Zyked Mixes Video Game Incentives with Physical Fitness

Tom Söderlund, CEO of Zyked, sent me a note about his new startup merging physical fitness and videogames. Currently the company is on the ground floor of testing, with 100 users in alpha, offering “points systems, skill levels, achievement badges and highscore lists” combined with users’ exercise. An open beta is scheduled in coming months.

One exciting aspect of Zyked is its mobile capabilities, allowing a jogger, for example, to enter and receive data through her cell phone while out and about. Advancements in RL physical activities merit advancements in Zyked, resulting in the merging of incentives commonly found in MMOs with activities in meatspace. This is a hot idea, as seen with Weight Watchers Online and the Wii Fit.

Study: Active Videogames Make Kids Break a Sweat

The Wii makes things easy to measure for researchers, as noted here many moons ago. The Wii Fit has spawned research linking active video games with increased health benefits. This seems to be a developing trend, as more research along these lines has been presented recently.

Charlene Laino over at WebMD reports that Gregory Brown, over at University of Nebraska, presented a study at the 55th Annual Meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine.

Brown and colleagues studied 25 youngsters whose average age was 11. The kids burned two to three times as many calories when playing Wii Boxing and Wii Tennis than when engaging in traditional handheld video games.

Their average heart rate shot up from 80 to 120 beats per minute — “about what you’d expect when walking or doing a slow dance,” Brown says.

Brown thought the kids would burn even more calories when playing Dance Dance Revolution, where participants stand in front of the television and boogie in step to instructions and graphics on the screen. But that didn’t prove to be the case; all three games proved equally beneficial.

Also presented at the conference was a study comparing Dance Mat Mania and Eye Toy Boxing, games which require physical activity, with a handheld game and watching a DVD. The less physical activities produced caloric consumption on par with reading; the active games produced heart rates equivalent to jogging. This second study was presented by Viki Penpraze, a doc candidate over at U. Glasgow in Scotland.

Meanwhile, Erica Hendry at USA Today reports all public schools in West Virginia will use Dance Dance Revolution next year, and North Carolina schools will introduce, “the HOPSports Training System into schools through a partnership with Be Active North Carolina, a non-profit group.” It offers simulated basketball dribbling and other sports related skills.

References:
Hendry, E. R. (2008, July 31). Exercise video games get kids off the couch. USA Today. [Online]. Retrieved August 1, 2008 from http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/weightloss/
2008-07-30-exercise-games_N.htm

Laino, C. (2008, May 30). Kids feel the burn with virtual exercise. [Online]. Available: http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20080530/
kids-feel-the-burn-with-virtual-exercise

Joystiq: Wii Fit Coming Soon to American Marketplace

We’ve seen educational games. We’ve seen serious games. Now, thanks to the Wii, we’re seeing physical fitness games. The latest news of Nintendo’s marketing maneuvers comes via James Ransom-Wiley over at Joystiq, who asserts the Wii Fit US is due out in a few months. The Wii Fit involves the use of a balance board connected to the Wii. It was introduced to Japanese players in December 2007. Ransom-Wiley speculates the US version may have to be beefed up to handle us Americans pouncing on it, on account of we’re so fat.