Fitness through playing video games

TIFFANY Ruiz had tried various gyms, apps, workout routines and diets, all in an effort to get fit and lose some weight. “None of them worked because none of them kept my interest,” she said.

Now, Ruiz is working out at least four times a week, thanks to a video game.

In her bedroom, she sprints, squats, stretches and performs other exercises like knee lifts and shoulder presses, all while battling a musclebound dragon and its toadies in

Ring Fit Adventure, a new game from Nintendo, the Japanese consumer tech giant.

Ring Fit Adventure, created for the Nintendo Switch console, is the latest effort by the video game industry to try to entice consumers to get up off the couch and become more active. Developers are folding fitness into games as part of a dualpronged strategy: to retain players by offering a physical twist on traditional gameplay and to draw in new ones, like Ruiz, who are looking to break up the monotony of working out.

The campaign appeals to parents and other caregivers, worried about the amount of time children spend glued to screens.

“Developers are trying to reach people who want fun and fitness at the same time,” said Rik Eberhardt, a program manager at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Game Lab.

Fitness games make up just 1% of the market, but the overall industry is steadily growing. Sales of games across all platforms generated $35.4 billion in the US last year, up 2% from 2018, according to NPD Group, a market research firm.

“Our latest data shows 73% of US consumers play video games of one sort or another,” said

Mat Piscatella,

an industry analyst for NPD. “Exergaming,” a portmanteau of exercise and gaming, has been around since the late 1980s, when Bandai introduced Power Pad, a gray mat with pressure sensors, for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Games now use motion sensors, smartwatches, and even virtual reality, to track a player’s movement. The gameplay has changed, too. Some games disguise fitness routines in the form of roleplaying, dancing or other activities like running from zombies. Others are fitness and health apps that lead users through workouts, with gamelike features such as scoreboards, real-time feedback and multiplayer options. Nintendo’s Wii game console brought exergaming into the mainstream in 2006. Its Wii Fit game incorporated a balance board, so players burned calories through calisthenics and yoga.

“The Wii had the fastest adoption rate in the US of any console in the first three years,” Piscatella said.

Wii Fit remains one of the best-selling games in the US, according to

NPD.

Nintendo’s two main competitors, Microsoft and Sony, followed its lead, adding motion-detecting cameras to their consoles. Games like Just Dance and Zumba Fitness: Join the Party, which were available on Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony consoles, were “breakout successes” in the motion era, Piscatella said.

Since then, the industry has been overturned by the rise of mobile devices, which allow games to be played on the go.

Hoping to build on that trend, Nintendo, in 2017, introduced the Switch – which functions both as a traditional console and a hand-held device. The Switch was the fastestselling console in the US that year and has sold more than 52 million units.

Some researchers are creating their own exergames. Eefje Battel, a project manager at the Sports Innovation Campus at the Howest University of Applied Sciences in Bruges, Belgium, uses Makey Makey in several of the centre’s exergame projects for children.

Developed by Joylabz, Makey Makey is an “invention kit” that allows users to connect everyday objects to the internet with alligator clips and a simple keyboard.

Battel created a version of Tetris, the ’80s puzzle game in which falling blocks are manipulated to fit them in a straight line. In her version, conductors are attached to bananas and other fruit, and children have to run from fruit to fruit to move the tiles in the game.

Regardless of the fun factor, exergames are not without risks,

Battel said. One element that is missing in Ring Fit, she said, is a coach to ensure that players are performing exercises correctly and safely.

“If you are squatting, the system will measure movement up and down, but it won’t track posture,” she said.