Fitness blogger says games need warning labels

8:00 PM on 07.06.2009   |   Colette Bennett

40 comments

A fitness blog called Winston Salem Fitness recently published an editorial calling out the Wii Fit and suggesting that videogames be packaged with a label warning against the possibility of obesity from their use:

Overall, I give Nintendo credit for trying to make a game that tries to get people to be more active, which is more than can be said for other video game manufacturers. However, this will not do anything in terms of chipping away at the American obesity problem.

In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that the video game industry needs to follow the route of the tobacco and alcohol manufacturers, and state that excessive use of their product could lead to inactivity and obesity, rather than try to make a half-hearted effort at increasing American activity levels...

I love when people who hardly know anything about videogames try to write about videogames. It's so quaint. The blog's claim that Wii Fit will not help you to lose titanic amounts of weight is quite right, although anyone using it expecting a result of that type deserves to learn the hard way that their posterior will only  continue to grow wider. However, slapping a label on a videogame to brand it as a possible factor in obesity means that technically anything I partake in that isn't active should get the same label: movies, food, porn (well, I guess the latter could inspire some form of movement).

What do you think? Do games need warning labels?