Jane Fonda’s Wii Fit: Continuity, Contingency, and Concordance in Fitness Gaming

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Boyer Steven
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

In order to investigate the implications of new gaming technologies, this paper turns to an unlikely source of parallels in comparing Wii Fit with Jane Fonda's Workout video. This historical and discursive analysis complicates the relationship between consumer and producer with regard to emerging technologies, turning to Celeste Condit's concept of concordance to investigate the negotiations at stake in the adoption and promotion of these devices by a broad audience. Moreover, it examines the centrality of women in the adoption of supposedly male-oriented technologies, the impact of these devices on the social construction of the body, and questions the consequences of a reliance on novelty that has become embedded in the video game medium's focus on innovation.