Wii Fit From A Programmer's Perspective (after one day)

I bought Wii Fit. It came in the mail yesterday and I had my first try at it last night and my first workout this morning. Although I haven't had a lot of time with it so far, I think I've had enough that I can share some observations.

I have read a lot about Wii Fit from a video game or fitness perspective, but I've never read about if from the perspective of a software developer. I think as software developers, we should have extra interest in it for three reasons:

1. Most software developers are physically weak.
2. The Wii Fit Balance Board is a new and unique user interface device.
3. There might be some money to be made!

Wii Fit as an antidote to programmer physical weakness

I talked myself into buying Wii Fit because of #1. As a programmer, I sit all day with little or no physical activity. Most of my life, in fact, has involved sitting with little or no physical activity. If you're reading this, I'm guessing that you probably don't get much physical activity either. Well guess what: that makes us weak!

I know not all programmers are weak. My good friend Wes is a programmer, and he's pretty buff. But I'm weak, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I didn't understand how weak until I played Wii Fit the first time. Just about every activity (and there are many) involved a seldom-used muscle. After a short while, I realized that I have a lot of unused muscles.

Will Wii Fit make me strong? I don't know. I suppose that depends on how much I use it. But if it pushes me to use lots of muscles that I never did, then it can only make me stronger, right? In other words, if I keep using it, my strength will increase monotonically. Eventually it will plateau, and it's limit is probably lower than going to a gym. But I'm not going to a gym, and this is sure better than nothing.

Plus, it's surprisingly enjoyable! I enjoyed my first workout this morning so much that an hour sped by before I looked at the time. Part of that is novelty, I'm sure, but there's something more to it, and I'm optimistic that I'll keep it up. I'm already looking forward to my next round tomorrow.

Wow. Did you hear what I just said? I said I'm looking forward to getting up early to have time to excersize. Either I got hit in the head with a coconut or Wii Fit is really on to something.

Wii Fit Balance Board as a user interface device.

Although I bought for the exercise, I'm interested in the potential of the Balance Board that comes with Wii Fit. It's one of the most unique user interface devices I've ever used.

Nintendo seems to be on a role with user interface devices. It's success at turning a gyroscope into sports simulation led to the huge success of the Wii. The availability of wiimotes led to an explosion of interesting uses and interest in hacking it. It's certainly an interface device success story.

The big question is: how useful with the Balance Board be? In Wii Fit, there seem to be two kinds of uses:

1. A measuring device.
2. A control device.

As a measure device, I think it's very useful. By "measure", I mean that the board measures how well you do a task. For example, I was doing "lunges", and it noticed that I was bending my leg too far, and told me so. That's pretty impressive. When I doing push-ups, it had a rhythm to follow and it really helped to know that someone was "watching"; I couldn't wimp out. Even just standing on it let me know that my whole life I've been standing too much on my heals. How's that for some realization!

Just like Wii Sports was the perfect application for the Wiimote, I think Wii Fit is the perfect application for the Balance Board. I can't think of an activity better suited to it's strong point: measuring.

But what else can it do? When we think of a user interface device, we usually think of controlling something, whether it be a web browser or a game character. As a developer, this is the possibility I was most excited about. After having used it, how well does the Balance Board work as a controlling device? I'm not so sure.

Wii Fit comes with a couple of "balance games" showing various ways of using the board to control something. There's leaning left and right to ski, crouching and standing to ski jump, and leaning in all directions to roll a ball into a hole. Some of them are actually quite impressive. But I still doubt the board's effectiveness for precise control.

The problem is I find it's really hard to control my balance. I'm not kidding. Just rolling a little ball down into the hole was really hard. My first time on the ski slope was a disaster. I read that a skateboard game is going to support the board. That might end up being so realistic that I can't control it, just like in real life!

I think a big part of it is that controlling my balancing is something I've never really done before. Imagine handing someone who has never played video games an Xbox controller and watching them play Halo. It won't be pretty. Similarly, I remember when I was a kid and the mouse was a new input device. My teacher at school couldn't handle it. She'd never had to control anything like it. Like her, I am facing a new control device, and there's a learning curve.

Long story short: The Wii Fit Balance Board is hard to use for precise control, but maybe it's just me. Hopefully, my skill with it will improve, and we as software developers will think of interesting ways of using it.

Profit

There's definetely some money to be made writing software for the Balance Board. How so?

• Millions of households already have a Balance Board
• Millions more will soon.
• They will show it to everyone they know.
• Many will want more beyond Wii Fit.

Even though it's only one player at a time, it a hilarious game to play in a group. Some family happened to be over last night, and they couldn't get enough of it. It was a surprisingly fun watching each other try and hula hoop and dodge shoes. The first decent, cheap party game featuring compatibility with the Balance Board is going to sell like hot cakes (which...sell fast, right?).

I'm not saying who is going to make a lot of money. Nintendo might make it all. But there's probably room for little guys too. With WiiWare, games like LostWinds have shown that a small developer can take a simple idea for a new interface, add a little bit of style, and make a great game. If someone made a game like LostWinds for the Balance Board for $10, I wouldn't hesitate to buy it.

I'd be excited just to have some Linux drivers and an interesting open source hack to control my computer somehow, even if it's something silly like that MacBook-turned-into-lightsaber trick. Someone might even think of way to really "surf the web". I don't think there's much many in that, though :).

So far, I'm glad I bought Wii Fit. I hope to keep it up and strengthen my muscles. It's a very fun party game, which should lead to widespread adoption and an opportunity to create interesting uses for the Balance Board. It's hard to control precisely, but I hope it will get easier as we learn to control our balance (something that some of us have never done before).