Chris Kohler Takes on Wii Fit for a Month

While we wait for a North American release of Wii Fit, Chris Kohler has been tackling the game exercise program (whatever you want to call it) for a month now and has written up his impressions. I’m glad to report that he was happy with it overall, and it’s turned out to be exactly what I hoped it would be (but feared it wouldn’t be). It hasn’t caused him to lose a dramatic amount of weight, but the important thing has been that it actually encourages you to exercise, which is arguably more valuable.

By turning exercise into a game, Wii Fit plays on the same sort of impulses and positive feedback loops that make videogames compelling.

Although I haven’t been playing Wii Fit every day, it’s successfully gotten me into the frame of mind where I try to exercise every day. For example, I did half an hour of Wii Fit Sunday morning, but the day before, with less time on my hands, I went out and ran a mile instead.

He did add, however, that the game’s focus on weight loss seems misplaced.

But since Wii Fit’s main measure of accomplishment, tallying everything up, is how much you weigh, this leads to a bit of a disconnect. Why Wii Fit just measures your weight and ability to balance is beyond me — why doesn’t it have some longitudinal collection of the strength-training data? It would be cool to see how my muscle power built up over the course of the month, but that’s not a feature of the game, even though it would be trivial to add.

To me, I don’t actually mind it focusing purely on those things, as the actual activity itself seems like the most important point. Even if I’m not seeing dramatic results on screen, telling me that I’m losing weight, I know that exercise is beneficial in more ways than just helping you to lose weight. This job isn’t particularly conducive to exercising, so maybe Wii Fit is just what I need when I don’t have time to go to the gym.