Sure, the stereotype is of the fat kid alone in his parents’ basement playing video games, but a new study says that may not be accurate. Well, at least it says the kid may not be quite so fat, quite so fast. West Virginia University researchers are claiming Dance Dance Revolution can at least slow weight gain in kids.

West Virginia’s pilot program was to install Dance Dance Revolution into every state middle school. But did it actually help? Researchers wanted to know, so they monitored 35 overweight children between the ages of 7 and 12. What they found was that kids who played Dance Dance Revolution on a nightly basis only gained 2 pounds during the 24 week study. That compares to kids who did not play and gained 5.3 pounds. (more…)

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Should life be more like video games? Is such a proposition even possible? Jane McGonigal thinks so. What does she mean? McGonigal believes that games are simply more rewarding than real life and that people would respond better to a real world with game-like attributes.

But just who is Jane McGonigal and why should anyone care? She’s a senior researcher at the Institute for the Future, but you can simply call her a futurist. It’s her job to predict how the latest fad might shape the landscape of the future.

No, she does not believe the world needs magic mushrooms that will make people grow, or ghosts chasing people through the super market. She does, however, believe that a major flaw of reality is that it simply isn’t as rewarding as games. If you get up and go to work everyday, there is very little actual feedback given from reality other than a paycheck. Compare that with a video game where you are constantly given feedback about how well you are doing your job and even tips on how to do it better. (more…)

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