brent phillips

I found a great pair of articles over at Ars Technica today that looked at fitness benefits of video games. It never crossed my mind before - I enjoy going to a gym - but there is a healthy industry around fitness programs for gaming consoles - moving beyond video tapes to a more interactive and engaging scenario? I don’t think its ‘for me’ but it certainly offers an alternative, like the videos,  for folks who don’t care for formal training or who prefer to exercise in private. Ars’ gaming editor, Ben Kuchera, in fact, took a few programs to task last January to shed around 20 lbs. Not a bad improvement for someone who professes to loath exercise.

The recent article, posted today, takes a bit of a different spin. Apparently UK researchers took a look at the Wii console to see if its interactive games offered any physical benefit to its players. The results were pretty much what I expected - no significant benefit.

The study concludes that the physical activity “was not of high enough intensity to contribute towards the recommended daily amount of exercise in children… In a typical week, active gaming rather than passive gaming would increase total energy expenditure by less than 2 percent.”

Bad news for the Wii maybe, but other game makers may have better success. During a recent Christmas excursion with the family, my boys tried out the Fisher Price Smart Cycle Physical Learning Arcade System - ok the name is terrible - but they seemed to really enjoy it.  Granted, It is for younger children (3-6, versus teens) and connects to a television. As the kids ride, they can interact with a number of different games (loaded by cartridge) to keep them engaged / entertained. We didn’t end up getting one - the kids are very active already - but it was definitely difficult to pull them away from it at the store. I guess its another way that parents can encourage their children to be a bit more active.

As a weight loss mechanism, I have my doubts.  Will be interested to see if any studies turn up about it (or similar products).

I tuned in to BBC from Nice tonight and picked up an interesting story about processor technology. Part of the discussion focused on gaming supercomputing that would “offer the cinematic quality of modern films”  (like 300 perhaps?) rendered in real-time for game play on the PC. While the technologist in me is fascinated by the notion of such an immersive user experience, as a dad I get very nervous about how this might affect those who play them - especially younger children who are still developing emotionally and cognitively.   I decided to dig around on this and found some great links, the most interesting was a page written by Craig Anderson of the American Psychological Association. This is a good resource if you need more insight on entertainment violence. 

I will offer one outtake that confirmed my assumptions…

Violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased prosocial (helping) behavior.

As with many technologies, I look forward to this with cautious optimism. I also firmly believe that the good will significantly outweight the bad. It definitely puts me on guard however, especially having seen the realism of violence in today’s video games. I did not see details of this in Anderson’s paper specifically, but I would imagine that the more realistic the experience, the greater the impact. 

Fixing this, i.e. making sure our kids are not overly exposed to violence, is not the responsibility of the chip and software makers, however. There is a reason why we’re called parents after all.