Nintendo's Health Games: Fit for Purpose?
Monday, 12 Oct 2009 13:49
Wii Fit
Marius Goubert explores the negative effects of the recent health game onslaught.
There's just no escape from the relentless onslaught of the modern media which, in a campaign of psychological torture, is constantly finding new ways to convince us of what inadequate, flawed and pathetic individuals we really are.
Because, if it's not billboards bombarding us with images of unattainable levels of perfection, with models totally warped by Photoshop, then it's the government throwing out daily statistics on obesity, heart disease and cancer. Indeed, nowadays, simply smoking a cigarette in public is liable to have you branded a murderer and chased through the streets by an angry mob wielding pitchforks and burning torches.
But in the midst of this obsession about body image, size zero, teenage obesity, exercise, cancer, type-2 diabetes, fast food etc., you would have thought that video games would provide some welcome relief. After all, there's nothing quite like losing yourself in a frenzy of virtual murder on something like GTA; distracting you from all your insecurities and hang-ups.
However, perhaps unsurprisingly, video game developers are now beginning to exploit this deeply depressing social trend and it is Nintendo who has really capitalised on it.
Offering up video games like Wii fit, Brain Training, Wii Sports and Stop Smoking, Nintendo has morphed itself into a guru life-coach; promising us all deliverance from our bad habits, our fat bodies and our dissolving brains.
Now, with the Nintendo Wii outselling the competition by almost 2:1 and Wii Fit being dubbed as one of the most successful games of all time, it's clear that (like a Paul McKenna self-help book) preying on everyone's growing sense of inadequacy has been Nintendo's saving grace.
Don't Judge Mii!
The most notorious of all these self-help style titles has to be Wii Fit - a game that sold more than a quarter of a million units in its first week. In fact, retailers were so inundated with consumer demand that their outlets almost went into total meltdown.
But despite its insane popularity, Wii Fit is one of the cruellest, most self-esteem-destroying games ever invented. Yes, it's a game that does provide users with exercises that are physically beneficial, but it is also deliberately designed to heighten the user's paranoia about their body image
Wii Fit judges whether the user is overweight using an unrealistic and even, some argue, highly flawed set of criteria. Upon your first go, the game asks you to stand on the board to be weighed, and quickly calculates your BMI (Body Mass Index). If you are deemed overweight, as practically everyone is according to BMI (even children and those with flat stomachs are not immune, since the system takes no account of frame or muscle density) the game creates a fat little avatar to represent you.
Having your console tell you that you're fat and even draw a little fat representation of yourself can be quite shocking. Although you've never thought of yourself as overweight, that's exactly what you've just been labelled. Then, realising you need to lose something mad like two stone, you desperately set about trying to gain the machine's approval, as if it's a hateful parent.
There's little doubt that BMI is a flawed system, but it's also one that's guaranteed to find the majority of people to be overweight and, from a financial perspective, it's not hard to see why Nintendo chose to use it for Wii Fit.
Act Your Brain Age
However, Nintendo aren't just cashing in on our anxieties about physical health and the way we look. Doctor Ryuta Kawashima's Brain Training is a game that challenges users to complete a series of mental puzzles, which vary between arithmetic and verbal reasoning.
The idea behind the game is that by completing a few challenges each day we'll keep our minds active and may even be able to stave off the inset of diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia.
Almost like Wii Fit, Brain Training is a game that, after providing you with a quick assessment regarding your mental competency, wastes no time in telling you your brain is, yes, totally screwed.
You might have thought you were just a normal 22 year old but, despite your education, your degree, your job, you've actually let yourself mentally degenerate to the level of a 60 year old. And no, despite what you might think, that's apparently not a good thing.
But just like Wii Fit, Brain Training is full of potential flaws. Even though it claims the scientific high ground, its true benefits remain unclear. According to a
story by the BBC, Brain Training has never been fully validated by the scientific community since it lacks 'peer reviews'.
However, the most obvious problem with the game is that players are being judged on how well they perform the same handful of tasks. Obviously over time, it's inevitable that you're going to get better scores when doing the same series of mathematical time trials over and over again. But, like the argument against high school SATS tests, this may have little to no impact on an individual's overall mental ability.
A Flawed Future
There's something quite sad about the way some video games are now evolving. At one point, they offered us an escape from all of the scrutiny, judgements and standards we faced in the real world.
In some cases, such as online role play, computer games could even be highly beneficial for those lacking self esteem; offering people with social problems an opportunity to be part of a community. But now, particularly with regard to the Nintendo Wii, many video games are only contributing to the increasingly puritanical, image obsessed climate in which we now live.
Despite the fact that Nintendo argues they are only out to entertain, the truth is that kids are exposed to gaming systems more than almost any other medium. Although there's a growing backlash against the media reinforcing unrealistic expectations with size zero magazine models, and an education system obsessed with assessments, video games now stand poised to perpetuate the problem.
Kids are being conditioned at younger and younger ages to see themselves as flawed and inadequate, and given how lucrative games corporations are finding this to be, there seems to be little hope for future generations.
Marius Goubert
This guest article was contributed by Marius Goubert of Dealspwn.com, a UK gaming blog.