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Editor's note: Frank continues in his quest to improve the image of gaming by helping dispel the myth that all video games contribute to an unhealthy lifestyle. You don't have to look very far to realize that fitness gaming has become its own money-making genre, though I do question the true motives of the publishers of some of the derivative, copycat products we're starting to see. -Jay
Almost every gamer who started playing games at a young age got the dreaded question from their parents: "Why don't you put down those games and go outside and play?" That question is just a symptom of one of the most prevalent and damaging slights against games — that they are simply a passive form of entertainment that forces kids to sit mindlessly in front of their TVs and grow fat.
This imagery has been made popular from studies that say that "every hour children play video games or watch television may double their risk of obesity" and claim that they can "present a strong association between playing electronic video games and childhood obesity in school-aged…children."
Even our President has jumped on the gaming-scapegoating bandwagon a few times. He has stated in a number of speeches, from talking to the NAACP to his State of the Union address, that parents need to "put away the Xbox." While his message of getting parents involved in their kids' learning processes is not a bad one, he is guilty of furthering the stigma that gaming offers no benefit to players.
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Things, however, are changing these days. The idea of games as passive entertainment is starting to be replaced by the idea that games can offer more than just mindless killing. President Obama has even made gaming a part of life in the White House by buying his family a Wii, and the First Lady is developing a program designed to get kids moving that uses video games as a positive tool. Reports like this, as well as the staggering success of the Wii, has helped make the advent of games that use body motion as a method of control one of the biggest aspects changing the way society sees gaming.
The Wii helped bring motion control to the masses and has reaped the benefits of popularizing the idea of games as exercise by amassing sales of around 68 million for the Wii console and 22 million for the popular Wii Fit series. The Wii, however, is actually just the perfecting of an idea Nintendo has been working on for years.
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As a matter of fact, the series Dance Dance Revolution made great strides for changing the perception of gaming as an active pastime years before the Wii existed.. This series was so popular that its positive effects on body weight and health were being studied by West Virginia in 2005. DDR was even introduced into some schools as a way of getting kids active through technology.
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The relationship between gaming, body health, and weight has also lead to the creation of a new word. "Exergaming" is now being used to give a name to products that combine gaming with exercise. The company Exergame Fitness has even been combining fitness devices like treadmills and exercise bikes with video games. Conferences like Games for Health have been created by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to "provide great insight to the growing worlds of exergaming/active games, health training games, disease management efforts, and much much more."
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Some scientists have been quick to strike back against active video games, claiming that they offer only a "physiologically relevant, though merely moderate workout," but the point they are missing with reports like this is that the very nature of the medium is changing. While video games will probably never become a replacement for a healthy and active lifestyle, they can at least now become a part of a healthy and active lifestyle.
To find out more about how video games are making the world a better place, read part one, Can Video Games Make the World a Better Place? (Re-Mission and Folding@home), Can Video Games Make the World a Better Place? Part 2: Creativity, and Can Video Games Make The World A Better Place? Part 3: Charity.