Gamercising? Exergaming?

Whatever the name, the physical and virtual worlds are coming together in the name of health. If you’re a child of the 90s, chances are that you grew up playing video games on the console of your choice. And you also remember your parents chiding you for wasting your time in front of the television with your eyes glued to it, fretting that you might grow up to be an obese zombie because you never went outside to play and interact with the physical world. In the intervening years, these worlds have come closer together under the umbrella of exergaming (sometimes also called gamercising). Gaming and exercise are not simply an intersection of two paths, but more like two rivers meeting up to form a third, flowing toward a new, unknown destination.

Rather than simulating physical stimulation to a form of visual entertainment, or simply slapping a television on an exercise bike, exergaming is forging ahead with a different approach that de-emphasizes traditional body management goals and encourages exploration and self-actualization. Ever since the 1980s, games and console manufacturers have made plays at incorporating aspects of physical care into their games. Who could forget the Nintendo PowerPad, which was laid out on the living room floor like a carpet to give running-centered video games a more immersive appeal through requiring physical effort. While modestly successful, the PowerPad laid the groundwork for the global smash Dance Dance Revolution, first available in arcades and then for consoles. In the early 2000s, exergaming wasn’t just promoting social habits, now it was social as well. The game foreshadowed a major change in a way; later in the decade, technology and social interaction would become fused at the hip, and we would learn just how powerful the mix of the two could be.

Around the same time the world was becoming more social the Nintendo Wii reimagined console input, making game control one-handed through motion sensor technology placed inside controllers called Wiimotes and subconsciously encouraging movement through freeing up the other hand. The effect was that even non-physical games became physical events. Where exercise-based games were concerned Nintendo beefed up their physical accessories, shrinking the PowerPad into the Balance Board, which promoted (and in the case of some games, downright required) the development of balance and coordination skills.

Microsoft and Sony saw the potential in developing exergaming, rushing out their own motion sensor accompaniments and making them indispensable to their platforms respective games. Wii would also release its very own stairclimber and exercise bike simulators, the latter of which had also been an intermittent feature in gaming since the 1980s with varying results. Consoles are fun, but the advent of smartphones gave people, among other things, a tiny game console that they could carry everywhere. Online gaming made its way there, yielding the creation of GPSand AI-driven games like Ingress and Pokemon Go!