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Using a Treadmill and Wiimotes To Run and Fly in Aion
MMO fans may recall news from last year when a treadmill was hooked into World of Warcraft so players could run in real life to make their characters run, getting exercise while playing. Now, with the release of Aion, which features characters with wings, the makers of the Robopult decided to take it a step further. Reader wintersynth writes
"We hooked a treadmill and Wiimotes through BlueTooth and GlovePIE to Aion so we could take advantage of the run/fly sequences and get fit while we play the game. It's kind of like interval training, which is supposed to burn more fat and be better for cardio. It's too tough to play this way all the time, but for a quest a day, it might be perfect."
First thing that pops into my head is lawsuit. Crazy country.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
That you can't go outside for 20minutes to run outdoors?
That's a sure way to kick the MMO addiction quickly.
I beat Metal Gear Solid 4 by using nothing but a leaf blower and a rake.
Those who enjoy running won't need the game. Those who don't like running end up using the mill twenty times and go back to the keyboard.
Considering how many people were using companies like http://www.gamersloot.net/ to get characters leveled for them as they didn't want to have to click too much, i don't see this becoming too common! =b Then again, maybe that's why those guys dropped the PL thing and just offer keys and such now. Pushed out of a business because gamers became fitness addicts? Who'd have thought!
What if you could gain status in the game through how much actual work you had put in. Or by how complex or consistant your wii weapon move pattern moves were? Ultimatley we're all striving to be the ultimate gamer, and to acknowledge the gamer who's proven to have put in the most effort. What if our virtual adversaries could actually teach us (inadvertantly) to chanel healing energies through our desires to participate in legendary battles. It's a start at least- getting some movement on.
I've allways stayed away from games that don't really end, as an all too alluring waste of time.. But if I could combine my weekly cardio with it... Allthough beeing competitve I think I would find it hard to stop at a few hours per week when others level faster. Still, if they installed something like this at my gym and took care not to make the game too levelling-focused, it might be fun.
This looks like a neat and innovative way to increase player's activity. Which is good, since most mmo players don't get nearly enough exercise and increased activity helps in general. Nintendo even tries to get their players more physically involved with their wii. However, it's not a substitute for real exercise. If you're getting winded after 2 min of activity (the duration stated in the article), you're not in shape; and stopping after you're a little tired won't help you much either. While an increase in activity is good in general, don't think this type of thing is the holy grail to gamer fitness. The formula and methods for getting in better shape haven't really changed much.
A game the gets you in shape was invented years ago: Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). I ran cross country during the same time frame that I played that game, and running 7 miles didn't wear me out as much as an hour on expert mode.
If there is something that humans find inherently addictive about gaming, health companies should tap into that to provide something which humans both need and desire: fitness.
If you ask around, a lot of people *want* to be fit but they have lots of convenient excuses as to why they're not. People want to look good and a lot of people are even willing to put up with the inconvenience of exercise and physical exertion - they just don't have the time.
Being able to introduce a method of exercise that is genuinely fun for all and doesn't require extra time on top of our daily activities, as long as it's done sensibly and cleverly, could be a crucial step towards reducing obesity.
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Get exercise while playing an addictive online multiplayer game? Not a bad idea at all. It makes it feel like you are more interacting with the game.
The overlap between people who play WOW and people who are in the least bit interested in doing regular exercise must be so small as to be insignificant, surely?
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
Maybe slightly off-topic, but it reminds me of the bad Babylon 5 spin-off focusing on the rangers. I saw the pilot (the plot was something with someone had a really anal interpretation of the rangers' slogan "we live for the one, we die for the one" - with emphasis on "die")
They had this space ship, with a holo-deck like weapons-control-system. The combat officer literally had to punch and kick at the opponent (punches fires lasers, kicks fires "missiles" (or their future equivalent)) ... Not only had they actually reduced the capabilities of the weapon systems to the stamina of the officer (why, luckily, were a fit, well trained woman), but the sensors was also reduced to the human field-of-view.
Anyhow, back to reality. For combining training with fun, this sounds like a fantastic idea! As long as the game is "RPG like" and does not depend on your reflexes like a FPS. Because then this equipment will only be used until the first encounter...
(Though it would be really good training with all the running in BF2/CoD etc.)
There's a new WiiWare title, _Overturn_ which allows one the option of controlling it w/ a combination of the Wii Fit (for movement) and the Wii Remote / Nunchuk) weapons aiming, firing, reloading, &c.).
If it required one to hop on and off the balance board (say being on the balance board is movement, off the board is being still) it could be a decent workout.
I'd really like to see a first-person RPG (ideally w/ some sort of persistent on-line interaction) which would use such an interface.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
This is a neat innovation : tying gaming and exercise together, with rewards in game dependent on how hard you exercise. There's a couple of problems, though : for it to work well, you need good ($$) exercise equipment tied to sensors and properly calibrated for the game ($$$). Second, multiplayer games won't be fair unless all of the players are required to exercise to make things happen in the game. Cheating would be a big problem for home users.
So I'm envisioning a combo video arcade/health club. There would be lots of exercises you could do, on equipment that is tied to games. From hitting up the machine bench press to bikes and treadmills. Hypersonic speakers and big flat panel displays would be used, and players would be issued their own personal (brand new from a box) controller for the games. (Hypersonic speakers create cones of sound that are completely inaudible outside the cone, so you could have a separate sound over each one. The health clubs would be a franchise, and you would be playing on servers that are restricted to club players. The system would somehow measure your level of exertion (by heart rate perhaps? Or a profile created by a trainer) and would properly scale the required minimum effort to make certain things happen in game.
Making it work would be tough, of course. The chief problem is that a club like this would be pretty expensive and complicated to operate, and would have to charge fairly high fees as a result. That in turn would limit the market. Furthermore, there's a network effect : the more clubs that existed, the bigger the playerbase, and so it would be very difficult to get started.
Heard you like to fly, so we put wiimotes in your MMO so you can fly while you fly!
Worrying as my meme habit may be to you, it really scares me.
Well I'd love to try this, but with up to 7 hour queues on the European servers (and this is the week before the full release), you've got more chance of your monitor flying out the window.
Gyms could run their own servers, making sure every player is on a machine: runners, bicyclists, and maybe people on elliptical trainers operating a Da Vinci-style flying machine with flapping wings.
A non-motorized one maybe?
I think this is a great move! While there are some doubts about how much gamers will use this I think it's important to remember that little changes can make a big difference. While it's true an obese person isn't going to become a conditioned athlete by using the treadmill for 20min-30min a day, that's enough to make some changes in the lifestyle of dedicated couch potato gamers. It's more than the nothing many of them are probably doing now. Maybe once they realize they can jog for 20 min while playing the game they'll give it a shot outside. Further, people do get fitter; it's very possible over time that 20min could turn into an hour.