Video games have had a pretty bad reputation over the years of harming the mental and physical health of those who play. From an increase in aggressive behavior to higher levels of obesity due to several factors including video games, gamers have stereotypically been seen as heavy, aggressive men who hide out in their dark basements all day, glued to their televisions.
However, in recent years, that stereotypical view has started to change, and playing video games isn’t seen as such a bad thing anymore. Systems like the Wii have also made getting up and being more active while playing video games more of the norm, helping to change the views of the gamer as being lazy. There’s even the Wii Fit that has a board that players can do several different exercises on, such as yoga, and the board measures your activity levels as well as your BMI and other health stats.
With the introduction of several different virtual reality systems comes the possibility for more active gameplay. In this case, I don’t mean active as in active within the game, playing as your character, but active in the sense that the player has to be up off the couch, running around this virtual world to get to where they need to be. While some virtual reality systems just have the goggles that immerse the player in the virtual world, more systems are being released that provide the “full experience” you could say.
These systems have the player on a treadmill of sorts, attached at the hip to an outer ring that keeps the player from walking off or falling off of the treadmill. This rings also allows the player to swivel and turn their whole body in reaction to whatever they’re seeing in the game. The player has to run and walk on the treadmill to make their player in the game move forward, forcing the player to get up off their couch and interact with the game in a much more “real world” way.
In forcing the player to get up off the couch, virtual reality could definitely help battle this stigma surrounding video games of being an inactive and lazy activity. While being more fun because you’re basically in the game, and also forcing the player to be more active, virtual reality, once made more mainstream and affordable, could definitely be the next step in more active and healthy gameplay.
