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The Gym Arcade
theodp writes "Cross Halo with an exercise bike, and you get Expresso Fitness' S3, which lets you blow away dragons by squeezing handlebar-mounted triggers as you pedal hard through the Chinese countryside. Portfolio notes that a new generation of Wii-like workouts is hitting gyms and homes, with companies like GameRunner incorporating treadmills into First Person Shooters and Kickstart offering mini steppers and cycles for popular game systems."
The crowd that has labeled themselves the "hardcore" gamers is going to be upset about this. Innovation in games and getting new people interested in gaming drives the improvement of games directly and indirectly, both because as the market gets bigger, people start taking games more seriously and putting more effort into them and directly because more money from wider releases means more development money for future projects. There are people upset gaming moved out of 16 bit, people who still think final fantasy sold out when they made the leap to the 3rd dimension. Not sure why they don't realize there are still games being made for them, there are just additional games now. I guess they'd prefer to have all games released explicitly for them even if it meant they never got any better.
Just a few observations. "Casual" gamer interest is improving games, not degrading them.
I've been playing a little Red Alert (1) since it was released for free this year. At the same time, the weather is turning cold and I've had to set up my bicycle on a stationary trainer. Wouldn't it be cool to have an RTS where at least one of your resources was wattage produced from some exercise?
Pedal faster, build more units/buildings/etc.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
First thing that came to my mind when I read the headline was Propcycle.
I'd love to rig something similar up, using MS Flight Simulator and an exercise bike.
Nonsense. This is a great step forward. There's plenty of people who like to exercise socially, and need that. There probably a much larger number who are overweight and embarrassed to do so. This starts them on the path to fitness, where they then may have the confidence to try social exercise.
Plus, while most games cater for the teenage male market successfully, the Wii started including a much larger audience of new gamers. This is a logical next step. There are many of us out there who would like to be gamers, but really don't want to shoot things, nor play driving games. Historically we have been excluded from most games (or have not been marketed to, if other games exist that we might find interesting). This kind of game is interesting. We need more lateral thought in gaming to include a much larger number of people.
I lift for about an hour 5 days/week and run about 30-40mpw. When I work out, I want to be unpluged. I don't want to see a screen, don't want to interact.
It's my mind, my body and me. Nothing else. Everyone needs it.
Gone!
We have one of these at work, and we're expecting another. It's a blast. And I'm not a gamer.
First, the downsides:
1) The shifter is not very well designed. It's a single lever mounted on the stem, which is an inconvenient spot. With 30 "gears" and very sharp changes of gradient, it's not uncommon to have to shift by 10 gears or more in a matter of seconds to avoid stalling out. The shifting doesn't seem all that responsive either, so there's a tendency to overshift, which usually leaves you moving too slowly. I'd rather have two shifters mounted on the bars, with the left shifter giving you 3-5 gears in one shot (i. e. something like front and rear derailleurs on a "real" bike). This is by far the weakest part of the setup. If they would fix that, it would be a much stronger product.
2) Every course I've tried has at least one very sharp downhill curve, which I find disorienting (maybe because I'm not a gamer). Shutting my eyes helps, but then I don't know what terrain is coming up, so I'm likely to be in the wrong gear in a hurry. One person at the gym tried it once and found that he just couldn't use it because of that.
3) The saddle simply isn't very good. It's adjustable in maybe 1/2" increments both vertically and front to back (which is OK for this purpose, but finer increments would be better). However, it's a wide, heavily cushioned saddle, which really isn't very comfortable for long rides. It would be nice if there were a couple of different saddles to pick from, and you could just plunk down the one you like at any given time. It's a much better saddle than the usual exercise bike saddle, but that's not saying much.
Good points:
1) There's just a lot more variety than any other exercise bike I've seen (not that I'm an expert). The changing terrain makes things interesting, much more so than any standard programs. That's a huge plus.
2) The pedals are "real", with toe clips on one side (yes, the old fashioned kind, but they work) and clip-in pedals on the other. I'm not sure which clip-in system; it's obviously one of the SPD variants, but I don't know which one. If your bike shoes have a different system, it's not likely to work. The system looks like it doesn't have any side to side or rotational play, which makes it hard for some folks (when I was riding, I absolutely needed that because of my overpronation and toe-out).
3) There's a good range of courses, everything from a 1 mile flat track course to a 20 miler that looks like a major mountain pass. They're divided into four groups (plus one more "ride over the monsters" type thing), for easy, moderate, hard, and extreme, and ranked from easy to harder within the groups. The pace rider rides slower on the easy ones and harder on the hard ones, and you can adjust the continuous output of the pace rider. There are a few courses that aren't available without a paid membership, but it's not worth $10 a month just to get those few courses.
4) The bike can be connected to the internet, with some additional features (I don't know what they all are; ours isn't connected yet).
Neutral points:
1) While your avatar responds to the steering, it doesn't really affect the riding in any way, except on the game course. It won't let you go off the course (if you try to steer off, or don't try to steer on, it just keeps you at the side of the course). You can also ride right through other riders, and they can ride through you if you're slower. It doesn't really feel natural, but without actual movement, it would be very hard to make the steering feel natural. I don't care all that much.
2) I don't know how it computes the relationship between wattage (power output) and calorie consumption. It gives me somewhat lower calorie numbers compared to the other exercise bikes we have, which may or may not be due to shifting response (it's easy to not shift high enough on downhills). For a 30~40 minute ride, I've averaged 227~240 watts vs. 235~260 that I typically average on the
I don't agree. The reality is that for a lot of us it is very difficult to find enough people who are available to play, who are at a similar enough skill level. When I was younger it was much easier. Now, people are too busy for a pick up game. Clubs tend to have people who are pretty serious, and I'm not. So, if I want to exercise, I'm left either going to the gym (boring!) or finding an activity that's solo (biking - a little better). Something like this could make getting exercise a little more fun for people like me, and I don't see how that's a bad thing.
The key is to really work fun game play into the system, and I think this has a much greater chance of success than the children's "educational game software" attempts to make learning fun.
I remember an old playstation ESPN racing game where your character would ride around on a bike, but you could kick the other players on either side and knock them to the ground.
Add some blood, maybe a few screams as they hit the pavement and I think we would have a winner!
If you want to get really sophisticated that would be really badass if you could work something like this into google-streetview and ride around in actual city scape.
I see Slashdot is showing its attention to journalistic accuracy. I've actually *played* Expresso bike thing and you don't "gun down" dragons with "handle-bar mounted triggers".
The buttons are the handle-bars are for shifting gears. The basic gameplay is that you run over coins of various colors and then have to go run into dragons of the matching color. (With various point values.) It's a pretty lame game, but it is mildly distracting.
I suspect that most people will stick to the basic "ride around a track with a pace rider" bit, which is decent enough.
The biggest problem is that even if you play at a machine in the gym, you still have to shell out $9.95/month to unlock a lot of the tracks. That's a pretty hefty price for a bike-racing game.
The cake is a pie
some of us have a desire to leave the world in better condition than we found it.
This involves life outside of simulation, even if games are a great escape in moderation.
This isn't exactly a new idea. I bought a gamebike (http://www.cateyefitness.com/GameBike/) a year ago for this sort of thing. It's an exercise bike which plugs into a PS2. Unfortunately, I don't have a TV for it, yet. So, at the moment it's just serving as an ordinary exercise bike. My impression from the brief time I tried it, is that'll it'll be more fun that just riding an exercise bike, but it isn't a great controller. Part of the problem is that PS2 games aren't made with this bike in mind. Custom games written for it could make it much more fun.
What's more funny is that most of these are aerobic exercises. Just play soccer or something. I hope these fail, because this only makes the art of "fun exercise" less social.
But what if workout chains started installing networked Wii-like facilities?
I would pay good money to see a roomful of hot chicks storming the beaches of Normany on bicycles.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
That's a super idea, Hojima.
I've got a full-time job, a wife, and two kids. I scuba dive, play in a concert band, and play DnD once a week.
When, exactly, would I go out and join a soccer team? During naptime for the toddlers? In the evenings, when it's one of the rare days when neither my wife nor I are going out so we can spend some time together? Sure, I can bike to work, but I'm the one who drops the kids off at daycare. That means either using a trailer (sunny and warm days only) or biking when daycare's not in session.
Bring the Wii Fit into the equation, and I'm down 15 pounds. I can get a good set of cardio and strength work while the kids are napping or asleep.
Seriously, some people simply can't go outside some days.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I have been in the Fitness Equipment repair business for 7 years so I have seen this sort of thing b4. I can tell you this it has been tried many times many ways, never popular. Try to sell the stuff used to a home equipment buyer perhaps, nope. People want to get on a treadmill or bike and just zone out for an hour or so. I have seen Life Cycles with nintendos built in with controllers on handlebars, Cybex Virtual Bike with tilt seat that lets you steer through a soccer game ... there were others too can't remember their names but they all ended up scrap metal. It might go in China though, here we are petty jaded about that sort of thing. Gimme the machine, gimme a tv or newspaper / book and i'll wipe the thing down when I'm done. The video game fitness thing has been tried going back 10 years never hit.
Many a long talk since then I have had with the man in the moon; he had my confidence on the voyage. Joshua Slocum
Actually, the average age of gamers in Australia is 30:
http://au.gamespot.com/news/6200065.html
Take up rock climbing, it's an individual activity, that usually spawns into a social activity, and ends up being something you couldn't imagine doing alone.
But I'm antisocial you insensitive clod!!
WTF, it's the first chance I get to make this joke and it turns out to be sincere.
But... the future refused to change.
Yeah, what he said....now, I do not have kids, but I have a spouse and a cat -- both of which need attention -- a job that requires me to travel about 60% of the year and I teach scuba diving on the side. In short, I spent plenty of time outside of the house already, and joining a soccer or other team sport team would be just impossible: I'd not be able to be there regularly due to an unpredictable travel-schedule, and so I'd make a horrible team-mate (not to mention, I'm a horrible soccer-player to begin with, making me even more of a boat-anchor for a soccer-team) and, frankly, what evenings/weekends I do have left, I'd rather spend with the spouse and the cat, than with a bunch of sweaty 40-something men chasing a ball.....
The nearest gym is about an hour away from where we live, btw., so one hour of workout would "cost" 3 hours of wall-clock-time. Just not cost-efficient.
Wanting to stay in relatively good health, we set aside a room in our house, and rebuilt into a gym -- principally a treadmill and some other exercise machines, and a wall-mounted TV. It allows - as notes Beardo the Bearded - that whenever either of us have got an hour available, we can get some exercise in without having to commit to trekking to the nearest gym. Often, it's of the form "hey, I was home first tonight, I'll toss the roast in the oven, then do an hour on the 'mill and some back-strengthening workout", and concurrently keeping up with what's wrong with the world on the TV.
We've got a WiiFit as well, and while that's great fun, I do not get the same "sweat" out of it nor do I manage to get my heart-rate high enough and exercise/strengthen my back. It's great for its Yoga-exercises, and a fun thing to do together (although, it'd have been cool had the WiiFit allowed for easier alternations between two players exercising together).
Anyways, when we were acquiring the treadmill, we were looking to see if there were more "fun" options than just "running at various paces and inclinations", but what we found was insufficient: either it was "more game than exercise" or it was "more flimsy" -- or the game just didn't seem like much fun after having tried them out once. TSo for us, and for now, it's the treadmill (with iFit training programs) + TV for the gym, and the WiiFit/WiiSport for having fun in the living room.
Now, just need to find a way of getting the cat to exercise as well....
Btw., "Beardo the Bearded", good job at dropping 15lb with the WiiFit! Keep it up!
-- "Life is a bitch - and she hates me..."