The Quest for the Perfect ExerGame

A sustainable business model for ExerGaming is a hot topic at the moment. It has been occupying my thoughts for some time and I had a particularly insightful conversation around this topic today. However, I must first point out in choosing a title for this post, it is not my intention to belittle or trivialize campaigns to combat poverty in the world which are just as much my problem as anybody else’s. Rather, it is the focus of this blog is on ExerGaming and seeking to maximize the potential health benefits. Second, the calculations that the title is based on a very rough and in order to maximize the impact, a dollar rather than a pound (sterling) was adopted as a currency that is easy to relate to.

Okay, first the competition. A round figure for a cost of a video game is $30 and on average will hold interest for 30 days. So you can have an engaging interactive experience for $1 per day.

In terms of promoting a physically active lifestyle, the current target is one hour per day, 7 days per week, 52 weeks per year. Do some rough calculations, it seems that a Dollar a Day for every man, women and child might just be enough to provide enough facilities and opportunities for the whole population to be physically active. A dollar a day doesn’t seem much and would be small price to pay in terms of the savings on future health care costs.

The problem comes when you start to multiply up the number. For a school say of 500 pupils, over a school year of 200 days that amounts to $100,000 per school. Now some of that money will already be invested in physical infrastructure and facilities, but where is the rest of the money going to come from? Our own pockets? One less soda?