Games, Gamers, & Gaming: Health Through Gaming
May 15, 2011Gaming and fitness hardly seem at first glance to go together. Stereotypical gamers sit motionless for hours in front of their screens, only their fingers and thumbs twitching across the keyboard or controller. Aren’t they all overweight for lack of physical activity, plus a steady diet of power drinks and junk food?
Yet traditional hobby gamers embraced active games as soon as they became available. Fitness games don’t automatically make all gamers fitness freaks, but the community as a whole surely benefits when libraries offer games that promote physical activity.
Wii want to have fun
Wii™ Sports comes with the basic game, offering bowling, boxing, tennis, and golf. Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus are the most obvious expansions of the library of games you can purchase. The Wii Fit yoga programs are suited to beginners, and the many other minigames can be silly and fun, like flapping your arms to “fly” from one touchdown point to another.
Balance games are a low-impact way to get in shape. EA™ Sports Active and Active 2 present solid workouts, with the latter including a 30-day challenge option. The popular TV show The Biggest Loser has an eponymous game (for Xbox 360 and the Wii) that lets players compete against previous TV show contestants or their own friends.
While Nintendo boasts the greatest variety of active games, the Kinect for Xbox 360 takes things to another level. The games rely on your body as the controller and allow for full-body sports like volleyball or soccer in an indoor video game format. Your Shape Fitness Evolved and Zumba Fitness will get your heart rate up at least as well as the exercise tapes of yore. A game like Dance Central teaches the moves a few steps at a time and works for multiple participants, making it an excellent choice for a library program.
Have a PS3? Sony’s PlayStation®Move contains a small library of games designed specifically to require the Move controller. Other games have Move options, including the now-venerable Dance Dance Revolution.
Look for games that allow groups to play or form teams for competition. As with most games, firsthand experience will help you tailor programs for your patrons.
What others are doing
Take ideas from the fitness activities staged by other libraries around the country. Games may be stand-alone events hosted by the library, but the best option is to offer active games as part of a broader initiative, especially if you are doing a series of health and wellness events.
One of my favorite examples is the Young and Restless club sponsored by Dundee Township Public Library, East Dundee, IL. This social networking group gathers professionals in their twenties and thirties for collective activities like Wii workouts for “Sweating in the Stacks.”
For National Gaming Week 2011, Rowan County Public Library, Morehead, KY, presented “Eat and Play the Healthy Way at the Rowan County Public Library.” Saturday’s program supported computer and board games. Then, the library launched a four-week Thursday series on healthy snacks and activities, including Zumba dance. This setting would be ideal to overlap fitness games on consoles as part of the bigger event.
Sound mind, sound body
We’ve known for quite some time that video games challenge the mind—some are specifically designed that way: Brain Age is popular, along with MindFit and Brain Fitness Program. As a large segment of the American population is aging, interest in (and sales of) brain games is increasing.
Bloomingdale Public Library, Bloomingdale, IL, has a great collection of such games for checkout, including Kinect fitness but also Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree. Putting these games to use in a library program is a small but logical step.
What’s less commonly recognized is that challenging the body keeps cognitive processing skills sharp. In one school, test scores jumped when students engaged in outdoor activity (bit.ly/eYkIog). An active video game may serve as a substitute when real exercise bicycles are unavailable or impractical. Even the hard-core gaming community is posting YouTube videos on practical reasons to take physical activity breaks during long game sessions in order to play more effectively against one’s pixilated opponents (bit.ly/ehDQpV).
Gaming advocates have been saying all along that just because you’re having fun doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from the experience. It’s a lot easier to discern the benefits when the sole purpose of the game is to get you up and moving, raise your heart rate, and work up a sweat. Bring out your books on healthy cooking and healthy living, and you will do even more to enrich the lives of your customers. Isn’t enrichment one thing libraries do best?
| Author Information |
| Liz Danforth (@LizDanforth), MLS, an Arizona-based part-time librarian who also works as a freelance game illustrator/designer/developer, writer, and library consultant, blogs at www.libraryjournal.com |
