Kotaku: Fitness

How Making Fitness Into a Role-Playing Game Makes Us All Look and Feel Great

Owen Good — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 23:00:00 EDT

About four months ago I profiled Fitocracy, the social networking/fitness site that seeks to motivate gamers to hit the gym by incorporating role-playing game aspects into their workout plan. Today, Fitocracy and its founding duo received a huge profile courtesy of CNN, and it's making all gamers look better as a result. More »

Can Video Games Keep Your Children Physically Fit?

Mike Fahey — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:00:00 EST

Can exergaming really take the place of going for a brisk walk or doing a few laps in the pool? A study out of Brigham Young University finds that certain video games do count as legitimate exercise for kids. More »

If Wii Fit And Madden Had A Baby...

Stephen Totilo — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:10:00 EDT

Fitness games are huge. Football games are huge. Ready for it? Football fitness game. From EA, on the Wii. The name is EA Sports Active NFL Training Camp and it has already made me sweat. More »

EA Sports Active Slapped with Trademark Lawsuit

Owen Good — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 12:00:00 EDT

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The Active Network has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against EA Sports Active, alleging the fitness title's online use of scheduling and fitness goals covers purposes for which it holds the trademark "Active." More »

Trump Hotels Hawk Training Sessions on Wii Fit

Owen Good — Sat, 22 May 2010 13:00:00 EDT

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For $90, you could buy Wii Fit and the Wii Balance Board and use it forever in your own home. Or you could play it for 55 minutes with a personal trainer at one of Donald Trump's hotels. More »

The "10 Minute Solution" to Fitness Now Includes a Wii

Mike Fahey — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:40:00 EST

What's the difference between Activision's 10 Minute Solution fitness game for the Wii and established fitness titles like Wii Fit and EA Sports Active? About $40-80. More »

The Wii Loses Some Of Its Fitness Thunder To Dance Town

Stephen Totilo — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:20:38 EST

Show of hands. Who has heard of the video game Dancetown? You know, the video game that National Public Radio reports might better whip you into shape than Wii Fit. More »

Teen Drops 150 Pounds With Video Game-Inspired Diet

Stephen Totilo — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:00:09 EST

Taylor LeBaron weighed nearly 300 pounds when he was 14 and has lost half of that, thanks, he told the Today Show, due to a strategy he got from video games. More »

Boy: Playing Xbox Will Get Me A "Nowhere Job"

Stephen Totilo — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:00:04 EST

An ex-NBA star recently asked a group of children where playing Xbox will get them. He was promoting fitness, so he probably expected a negative answer. And he got one. More »

Microsoft Patents the Exercise Guilt Trip

Owen Good — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 13:00:00 EST

Microsoft's filed a patent that would make avatars more realistic and less idealized, with the point of getting your husky ass out to exercise if what you're seeing in the dashboard is a more realistic presentation of yourself. More »

What's Clarissa Doing At An Ubisoft Event?

AJ Glasser — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:20:00 EST

Spotted by omg! fashion police, Melissa Joan Hart — of Clarissa Explains it All* — attended an Ubisoft event last week for Jenny McCarthy's Wii Fitness game, Your Shape. Looks like Hart could use some Frag Doll fashion tips. More »

Wii Fit And Wii Sports Exercise Weighed And Measured

Mike Fahey — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:20:00 EST

A new study has determined which Wii Fit and Wii Sports activities actually qualify as moderate intensity exercise, as defined by the American Heart Association. Are you actually exercising? More »

Good Advice: Don't Work Out Like A Programmer

Stephen Totilo — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:00:33 EDT

Wise choices may make EA's Wii fitness sequel improve upon its predecessor. But the decision not to support MotionPlus makes the game prone to cheating — as, it seems programmers, like many who try to exercise, are wont to do. More »

Peter Moore Challenges Obama to a Fitness-Off

Owen Good — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:30:00 EDT

President Obama again referred to video games as a family-life negative in his Father's Day message. But Peter Moore - grabbing for publicity - challenges him to drop the rhetoric and see what they offer. More »

GameStop Employees In Fat Suits And The Ballad Of Ralph

Mike Fahey — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:40:00 EST

The only thing better than being a low-paid retail employee, is being a low-paid retail employee coerced into wearing a fat suit in order to help promote fitness games at Los Angeles GameStops. More »

GameStop Offering Girlie Mags With Fitness Games

Mike Fahey — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:20:00 EST

Game Informer gets a little feminine competition as GameStop announces a special promotion that delivers free 12-month subscriptions to popular female-friendly magazines with the purchase of select fitness titles. More »

Jogging Controller Adds The Fun Of Jogging To Your Games

Mike Fahey — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:00:00 EST

New Concept Gaming Ltd. has answered the prayers of gamers who for years have wished they could combine playing of Wii and PlayStation 2 games with the fun of running in place. More »

UK Scientists Testing The Wii's Exercise Potential

Stuart Houghton — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:20:00 EST

Is Playing on the Wii actually any good for you? Kotaku was all over this from the start - check out our groundbreaking study - but apparently the Lancet don't take papers from gaming blogs. Their loss. More »

MMO Players Surprisingly Adept At Lying On Surveys

Mike Fahey — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:20:00 EDT

MSNBC is running an interesting story on a recent survey conducted by researchers at the University of Southern California that indicates that MMORPG players rank among the most physically fit people in America. The data was pulled from more than 7,000 Everquest 2 players, enticed to answer the 25-minute survey with a limited-edition in-game item.

Still, players scored well on physical health compared to the rest of the nation. They reported exercising vigorously once or twice a week, as opposed to 62 percent of American adults who don't exercise for more than 10 minutes at any time.

They also found that MMO players are on average 10 percent leaner than the average American. Okay, so I ran the story as it was presented, now let's take a look at how we run it in reality land. More »

How Weight Watchers is Like an RPG

Owen Good — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 20:00:00 EDT

I need to lose weight, and the Weight Watchers points concept actually resonates with me, as I attempt to do something similar with my home meals, I just don't count the calories like I should. But damn, it is hyperbranded as a female diet plan, and I'm self-conscious enough printing out a Men's Health diet at the office. Still, Wired's Clive Thompson has a different take on why WW works — it's actually an RPG. More »

Former Lara Croft, Fitness Guru

Leigh Alexander — Tue, 20 May 2008 19:20:00 EDT

Nell McAndrew is apparently launching her own "lifestyle companion" mobile fitness application in the UK, used to create workout routines from a database and develop a meal plan. Who's Nell McAndrew? 1998's model for Lara Croft, of course. More »

Xbox 360 Sponsors National Family Fitness Day

Brian Crecente — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:00:00 EDT

Microsoft is teaming up with the Boys & Girls Club of America to help kick-off the inaugural National Family Fitness Day on May 12. More »

Wii Fit Invades Central Park Later This Month

Brian Crecente — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:00:00 EDT

Nintendo and celebrity trainer Ashley Borden will be taking over a chunk of Central Park on May 19 to celebrate the release of Wii Fit. More »

DDR Workout Benchmarked, Found Healthy (Again)

Mark Wilson — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:20:09 EST

DDR might not still be all the rage with Wii Fit around, but its health benefits are legitimate according to the American Council on Exercise (ACE). We just came across and interesting study from late 2007 testing people ages 12-25 in which ACE calculated that teens burned 5.9 calories per minute on easy, and 6.7 and 8.1 calories on standard and difficult, respectively. For adults, probably because they weigh more, those numbers were even higher. So let's compare DDR to some standard aerobic activities and see how it holds up, shall we? More »

LA Kids Learning Via Video Games

Mike Fahey — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:20:06 EDT

Now I have another reason to want to go back to school besides really cheap little rectangular pizzas. Starting today, children in schools across Los Angeles County will be playing video games in class...or more specifically as class. PlaySmart is a unique education program created by non-profit organization Star Inc. that uses video games to teach children skills like problem solving, objective thinking, literacy, and jumping on turtles. The program takes games like DDR, Mario Kart, and the Pokemon card game and twists them into tools for teaching PE, team building, and positive gamesmanship, whatever that means, noobs. Hell, if I had DDR in gym class I wouldn't have had to wear that fake cast every day. Check out the program's website for more details on this innovative merging of games and education. More »

Personal Trainer Offers Wii Workout

fdemarco — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 13:00:00 EDT

We've all heard the stories about people using Wii Sports as a workout tool, but personal trainer Zander Urquhart of Glasgow, Scotland is taking Wii fitness to new a new level. He has started offering classes that utilize the Wii as a workout machine. He started off by offering the classes fro kids, but then saw the popularity quickly spread to adults as well. Up to four people can participate in each class and according to "University Studies", players could burn up to 125 calories in a fifteen minute session. Mr. Urquhart is purportedly the first person to use the Wii in this manner, but I doubt he will be the last. More »

Better Fitness Through Gaming

Mike Fahey — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 14:45:26 EST

Ben Kuchera has an excellent article posted over at Ars Technica, in which he tackles a subject that has been on everyone's mind since the release of the Wii, that being gaming and fitness. Unlike the Wii Sports Experiment, Kuchera avoids the Wii itself, opting for more fitness oriented games like Dance Dance Revolution, Yourself Fitness, and to a lesser extent, Eyetoy Kinetic. He adjusted his diet and worked out using the games for 45 minutes a day, 4 days a week, for two months. I don't want to spoil the result, but let's just say he did not gain weight. More »

Lose Weight With Wii Sports

Brian Ashcraft — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 08:22:51 EST

Playing Wii Sports not only helps you lose weight, but makes you shorter and your pants bigger. Suburbia at WiiNintendo.net began what he calls the "Wii Sports Experiment" in December. He blogs: More »

The Wii Sports Experiment

Mike Fahey — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 14:40:45 EST

Since the release of the Nintendo Wii, we here at Kotaku have wondered how much of an effect playing Wii sports actually has on the human body. How would it effect weight, heart rate, and overall general health? As we gathered our resources together, ready to hire a massive team of scientists, nutritionists, and computer specialists to do just that, someone else beat us to it. *sigh of relief* More »

Tetris Weightlifting

kotaku.com — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:00:27 EDT

This meat puppet I walk around in? Not only do I want a refund, but I can't believe the amount of upkeep it requires to work properly, including exercise... something I hate doing because it's just plain hard. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner science can extract my brain with a mashed-potato scoop and slap it into a super-sexy, non-degrading cyborg body with a prehensile penis, retractable machine gun turrets growing out of triple-D breasts and a Wii disc slot directly interfacing with my brain, the better. More »

The Obese And Out-of-Shape All Love Maya

brownlee — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 07:00:17 EDT

Game Set Watch has a great post up summarizing the personal connections a lot of people feel towards Maya, the peppy virtual fitness instructor from Yourself! Fitness. A lot of people tend to think of Maya as a real person. Although I would normally consider such people out of their fargin' gourds, I actually understand this, because Yourself! Fitness helped me get in shape. More »

Physical Training With a Digital Partner

lsmith — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 18:41:17 EST

The New York Times looks at the curious success of digital physical trainers like Maya in Yourself!Fitness. The notion that digital personal trainers can use artificial intelligence to adjust your fitness regime is pretty fascinating. Whether or not you get off your behind and do what Maya tells you is another matter, I suppose. Who said video games weren't good for you? More »