room and they are ugly. Those beloved guitars are even cited as "a particularly egregious affront to interior design." The article suggests that plastic peripherals may be the man's equivalent of the stereotypical closet (or floor) full of shoes. That premise ...

Wii Workouts
April 8, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

According to the Daily Record, Liverpool John Moores University found that Wii players who play 12 hours a week or so burn 1830 calories, or the equivalent of around 27 pounds a year. 12 hours a week of Wii is more than you think, but certainly 30-60 minutes a day is pretty conceivable. That's roughly equivalent to a 20 minute aerobic exercise, according to the article. Over on Kotaku, Flynn De Marco suggests that Nintendo should just go ahead and start making a Wii Fitness series. Based on the work I've done on exergames (there's a chapter in my forthcoming ...

My new column: The Missing Social Rituals of Exergames
February 3, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Serious Games Source has published my latest Persuasive Games column, this one about social practice in exergames. In the column, I argue that exergames are currently limited by the lack social rituals of physical activity like sports. A brief excerpt: The whole experience exposes the inhumanity of exergames of this type: videogame-induced movements are no more inherently inspiring than exercise bikes or stairmasters. Wario Ware’s micro-games are cute and quirky, but their novelty quickly fades, and Wario’s characteristic end-of-session cackle becomes the gracious alarm of a new kind of countdown timer. You can read the whole thing over at Serious ...

Belgium's anti-gaming social marketing
December 21, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

A while ago, we covered some anti-gaming ads presumably run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but which turned out to be unapproved ads created by their agency (the CDC later confirmed this to me personally). Well, now it looks like the country of Belgium has adopted the same style of the anti-game social marketing. The image at right (click for a larger version) was created for the Belgian Association for Obese Patients, and depicts a chunky boy climbing a tree to retrieve his wayward PlayStation. (thanks to Liz, via Adverblog) ...

Sonic for School Lunches
December 1, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Snack Dash is a Sonic-style side-scroller distributed by the UK's School Food Trust. "Speed is the key as you race to collect as many healthy eating points as you can while avoiding the bad guys and keeping up enough energy to get through the course." Normally I'm a bit cynical about these sorts of games, because they tend to decouple the subject represented from the gameplay. But there are a few nice touches here, most notably the fact that junk food slows you down, which is abstractly accurate and also important in a Sonic-style game. Still, it's a pretty low-level ...

Nintendo: Wii is not an exercise machine
November 30, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

There are a bunch of leading articles on Yahoo! this morning about the Wii, including coverage of people breaking their TV's and windows by inadvertently hurling wiimotes. More interesting, though, is a story on "Wii elbow", in which we get an official Nintendo position on Wii as exercise. Short answer? It's not. Nintendo vice president of marketing Perrin Kaplan put it plainly. "[The Wii] was not meant to be a Jenny Craig supplement," she told the WSJ. "If people are finding themselves sore, they may need to exercise more." ...

Disability and the Wii
November 23, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Kotaku posted a letter they received about from a longtime Nintendo fan who also has Muscular Dystrophy. He's having trouble using the Wii effectively. I can't really play some of the games in Wii Sports, because of the broad physical movement required. ... I can however play games with more subtle movement controls such as Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. This leads me to believe that more options related to the adjustment of movement control sensitivity could have been included in games like Wii Sports, as would fit the precision that the Wiimote seems capable of providing. I'm sure this ...

CDC in Second Life
November 13, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

In case you didn't hear, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), located right here in Atlanta where I live, is the latest government group to open up shop in Second Life. Sounds like they're mostly using it for public outreach and social marketing, that favorite topic of my friend Liz Losh. ...

Games for Health Competition
October 20, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Games for Health has announced a competition to design health-related games. They have three categories, one for a student treatment/storyboard ($5k prize), one for an organization storyboard/treatment ($5k prize), and one for an open prototype/game ($20k prize). Deadline is April 1, 2007 and winners will be announced in June 2007. There are a number of conference calls to get more information; find them on the contest site. ...

Dave Perry working on Dance MMO
October 17, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

According to 1up, former Shiny chief Dave Perry is working on a multiplayer online dancing game called Dance!. Details are very thin, but according to the report publisher Acclaim will offer the game for free, although players will be able (or need?) to purchase clothing and other accessories for their avatars. Details are thin, but the game has an official site with a short statement about the game. You can also sign up to be a beta tester. Strange as the concept might sound at first, it's already been partly proven in Ken Perlin, Mary Flanagan, and Andrea Hollingshead's Rapunsel ...

Want to make a Safer Sex Video Game?
September 19, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

IGDA Sex Sig chair and author of the just-released Sex in Games, Brenda Brathwaite points us to a call for proposals from the University of Connecticut for a Safer Sex Video Game. If you're interested, act fast: there's a mandatory bid meeting Wednesday Sept 20 at 2pm ET. ...

Native Dancer - Virtual Powwows for Health
August 28, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Here's a rare example of an game that simultaneously attempts to educate, preserve an at-risk culture, improve health, and tackle an interesting game design problem. The Native Dancer Diabetes Education Game is a project in development at North Dakota State University and supported by the White Earth Reservation Tribal Council. ...

post-traumatic stress disorder
August 23, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Businessweek reports on the use of games for dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder among Iraq war veterans. This, as the article states, is not new and has been used with veterans of other wars (see, for example, Larry Hodges' work at Georgia Tech with Vietnam veterans). I wonder if "post-traumatic stress disorder" is not, in most cases, an euphemism for "feeling guilty as shit after going to the other end of the planet to kill a lot of people". Anyway, everybody needs help and if these poor guys are sick, I'm sincerely glad videogames can help. Too bad videogames cannot ...

Registration for Games for Health 2006 now open
August 6, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

The Games for Health initiative has announced registration for its 2006 conference, to take place in Baltimore, MD September 28-29 (yep, that's next month). You can register here; registration is $295 until August 10. This year's conference promises considerably more content than previous years, including topics such as personal health, exergaming, professional care and training, epidemics and emergency response, and health messaging. Click through for the full press release. ...

Hand me the wiimote, stat!
July 28, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Kotaku reports that the Japanese surgery-adventure title Trauma Center: Second Opinion will be a Wii launch title. The game is being developed by Atlus, who created Trauma Center: Under the Knife for Nintendo DS, which I reviewed last year. A surgery game on Wii sounds like a sure thing, and I'm sure Trauma Center won't be the only one we see. Atlus insists that the title is not a port but a "wii-make," which has "new graphics and animation; new surgical implements and operation types; a second playable character with new missions; multiple difficulty modes; and a revised control system ...

CDC: We did not approve anti-videogame ads
July 21, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

As reported yesterday, during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta I learned that the anti-videogame print ads we had previously attributed to CDC (following the advertising trades), might not have been in any way affiliated with the organization. Today the CDC confirmed that the ads in question were not a part of the VERB Youth Media Campaign, which the organization has been running since 2002. Faye Wong, Director of the campaign, explained that the "Give your thumbs a rest" ads were indeed created by Saatchi & Saatchi New York, one of the agencies retained ...

CDC doesn't villify games, gamers?
July 19, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Back in February, I wrote about the Centers for Disease Control's misguided attempts to market against videogames and gamers, a campaign titled "Give Your Thumbs a Rest, Play for Real." I first saw the ads in AdCritic and later found the remainder of the series online. Joystiq and others picked up the thread, and we all did a good deal of seemingly well-deserved CDC-bashing. Well, I just got back from giving a talk on games for health at the CDC here in Atlanta. Before the talk, John Anderton told me that the CDC had nothing to do with this campaign ...

Mobile game teaches emergency first aid
July 14, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Spanish developer Exelweiss has created Emergency 112 (or Emergency 911, if you prefer, in English), a mobile game to teach first aid techniques for medical emergencies. The game was apparently created for emergency response company Area de Intervención, but it looks like it's generally available too; a demo is available from the Area de Intervención site. Screenshots and game footage are also available from the developer. The player takes the role of a good samaritan who finds pedestrians in trouble. You must check the victim's condition and choose an appropriate diagnosis and treatment. ...

Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, but train it for what?
June 16, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Author's note: Nintendo has created a community at Gather.com to facilitate discussion of their "Touch Generations" series of games. I have cross-posted this article there, and readers may want to view the other articles in that series. I know the game isn't new, but we never covered it properly here, and I'm rather glad we waited so we can benefit from a bit of perspective on the unusual yet popular title for Nintendo DS. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day was released in mid April by Nintendo as the first salvo in the company's new battle to ...

Own a piece of Exergaming history
June 14, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

One of the things that bothers me about videogame research is the lack of a sense of history. Sometimes you'd think that the only videogames that exist are EverQuest, WoW, and Grand Theft Auto. I've tried to do my part to correct this in my own research, and to that end I've managed to collect a number of rare and esoteric early advertising games and exergames (including, among others, Jack LaLanne Physical Conditioning). Well, now's your chance to own a piece of exergaming history. Avaialble on Ebay now is a sealed copy of Bandai's Stadium Events, widely considered the rarest ...

Serious links galore!
April 19, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

So many things to post about. First, CMP launched the Serious Games Source (www.seriousgamessource.com), a site on games and all things serious. Among its feature stories, there is "Why we need a corporation of public gaming, a very thought-provoking article by David Rejeski, which triggered a must-read post from Wonderland's Alice (who happens to be a BBC employee.) There is plenty more to be read at the source, includying The State of Serious Games in Japan. But wait! There is more stuff to read. Thanks to BusinessWeek, we learn about Pulse!, a hospital-themed serious game funded by the Office of ...

Bodypad, the full-body controller
April 19, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Is DDR not enough for you? You may need (?) the Bodypad. It's "a fighting simulator actuated by your arms & legs that you plug as a gamepad on your best Playstation & Xbox games!" You attach movement sensors to your arms and legs, connect the thing to your game console (wirelessly), then kick and box and flail to your favorite fighting games, including Dead or Alive 2, Mortak Kombat Deception, Tekken 5, Soul Calibur 3, and more. If you can't quite envision how it works, there are some videos on the manufacturer's site. And they'll be exhibiting in the ...

Games for Health day at E3
April 14, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Games for Health is running a one-day event right before E3, on May 9th. The "full-day event" will focus on "the use of games and game technologies in health and healthcare, including an evening reception." Topics include health messaging, combat and emergency medicine, psychotherapy, cancer treatment, disease management, and cognitive health. A limited number of public tickets are available for $99. Register here. And if you're going to E3, best to get your travel sorted as soon as possible; check out these tips from Games for Health. ...

More on the CDC campaign against gamers
March 19, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Last month I pointed to the CDC's new advertising campaign, Give Your Thumbs a Rest, Play for Real. I argued that the campaign is ill conceived and detrimental to their overall project; vilifying gamers won't earn them any ears. Joystiq also pointed out that the CDC themselves are using videogames for training and education, mixing the message even more. ...

Accordion Hero - Leben Sie Der Traum!
March 4, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Bavarian videogame satirists Schadenfreude Interactive have announced their most recent parodic homage, Accordion Hero! Polka your way up from Der Rathskeller to Oktoberfest in Munich! From the amusing "product page": Hit all the right notes and get the crowd on their feet waving their beer steins in unison - you are an accordion hero! Includes all the great accordion melodies you've ever gotten really, really drunk to...from Ein Munchen Steht Ein Hofbrauhaus to Rock You Like A Hurricane. Accordion Hero follows in the long line of absurdities showcased at Schadenfreude, including Nazgul Thunder 2003, Grand Theft Ottoman, and Secret Weapons ...

CDC villifies games, gamers
February 27, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

The Centers for Disease Control, which is located just a few clicks down the road from where I live, has a new ad campaign to encourage more active lifestyles. As printed in AdCritic, one of these ads depicts a bunch of overweight baseballers in stained uniforms idle and cookout on a sullied, overgrown infield. The image is intricately created to resemble an in-game render; for example, the stands are simple primitives with textures to make them appear to have seats. The ad (and presumably the campaign) tagline reads, "Give your thumbs a rest. Play for real." Click the thumbnail at ...

NYTimes on exergaming and other games for the average Joe
February 23, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

The NYTimes (free reg. req.) runs today an article on Maya, the virtual personal trainer (the game was reviewed by Ian here at Watercooler in 2004). It includes interesting observations on how people relate to her. Ricardo Torres, from Gamespot, is right on the spot (no pun intended) when he says that even if the game looks "cheesy", it is effective. That "cheesy" adjective is the natural thing to say from somebody who plays mainstream games (read games for gamers not for human beings). I would probably have said the exact same thing: the first aspect that we notice is ...

PopCap for healthy minds
January 12, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

This just in on the Games for Health front. Casual games heavy PopCap has funded research with G4H on the "Cognitive Health Benefits of Digital Gameplay." Here's the official word fr