Implications towards exergaming at ATEi

Another interesting thing was to find notions towards exergames at ATEi 2008. Don't get me wrong -- that was not really a huge trend there. Most of the "exergames" were different variations of DDRish dance pads. Anyhow it was interesting to see some concept visualisations at the Sega booth of cyber sports promising "Great rides, sports, amusement and more in our all-weather facilities".

Different sporty arcade machines from DDR to boxing have existed for ages already. It was anyhow interesting to see Sega's vision of more overall sports entertainment center. So far DDR, novel fitness controllers for games (e.g. Powergrid fitness Kilowatt games and exerbikes) and Wii Fit have been brought up when talking about novel ways to motivate teenagers to exercise. West Wirginia schools have got a lot of press for utilizing exergames in the school. In the wave of the trend also fitness center for teens was opened in California a few years ago. Though soon they realized that they need to expand their target group and now Overtime Fitness is open for all.

It has also been interesting to see different activity and adventure centers like HopLop in Finland spreading to shopping malls or dedicated rooms. Casual exercise at shopping malls or other hangaround places is worth considering and as far as I understood Sega's Cyber sports just that.