Monday, February 8, 2010

Our Blog Site has Changed

Thank you to all of you who have regularly followed our blog posts. Our blog site has changed to a new location. As of today, it will now be housed at http://exergamesunlocked.com/articles/category/blog. Please continue to follow our posts at this location.

You are also invoted to view our ExergamesUnlocked website, where you’ll find the best and most effective exergames, as well as strategies and recommendations on using them with different audiences and in different locations.

Seeking Game-Changing Solutions to Childhood Obesity

It seems recently the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture hosted a workshop to gather insight from leading experts in the fields of gaming and technology to inform the development of a nutrition game-design challenge.

The Healthy Kids Challenge is a call to American entrepreneurs, software developers, and students to use a recently released USDA nutrition data set to create innovative, fun, and engaging web-based learning applications that motivate kids, and their parents, to eat more healthfully and be more physically active.

Some of the major design-related themes that emerged from the Workshop are:
Goal - potential for games – powered by nutrition data – to change behavior in our target segment
Incentives - government limitations on the size of the prize ($3000)
Final Products - spectrum of potential final products (ideas, game story boards, working prototypes, and market-ready
“final” products)
Commitment - incorporating nutrition data in already-developed games, faculty assigning class time towards building
nutrition games, or organizations spreading the word about the contest.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

ExerGames: Not Just Another Health Craze!

The author, Katt Mollar in this article, examines exergames and how they can help the global epidemic of obesity, which she refers to as "globesity".
Obesity is a global epidemic and serious public health problem. Research has shown that obesity increases the risks for many diseases from cardiovascular disorders, to arthritis, to sleep disorders and cancer and it can be associated with serious psychosocial problems.
Research was undertaken and revealed that children were six times more likely to take to exercise if it involved a video game.

There have been several studies examining exergaming in the past couple of years, some key findings included:
(1) Calories burned and heart rates increase after engaging in exergames when compared with seated video games.
(2) The amount of energy spent doing exergames is equivalent to doing moderate-intensity walking.
(3) Although the energy spent in exergaming doubles that when doing seated video gaming, the former does not equal the energy used to doing the sport itself.
(4) Little movement is better than no movement.

But a very important point the author makes in her article is - if the choice is between moving and not moving at all then the alternative of exergaming is indeed preferable.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Weight loss success with a video game

One woman lost 33 pounds with the help of a video game. That video game is EA Sports Active. At first she was skeptical that a video game could help her to lose weight, but she took the program seriously and also watched what she ate. She completed the 30-day challenge in the game 3 times, eventually leading to her 33-pound weight loss. Throughout her challenges she began to combine the Active workouts with walks and even some running, which helped her to build up endurance. Her success with EA Sports Active inspired her to engage in other kinds of exercise with her friends. She even became a community leader when EA Sports Active community announced their plan to host a 5K run, and she's currently leading a challenge in her community so that she and her neighbors can help support and motivate one another to become more fit and healthy. She says that EA Sports Active helped her build confidence she didn't know she had

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Wii Fit Plus users invited to use Twin Galaxies

According to this press release, Twin Galaxies International, the video game scorekeeping organization founded in 1981, is inviting users of the popular Wii Fit Plus by Nintendo to participate in it's scoreboard database.
"Twin Galaxies hopes that Wii Fit Plus users of all ages will record and submit to our database," Patrick Scott Patterson, a Division Manager for Twin Galaxies, said. "It is our hope that people sharing their goals and accomplishments will help users set new fitness challenges for themselves and others."

For information on how to record and submit your Wii Fit Plus accomplishments and for official Twin Galaxies rankings, visit the Twin Galaxies website. Signing up only takes a few minutes and it's completely free. Twin Galaxies also accepts data submission for other Wii fitness games.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Nintendo Wii Balance Board could prevent falls

A study, led by Dr Ross Clark of the Department of Physiotherapy at the University of Melbourne, which compared the balance data derived from the Nintendo Wii Balance Board with the data collected from a laboratory grade force plate, a metal based system which typically costs more than $20,000, found that the Nintendo Wii Balance Board collects data comparable to the force plate. The study concluded that The Nintendo Wii Balance Board could be a far cheaper alternative than professional diagnostic tests for clinicians to test balance in elderly partners or in patients with neurological conditions such as stroke and Parkinson’s disease.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Wii therapy in Columbus: From rehabilitation to special education

Tim Barrett, Columbus Special Education Examiner, writes about a hospital in Columbus Ohio, which has introduced the use of the Nintendo Wii to help people undergoing therapy to rebuild their muscles following a stroke, brain damage or spinal cord trauma.
In his article he also lists six examples of the benefits emerging from Wii play:
1. The Wii can divert the attention of the subject off of the pain associated with movement making it easier to do the movement.
2. "Virtual PE" from a wheelchair is possible in special needs classrooms.
3. Teachers, specialists and assistants often hold and assist the student with the Wii remote to model movement, the swing, roll, punch, etc.


4. Better circulation of limbs is occurring.


5. Games support eye/hand coordination and students are able to "whack the ball out of the park" on the Wii.
6. Color and shape recognition is increasing.