Health Meter: An Open Letter to Publishers and Developers

6/22/2009 1:23 PM | 2 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Hi,

Thank you for working so hard to make "fitness gaming" a legitimate videogame genre.

While games like Dance Dance Revolution and various EyeToy releases laid the groundwork, Wii Fit -- the first next-gen fitness game -- clearly showed that moving your body to play a game could not only be fun, but good for your body. Unfortunately, though, just about every other attempt to combine a videogame with fitness has been an awkward and forced marriage.

There's no denying that we currently have the hardware to do some very cool movement-based gaming. The problem is that there's no software out there that's taking advantage of it. Fitness games seem to be developed in bubbles. Development teams don't seem to be aware of what other games are doing or have already done. And any ideas that are driving the development bus don't appear to be coming from gamers -- or from folks who know what the hardware is capable of delivering.

My frustration with fitness gaming hit its high point with EA Sports Active. A good chunk of the game is spent mock-running with the Nunchuk strapped to your leg. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Running -- even the running-in-place that you're forced to do here -- is an activity that will strengthen your heart and lungs and help you burn a few calories. The problem is that the game throws you into the running mode by having you stare at the back of your avatar while it runs around a track. I've been in the fitness industry for a decade and have been an athlete my entire life. Next to standing in line waiting to renew your driver's license, running around a track may just be the most boring thing a human being can do. Who on Earth decided a videogame version would be any better?

People who don't enjoy traditional -- and some may say boring -- workouts aren't going to, all of a sudden, love them just because they can do them on the Wii. I'm not, all of a sudden, going to really get into doing payroll and taxes just because Activision or THQ decides to roll out a PlayStation 3 version of QuickBooks. As a trainer, I make a really good living from people who want to move their bodies, but who can't stand doing traditional workouts. The whole point of videogames is escapism. They throw you into situations and worlds that would otherwise be impossible to experience. When are the brains responsible for fitness games going to realize that? Right now, fitness games that are being developed are Pong-level in their ability to offer any escape. They deliver a high-tech version of something that's pretty mundane.

Again, the hardware is available to deliver more. Just off the top of my head, here are a few ways in which existing Wii technologies can be used to turn Pong-level fitness games into BioShock-level fitness games.

Whether you do your running with the controller in your pocket (Wii Fit) or strapped to your leg (EA Active), it's been established that the motion sensor can monitor the speed of your movement and have it correspond with an on-screen character. By using the directional control on either the Remote or Nunchuk, theoretically, you should now be able to control the direction of your running. Instead of being on a leash running around a track, you'd now have the freedom to go anywhere -- as you can in just about any action game. You'd also have the ability to very intuitively slow down or speed up. The remaining controller buttons could be mapped to actions like shooting a weapon, picking things up, etc. This could essentially add a cardiovascular component to any action game.