There is a new Wii Cheerleading Game that has been announced. This game features allows the player to assume the roll of a cheerleader and do some basic routines, mostly dance moves, to music. As I understand it, you score points by hitting the motions correctly with the controller.
I’m undecided how I feel about the creation of this game. I’m a very strong advocate of cheerleading. It has been a large portion of my life and I continue to devote countless hours to the sport. I coach, I train, and I work on proliferating the sport. While this game will help in popularizing the sport, it raises several concerns for me:
- The Nature of the Game, this game focuses on basic dance moves. There are some screen shots of people doing jumps, but in general the goals are dance related. This is NOT cheerleading. Cheerleading involves aspects of gymnastics and jumping and stunting, all of which are left out of this game.
- Potential for Injury, despite the fact the lack of stunting and tumbling exist in this game, I am also afraid that some of the jumping and whatnot required will lead to injuries. Cheerleading is already a dangerous, but what makes it so dangerous is the lack of good coaching, this game cannot possibly provide the required coaching.
- Choice of Music, the music for this game is very teeny bopper. Not really what is used in most modern day cheerleading.
- Lack of Coed Options, As far as I can see this game is designed specifically for women. There are no men in this game. This game is very female centric. I feel that I already have enough problems trying to convince men to join the sport, by creating a game like this we alienate men even more. This might be irrelevant if the game never reaches a high level of popularity, but if it does, this could actually be a factor.
Some of these factors are a little premature. This game might have no impact, or it might help boost our popularity in areas of the country or world where we are still an emerging sport, but I just wanted to state that I have my reservations.