Exertion Games

Exergaming's exercise component.

I believe that the effectiveness of exergames is not down to the calorie burn per hour alone, but a combination of physical exertion and sustainability through video game play. Recently a spectator of the exergaming field brought up the question of exertion, in isolation from practical experience, and highlighted the need for exergames to create physical exertion.

Although I don't advocate choosing an exergame based solely on physical exertion, but none the less, this is a chart pulled directly from the Gamercize website. Which ever way you approach exergaming, Gamercize always comes out on top.
As you can see from the chart Gamercize has the top spot, but a chart only tells half the story. See this video from independent film makers VideoJug for a better picture of the four top home exergaming options here.

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Children ask for Exercise to be Fun to meet Fitness Guidelines

Gamercize tested, proved and delivering when kids need to keep active!

Image by gamercize via FlickrKids with equal opportunity for physical exercise or video games choose sedentary gaming, despite wanting to be more active. Results of a study show that 90% of fifty 11 and 12 year olds like the approach of combining these activities with Gamercize. The study, carried out by with twenty-two 11 year olds (8 boys and 14 girls) and twenty-eight 12 year olds (17 boys and 11 girls) investigated the relationship between physical activity and video game usage and examined whether children like the idea of exercising whilst playing video games.

Children had equal opportunity to take part in either activity in their normal daily lives, with 94% of the children saying they had plenty of opportunities to take part in physical activity and 94% with a video games console in the home Despite 86% of the children in the study saying they would normally rather be physically active than play video games only 20% achieve the recommended 1 hour per day of moderate physical activity while 75% manage over 1 hour per day of video game play.


Image by gamercize via FlickrGamercize was chosen to combine video game pay and exercise because the system supports all the video game consoles the children use, and works with all the games they play. The children could play their video games only while they maintained movement on the Gamercize fitness machines, stopping moving causes the game play to pause.


In the independent study, carried out by the University of Cumbria, Gamercize was introduced to the children with 90% of them enjoying using the Gamercize GZ Endurance Cycle for PlayStation 2. Gamercize has proved popular in schools and homes worldwide being successful in engaging children in exercise and solving the problem of physical activity being perceived as boring.

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