Why game?

 

Recent research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found that gamers are less healthy, fatter, and more depressed than non-gamers. CDC’s Dr James Weaver told the BBC: “Video game players also reported lower extraversion, consistent with research on adolescents that linked video-game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status.”

 

Could this adonis be a gamer?

Not really surprising when you consider that they spend most of their free time sitting in front of a computer screen, eating high fat, refined foods and taking less exercise than a narcoleptic sloth with a nasty case of glandular fever. Despite recent attempts to make gaming more healthy, it remains a very passive pass-time.

So why do it? Well, let’s face it, in our daily lives we just don’t get to stomp around in big-stompy-robots, blowing up other big-stompy-robots.

Not as much as we would like anyway.

 

Live Fat, Die Young…

 

Obese?

 

Let’s face it, a lot of people in the world are fat. No, I’m not talking about the ones who could stand to loose a few pounds. I’m talking about people who are clinically obese; people who are stretching the physical limits of just how large you thought a human could be. People who are pushing their bodies to breaking point through sheer size alone.

It’s not surprising. Our society eats high fat, refined foods and many people exercise less than a narcoleptic sloth with a nasty case of glandular fever.

Actually, I was once trapped in the top floor of a club for two hours when a massively obese woman passed-out (from alcohol) in the stairwell. Five bouncers couldn’t move her. We had to await the emergency services and specialist lifting equipment.

Anyway, back to the point. Games.

Games have a reputation for being part of this growing problem. We already know they can cause migraines, back-strains and motion-sickness. And of course, sitting down for long periods of time doesn’t do anything for one’s physique.

But active games like Dance Dance Revolution, Eye Toy and Wii Fit are starting to change things. By making games more active and less static, the same addiction to the virtual environment can be used to combat poor fitness.

 

 

Other games out there are also trying to educate kids on the risks of an unhealthy diet: Fatworld, for example.

According to creators, Persuasive Games, “Fatworld is a video game about the politics of nutrition. The game’s goal is not to tell people what to eat or how to exercise, but to demonstrate the complex, interwoven relationships between nutrition and factors like budgets, the physical world, subsidies, and regulations. It’s one thing to explain that daily exercise and nutrition are important, but people, young and old, have a very hard time wrapping their heads around outcomes five, 10, 50 years away”.

 

 

Your avatar can select a starting weight and height and predispositions to medical problems like diabetes. You then have to select what and when you eat, what you avoid and whether you exercise. And the results of your choices are reflected in the size (and health) of your avatar.

So perhaps gaming is the future of combating obesity? The Wii certainly likes to tell kids they’re solidly built, even if they don’t want to hear it.

But it’s a Fat World, after all…