Computer gaming is undergoing a transformation. It’s no longer the preserve of solitary geeks in their bedrooms. It is being adopted by 40-year-olds, embraced by 60-year-olds and even has devotees who are centenarians – and all in the pursuit of health and fitness. But surely, you might think, gaming is the ultimate in unhealthy, sedentary pursuits? You’d be wrong.
The stereotypical games player is indeed a black-clad male teenager in his bedroom, locked in the multiple levels of Mortal Kombat, or any of those other shoot-’em-up/fantasy/ race games. And, yes, games playing is cited as the cause of everything from obesity to acne, although with precious little evidence to support such claims. But I suspect that much of its bad-health press has been generated because older adults are excluded from it, both by gaming’s complexity and by the level of skill that is needed to trash stroppy teenage offspring.
So, first of all, is there any evidence that gaming has any physiological effects on the body? Dr Simon Moore, a leader in psychology at London Metropolitan University, is emphatic. “Definitely,” he says. His department is known for its work exploring the link between computer games and health and is involved in an experiment at the Science Museum.
He is speaking about this work at In the Game, an event at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre next week. He wanted to find out whether games were relaxing or, especially given the way that players become immersed in often violent games, whether they were stressful.
Volunteers taking part provided a saliva sample before and after playing a simple go-kart racing game for five minutes at the museum. The volunteers believed that they were playing against a specified type of opponent: male, female, experienced, inexperienced. The samples were then analysed to measure how the game and the knowledge about their opponent affected stress-hormone levels and immune activity. The results were fascinating.
Like most activities that humans engage in, gaming raises the heartbeat and breathing rate. The more novel the game, the greater the effect. Whether people find a game stressful depends on how well they think they are doing and who they think they are playing. The saliva of a red-hot male gamer, who lost to an inexperienced woman, indicated that a drop in immune activity had taken place (therefore the subject was more stressed); whereas there was an opposite effect in an 82-year-old man who did better than he expected. There is a general effect, too. “Games that are thought to be too hard, or where the learning curve is too steep, are experienced as stressful,” says Dr Moore.
This takes us back to the alienated over40s, who are stressed out by complex games but who make up a lucrative and largely untapped three quarters of the population. Add to this the fact that the market for gaming is in long-term decline and you can see why the Japanese company Nintendo decided that it was time to widen the base, which meant going back to the drawing board and starting over.
Nintendo is marketing to the over50s
Part of the solution was Nintendo DS (£99.99), a portable handheld console with a double screen, which was introduced in 2004. It works with a stylus and, if you can write your name, you can use it. Initial applications for the DS were familiar Nintendo favourites. But now there are a whole range of new applications, including Brain Training, which was launched just as Sudoku was taking off. It was a big hit and even Nintendo was surprised by its popularity. So Nintendo is marketing like mad to the over50s, exploiting the fact that video games can teach and train. They’re already widely used in adult training and education, with great success.
The key to the Nintendo approach is the constant psychological reward that is offered. Margaret Robertson, the former editor of the video game magazine Edge, says: “It’s very good at positive reinforcement. You engage and try hard and it gives you the sort of pat on the head that you don’t usually get in adult life.”
New to the Nintendo fold is Sight Training, which is out next week. It promises to train your vision in a few minutes a day. Like Brain Training, it was developed by an academic (the vision specialist Professor Hisao Ishigaki of the Aichi Institute of Technology). I tried this out and found it compelling. It exercises five aspects of vision – hand-eye coordination, peripheral vision, eye movement, momentary visions and dynamic visual acuity – with games from baseball simulations to puzzles. The first time I tried it, I confess, it told me that I had the sight of an 80-year-old. Three further tries and I was beaming, as my eye age got down to the thirties.
“These are not exercises that will cure eye problems or let you throw away your glasses,” says Gail Stephenson, a senior lecturer in orthoptics (the study of eye muscles) at the University of Liverpool. “But they can make your eyes work better.” She gives the analogy of your lungs before and after training for a marathon; the same lungs before and after, but training can make a big difference to their function. She thinks that Sight Training players will notice that their eyes tire less quickly and that they’ll notice things faster. Using it every day simply works eye muscles a bit harder, making it easier, for instance, to follow lines of print or to spot things in our peripheral visual field. For those who have the Brain Training Nintendo programme, Sight Training will be familiar, with its graded exercises, and the ability to chart your progress. It’s a tiptop Christmas present. Give it to your least favour-ite uncle and you will find Christmas afternoon will be blissfully peaceful.
The Wii gives you a physical workout
The other platform developed by Nintendo was Wii (£179.97). If “everyone knows how to use a pencil” is the basis of the DS, then “everyone knows how to use a TV remote” is the foundation of Wii. In addition to a console, the Wii (pronounced Wee) has a remote device. This uses a combination of built-in gadgets to sense its position in 3-D space, when used with the console, which can be hooked up to the TV or another screen. It means that the remote’s activity is translated to the screen, so you can actually wield that sword, golf club or tennis racket shown on the screen, or indeed anything else that Nintendo might devise. Physical activity and all without going outside or, if you are 65 and finding tennis a bit hard on the knees, injuring yourself. It is becoming hugely popular with older people, even being used in the US as therapy for those recovering from strokes.
Clearly the Wii has many attractions for the housebound and there are already reports of it being used in old people’s homes.In terms of health benefits, the DS may simply be the modern equivalent of crossword puzzles, a way to keep your brain actively engaged. When I visited Japan earlier this year there were an amazing number of applications for DS on sale, including Face Training, which is where you gurn away to your console’s instructions to keep your jawline taut. It hasn’t yet got a launch date here, unlike Wii Fit, a home fitness programme for Wii, which promises tautness for everywhere else on your body. There are no prizes for predicting that it will take the market by storm when it launches next year. I think it’s time to stop viewing video games as time-wasting devil’s spawn and embrace them and acknowledge that they can be good for your health, mental and physical. Prescribe them to yourself soon.
