RipTen Videogame Blog » exercise

Videogaming Burns More Calories than Sex, So Says Totally Retarded Women’s Magazine

Dan Landis — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:11:22 +0000

Color me surprised. According to women’s fitness magazine Oxygen (which I totally do not have a subscription to), playing videogames burns 50% more calories in a hour than “athletic” sex does. And that’s not including the Wii or Dance Dance Revolution — I’m talking just regular ol’ sitting-on-your-ass-tapping-buttons videogames.

The September issue of Oxygen has a special feature entitled “100 Ways to Burn 100 Calories”. Number 71 on the list says “Play some vids”. First, as a slap in a face to girl gamers everywhere, it says “Go over to your boyfriend’s house and get on his PlayStation 3″. That’s right, girls don’t play videogames. So stereotypical, Oxygen…

Anyways, Oxygen claims that forty minutes of gaming will cut 100 calories, scientifically backed by the British Medical Journal. According to number 55, “Wii the people”, Wii gamers burn an additional 40 percent more calories than other gamers. With some advanced calculus skills, I’ve determined that regular gaming burns 150 calories per hour, and Wii-ing burns 210 calories per hour.

So, how does this compare to sex? Oxygen’s number 81, “Get your freak on”, states that one full hour of “athletic” sex burns a mere 100 calories. That just seems inaccurate somehow. An hour on the Wii burns over twice as many calories per hour as having sex?

Just to put things into perspective, here’s a list of other things they claim burn 100 calories:

Playing Frisbee for 30 minutes
Drinking a gallon of water (in a day, not all at once)
Laughing for 20-30 minutes
Driving for 45 minutes
Gardening for 15 minutes
Walking a mile (which takes about 15 minutes)
Grocery shopping for 45 minutes
Playing Monopoly for an hour

Wait, what? What was that last one again? You burn the same number of calories banging for an hour as you do from playing freaking Monopoly!? Something is seriously wrong with these statistics. The only way this would make sense is if, since this is a women’s magazine, all of the test subjects in the sex study were just laying on their backs, holding their legs in the air and moaning “athletically”, and that was it.

Maybe I’m missing something here, but when I think of a woman having “athletic” sex, it seems like it would burn a lot more in a hour than playing Monopoly or Call of Duty 4. At least now we can claim we spend all day getting in shape, so tell your girlfriend to shut up already.

Don’t get your hopes up just yet. Turns out, Oxygen doesn’t know what the fuck it’s talking about. Playing videogames doesn’t burn any more calories per hour than just sitting, at least according to number 38 “Road rage”, which lists sitting at 100 calories in 40 minutes. But wait, driving takes 45 minutes to burn 100 calories, so why does it take an extra 5 minutes if you are actually doing slightly more than just sitting? Also, it takes a full 90 minutes of “movie-watching” to burn 100 calories even though, again, you are just sitting.

As you can clearly see, Oxygen’s “100 Ways to Burn 100 Calories” is really just a bunch of bullshit. This was even a collaboration by the Oxygen team, so it’s not like it’s just one writer that fucked up. Thanks for putting out a worthless magazine and making women think that you will help them get fit, and making me think that playing videogames was actually some form of exercise. Consider my subscription (that is totally not mine) canceled.

Press Scapegoat Wii Fit For Millions In Damages

Kev Lochun — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:10:40 +0000

Both mainstream and games press have reported today that UK women are breaking more than a sweat when it comes to Wii Fit. Trouble is, they’re all talking a load of cobblers.

Their reports are based on a recent study from women-only insurer Sheila’s Wheels, which apparently reveals that these female Wii Fittie Wannabes are hulking out on the balance board and have caused some £20 million of damage to their homes since launch, breaking vases, falling over cats and other such japery.

Thing is, not one of these sites, not even the one enjoying inflated traffic from N4G, has linked back to the original study – apparently the journalistic tradition of checking your sources has gone out of fashion.

So I dug up the original press release from the Sheila’s Wheels website. And when I said dug, I mean opened a press release from their media room. Wii Fit, £20.1 million of damage? You are having a laugh. Here’s the skinny:

” When it comes to exercising in the home, vases are the most commonly damaged item with just under 2.5 million women (8 per cent) admitting to smashing one. ‘The box’ is also in danger when it comes to indoor activities with 615,422 (2 per cent) women having damaged their TV set – many getting a little carried away on computer consoles, such as the Nintendo Wii, which requires handheld controls.”

This harks back to the Christmastime tradition of hurling your newly unwrapped Wii Remote into your TV/wall/friend’s face. Still has nothing to do with Wii Fit though. But wait, there’s more:

“The recent launch of the Wii Fit console saw a surge in the popularity of exercising at home, with a huge 86 per cent of the respondents already owning a Wii – or planning to buy one.”

So that’s it. Wii Fit equals exercise. Exercise equals damage. Therefore Wii Fit must equal damage. It makes no sense. These leaps and bounds in logic are the same which cause people to link gun crime and Grand Theft Auto.

The £20m damage figure doesn’t even appear in the main body of the press release. It is tacked on as an editor’s note, very much removed from that sole reference to Wii Fit.

“Headline – £20,155,080: Based on average cost of damage (£6.55) and UK female population estimates from CIA Government Data, 2008.”

But whatever I say, I’m pretty sure this isn’t going to do anything about the likely torrent of calls Ninty will get from the National Accident Helpline.

Source: Sheila’s Wheels media room

Football Star Comments on “Videogames Are Ruining Sport” Debate

Adam Montgomery — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:57:42 +0000

Football legend Sir Geoff Hurst offers a positive opinion on gaming, delivering logical and praise worthy comments regarding the “videogames are ruining football” debate that hit last week.

The World Cup Winner pronounced that videogames are “fantastic”, and stated, “there’s technique and skill needed to be good and successful”, which he compared to that of a real game of football.

Hired to promote upcoming remake Sensible Soccer, Hurst isn’t perhaps as skillful on a virtual pitch as he was on the real thing, admitting, “I get walloped by my grandson.”

Earlier in the week, controversy was created when videogames were blamed for England’s failure to qualify in Euro2008 after losing to Croatia. Hurst, however, suggested a much more reasonable take on the situation.

He suggested: “We have so many distractions that not enough children are playing sport,” and while he cited videogames as one of these distractions, he didn’t single it out as the greatest.

“There’s a balance between sitting down enjoying your leisure time playing games and running around playing sport,” which is a balance many aren’t finding, according to the legend.

Via CVG