The electronic game industry is now bigger than the movie
business. In 2007, electronic gaming reached record sales of just under $18
billion, an increase of 43 percent over 2006, according to NPD Group, an
industry research firm. Meanwhile, according to the BBC News,1 people in the U.S. and
Canada combined spent only about half as much at movie theaters, where receipts
totaled $9.7 billion, an increase of just 4 percent over 2006.
The Wii, a Nintendo system that uses a motion-sensor in the remote
control to mimic players’ arm movements, racked up sales of 6.3 million
consoles in 2007 — more than 1 million people bought Wii systems in December
2007 alone — followed by the Xbox from Microsoft with 4.6 million units, and
Sony’s PS3, with 2.6 million.
Halo 3, a violent game for Xbox, has sold 4.8 million copies. More than
10 million people subscribe to the fantasy game World of Warcraft. Nine
million people have created avatars, three-dimensional stand-ins for real
people in Second Life.
What is significant about the newest generation of games and
consoles is that they encourage people to participate physically as well as
mentally. This is ironic, considering that one of the biggest criticisms of
traditional video and computer games is that people who play them fail to get
enough exercise.
The Wii gaming system is being used to help people rehabilitate
from injuries, strokes, and surgery. To play games, users must go beyond
pushing a few buttons as they do on other systems. Instead, to play a game of
golf, for example, they must swing the wireless Wii remote like a golf club.
For a patient rehabbing a broken elbow, the repetitive exercises needed to
strengthen the muscles around the injury can be boring, and many patients do as
little as possible.
But when patients play Wii games, they become so involved in the
game that they don’t even realize that they are getting the...
