The plane lifts off and is soaring high above the urban landscape. The sun creeps behind a tall building. Then suddenly, the sky gets a little darker, and the ultralight craft isn't alone. Another plane is coming, and it's firing its weapons.
This is a Dogfight -- a new computer game by Electronic Sports, where competitors go head to head in an effort to shoot each other down.
It's not just another new arcade game. Yes, there is a screen complete with realistic computer-generated sights and sounds. But it's hooked up to a stationary bike, and competitors have to pedal to play.
This is a so-called "healthy game," and the visuals aim to distract the players from the "drudgery" of cycling in place, said Joe Dean, the company president and chief executive. It's one of hundreds of new games that are the latest weapons in the battle against obesity and other health-related problems.
They are played on computers that have long been contributors to the sedentary ways of children, who spend hours at a time sitting behind a screen in pursuit of the high score. Some game developers, health care companies and medical researchers now are teaming up to use the joystick's power for good.
Many new games require players to move to make them work and are increasingly being used in schools, community centers and gyms. Other games aimed at education rather than exercise are being handed out by health care companies to patients and school kids and by medical institutions to trainees and first responders.
Together, they broadly comprise the nascent but rapidly growing healthy games market. The segment may now make up close to one-third of the nation's $1.5 billion "serious games" industry, which includes games with some sort of purpose beyond entertainment like modeling and simulation for business or the military.
Healthy games are not likely to generate the buzz or record sales of the traditional video game Grand Theft Auto IV, which topped $500 million in its first week this month. But at least one may push them more into the mainstream and grab more of the $40 billion overall video game market worldwide. Nintendo's Wii Fit went on sale to individual consumers this month for about $90 and offers skiing, soccer and other games to agile players with a footboard.
"The special nature of games is that they motivate you," said Ben Sawyer, a Portland, Maine-based technology developer who launched the Games for Health Project (gamesforhealth.org) four years ago to assess the effectiveness of the genre and put on a conference for those in the field.
