|
Can video games be sports? The Esports Foundation, a Saudi Arabian non-profit outfit, thinks so: in July and August it hosted the 2026 Esports World Cup in Paris, in which competitors played everything from driving games and first-person shooters to, er, chess, for a share of a $75m prize purse.
Grumpy traditionalists might disagree: after all, playing video games involves little more physical effort than clicking a button. But that is not quite true. Virtual-reality (VR) headsets have never really caught on. But they have enabled one intriguing niche: games that you play by moving your body, rather than just your fingers. “The Thrill of the Fight” is a VR boxing game in which you have to physically dance around your opponents and throw punches at them. “Beat Saber”, asks you to physically slice blocks in time to the beat of the music.
Such games certainly raise your
heart rate.
But do they do so enough to count as exercise? That is
the subject of this week’s column.
Happily for the gamers among you, the answer seems to be yes. “The Thrill of the Fight”, for instance, seems to be about as metabolically taxing as playing a game of non-virtual football out in the real world. Other games offered different benefits.
If you want the details, please do read the column. But one thing struck me when I read it: the best piece of exercise advice I was ever given is to pick a sport you enjoy—after all, the most effective kind of exercise is one you’ll actually stick to. A lot of people drag themselves out on runs out of a sense of obligation, rather than enjoyment. Maybe a VR headset offers a better way?
Could VR gaming encourage you to exercise more?
Vote in our poll below.
And you can tell us your views by emailing us at
wellinformed@economist.com.
We might feature you in next week’s newsletter.
Last week we asked if you thought
vaccines would help to prevent cancer.
Almost 90% of you believe that they will. That sentiment is shared in the dozens of emails we received on the topic. Ronald, Joe and Nagendra are encouraged by the developments in mRNA technology. “The holy grail of cancer treatment will likely be a vaccine that is unique not to the patient, but rather to the cancer cell,” writes Ronald. “mRNA technology accelerates the search for a vaccine enormously, leaving the identification of the target yet to be done.”
Several of you, including Wendy, Tracey, Frank, Stephen and Carol, wrote in to explain that vaccines already help prevent certain types of cancer. That’s certainly true, even if
HPV vaccination—which is unequivocally effective—works in a different way from
the breakthroughs we described last week.
Finally, Mary in Canada is upbeat about vaccines but thinks there is a long road ahead, especially when “irrational fear” may slow things even further. See you next week. | 
