Video games as sport

Orlando Sentinel reported:
The researchers (Univ. of Miami) have studied the metabolic and physiologic responses of 21 boys, ages 7-10, as they played an action video game called Tekken 3 for 15 minutes. As the boys punched and kicked their way through the game's mock martial-arts battles, their heart rates went up, on average, by 19 percent, their systolic blood pressure rose by a similar amount; and their breathing rates increased by 55 percent. The levels of glucose and lactate in their blood didn't change as they would during real physical activity. Nonetheless, the researchers estimated from the boys' breathing and oxygen consumption that the energy they expended in playing the video game was roughly equivalent to what they would use in walking at a 2 mph pace. They reported their results in the April 2006 Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

At the Tekes funded Virtahepo-project, related study is underway. Lahti AMK is carrying out analysis on Megazone laser tagging. They try to figure out what type of sport active Megazone gaming is. The results will be ready at the beginning of 2007.