How to Do Things with Videogames

16. Exercise

16 Exercise Exercise is boring. We hatedoing it, and we makeexcuses toavoid it. And when we do exercise, we usually try to drown it out with something more pleasant. On neighborhood sidewalks, joggers use iPods to make runs feel shorter and less lonely. Behind the glass windows of gyms, members stare at television screens as they wait for their elliptical machines to signal the end of a workout . We knowweought toexercise, butwewish itwere less miserable to do so. Unlike music and television, all videogame experiences require physical action. Not much action, in most cases, but action nonetheless. “Exergames” hope to make the interactive demands of videogames greater, such that they might reach the levels and rates of activity required for a workout while replacing sedentary leisure activity with active leisure activity. Instead of sitting in front of the television idle, mouth agape, we might step-to with Dance Dance Revolution or jump around with Eye Toy: Kinetic. Most of the games we celebrate for their exercise potential offer compelling entertainment experiences that also encourage (or better, demand) physical activity. And studies have coupled exergame play to measurable physical effects, from simple weight loss to cardiovascular health.1 Butall of thesegamesand thestudies that laud them celebrate theexercisepotential of gamesdivorced fromanycultural context in which exercise might happen naturally. And this division poses a problem. The sidewalk job and the office gym succeed not only because they offer a place to run but also because they afford a credible and familiar social context in which to do so. ExErcIsE There was a time when we didn’t have to think so much about exercise. We tilled our own fields and slaughtered our own pigs. We churned ourown butterand reaped ourown squash oronions orpotatoes. Getting through thewinteroffered physical challenge enough, and we worried more about disease than about fitness. Exercise was an accident of necessity. In developed societies, most individuals are freed from the daily imposition of finding enough sustenance for the next day or week. We’re able to reinvest that time in intellectual, spiritual, or material pursuits. But even early high-density societies preserved physical fitnessasan important trait, more intertwined withdaily life. Sport is one way organized societies developed their physical attributes, and sports in the ancient world were often tied to ritual and social values such as sacrifice, war, and individualism. Contests of physical skill like archery or footraces might just as easily have marked celebrations of mourning as they would contests of might. Exercise was still a by-product of the limited automation of daily life, but it was also a ritual practice. In contemporary society, when we think of sport we usually think of spectator sport, like football or boxing matches. These activities probably share more in common with arena fighting, like ancient Roman gladiatorial combat, and carnival contests, like medieval English Shrovetide football, than they do with everyday ritual. Such sports were primarily intended for entertainment and spectacle, roles they still play. Today, exercise is a major concern thanks to the so-called diseases of affluence like diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. We think of exercise as a way to compensate for increased use of cars, increased leisure, and greater inactivity at work. And so exercise has become reparation. Morning jogging and afternoon trips to the gym compensate for days at the computer and evenings in front of the TV. These kinds of exercises are stripped of the ceremonial or cultural features that once defined physically intensive work and sport. Like so many other aspects of industrial society, we have found ways to measure our exercise so as to maximize ExErcIsE performance and minimize time. Perhaps some business colleagues still review the day’s business deals over a game of squash, but by and large, we spin our legs on our exercise bikes all alone, iPod buds nestled in our ears, waiting for the timer to beep mercifullysowecan stop. Exercise has becomeachore thatwesomehow must squeeze into our busy routines. The obsession with exercise as enumerated personal physical performance has become so widespread that even players themselves have adopted physical performance as a primary metric for the success of these games. Mickey DeLorenzo (an ordinary gamer, not a researcher) ran a “Wii Sports Experiment,” in which heplayed Wii Sports forahalf hourdailyand meticulouslytracked his weight, body mass index (BMI), resting heart rate, calories burned, and body fat over six weeks.2 As DeLorenzo’s experiment testifies, the Wii...