Skip to main contentLeave it to Portland to take a medium typically reserved for laser battles on alien worlds and try to make it...healthy.
Such is the aim of Yourself!Fitness, a new title for Microsoft's Xbox video-game console that was developed entirely on Rose City soil. Instead of wearing out their thumbs attempting to defeat orcs and win the Scimitar of Thrashing, Yourself!Fitness gamers have to actually scrape their asses off the couch for an individualized workout with an animated personal trainer.
The game is the brainchild of Portlander Phineas Barnes, 28, who conceived the idea in 2002 after he noticed something about the haul of video games his brother-in-law received on Christmas Day.
"They all came from the women in his life," Barnes recalls. "I thought, they're buying this stuff but getting no use out of it. Let's put these two together."
What better way to do this than through something many women already do in their living rooms: work out. Yourself!Fitness isn't quite a "game"; it's more like a $35 permanent personal trainer. Players begin by creating a physical profile--height, weight, flexibility--and setting fitness goals. The game then caters workouts to achieve the gamer's objectives, from an intensive cardio routine to a half-hour of yoga. It remembers each workout and even plans meals for you, recipes and all.
"So the program evolves and is more personalized than the typical DVD, where you do the same push-up with the same voice cue with the same wave breaking and bird flying over you every single time," says Barnes.
Presiding over all of this is Maya, an animated trainer versed in hundreds of different exercises. Maya is based on Los Angeles trainer-to-the-stars Yumi Lee, who has firmed up Brad Pitt, Demi Moore and the occasional Spice Girl. Unlike many video-game femmes, Maya doesn't have gigantic breasts striving to break free from a bikini or a feline, come-hither air.
"We did focus groups about Maya," Barnes explains. "We found that she has to be a real woman. She can't be so fit that she's intimidating, but she needs to be fit enough to be credible. We needed to make her motivational, but she can't cross that line and be bitchy."
Voiced by Lee, Maya can be a gentle motivator ("Stay focused--you can do it!"), a homegirl ("That's what I'm talkin' about!"), and something of a drill sergeant ("MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!")--and she's not afraid to chide if you skip a scheduled workout.
Capital for the project came from tech entrepreneur Ted Spooner--founder of the banking-software company Corillian--whom Barnes buttonholed at a Blazers game with his idea of "games that are good for you." Spooner signed on the next day, and Barnes' company, responDESIGN, was born.
The result of 18 months of production and an investment of around $10 million, Yourself!Fitness is definitely a Portland product; animators did motion capture at Nike and got their cinematics from Portland's PBDigital. But Barnes hopes it'll have global appeal. So far, Yourself!Fitness is nearly sold out of its first run of 50,000 copies, and, thanks to partnerships with big guns like Wal-Mart, Target and even Nordstrom, Barnes thinks he has a franchise on his hands--for gamers and non-gamers alike.
"It's a great way to get a little fitness into an otherwise unfit world," he says.
WWeek 2015