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| Manu Saraswat tries out MOVES while Nicole Nixon and Hannah Johnston look on. (Bruce Bottomley Photo) |
Step left. Step right. Step back. Step forward.
Without the glitz鈥攖he music, the instructor, the beat鈥攅xercise can be really, really boring. It鈥檚 no wonder, then, that video games like Nintendo鈥檚 Wii Fit and Konami鈥檚 Dance Dance Revolution are being marketed as alternatives not just to couch-potato gaming, but to traditional exercise itself.
Last year, Nicole Nixon was one of a handful of kinesiology students who explored the potential health benefits of Nintendo鈥檚 Wii gaming console and its motion-control capabilities. Now she鈥檚 expanding that research to include the popular Wii Fit game and also testing the health benefits of a new prototype game called MOVES that has been produced by master鈥檚 students at Carleton University.
鈥淚 honestly didn鈥檛 expect to come back to gaming in my studies,鈥� says Ms. Nixon. 鈥淏ut my thesis supervisor sent me an e-mail about the MOVES project and it caught my interest. I think it鈥檚 the fact that we see so many people in our society who are inactive, and we鈥檙e always looking for entertaining alternatives to exercise. And I want to make sure that they actually work.鈥�
You鈥檝e probably already heard about Wii Fit. Released last spring, it was even harder to find on store shelves than the Wii system itself this past holiday. Using a weight-sensitive 鈥淏alance Board,鈥� Wii Fit features a number of exercise games and activities and maps the user鈥檚 progress over time. To date, it鈥檚 sold over 14 million copies worldwide.
MOVES is a slightly different beast. 鈥淚t鈥檚 an active game that uses accelerometer system to detect full body poses,鈥� explains Hannah Johnston, who worked on the software as part of her master鈥檚 program in information technology at Carleton. 鈥淲e enacted multiple sensors to enforce more rigorous movement, focusing on the lower body as well. We hope that it makes for a more active game.鈥�
Obviously, given that MOVES is a prototype, its production values aren鈥檛 quite at the same level as Nintendo鈥檚 creation. But it鈥檚 still got the core elements of an active game: visual prompts that direct the user what dance moves to attempt, a pumping soundtrack and stats to indicate how many of the moves you鈥檝e successfully completed.
By hooking test participants up to a heart monitor that wirelessly downloads results to a computer database, Ms. Nixon is comparing how well MOVES and Wii Fit provide a cardiovascular workout. Participants spend 30 minutes with each activity, as well as 30 minutes playing an old-fashioned Super Nintendo system to show the difference versus traditional gaming. She also is asking participants to record how much they enjoy each activity and also their level of perceived exertion鈥攈ow much they think they鈥檙e exercising.
Sara Shanahan, a fourth-year year psychology student, is one of the study鈥檚 participants. 鈥淚t鈥檚 pretty cool,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 own DDR (Dance Dance Revolution), and while this is similar, it incorporates the upper body into it more. It鈥檚 pretty tiring.鈥�
Manu Saraswat, also in kinesiology, is a little more uncertain about the product but thinks that the concept has potential. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a bit choppy and it doesn鈥檛 dance so well yet, but the technology holds promise for actually teaching someone how to dance.鈥�
Ms. Nixon will be compiling her results for her honours thesis, due for completion next month.