Games for Health 2006 Sessions
Posted by Ben Sawyer on 06-07-08This post include 95% of our Games for Health 2006 content, with our Keynote and some smaller final sessions are forthcoming.
To register please visit: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaID=107675
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STATE OF EXERGAMING
Exergaming has been established as a popular culture buzzword but to what extent is it truly being established as credible business and approach to physical fitness?
This important panel led by Ernie Medina, Jr. DrPH, CHFI involves both those who develop and deploy exergaming will look at the current state of research, development, market development, and target-user success/failure and offer up both needs and predictions for the future of one of the most critical areas of the games for health field.
THE BODY IS A GAME
Look at any portion of the body and there is great potential for gaming. Whether its the cellular level, the circulatory system, the inner workings of the Brain, or even the process of digestion the body offers incredible content for gaming. During The Body is a Game session several projects will provide brief overviews of their work. This will be followed by a group discussion about how we can mine far more then we have from the inner workings of human biology to create a host of games that could form an exciting new way to teach health, help patients visualize their conditions better, and even create entirely new consumer entertainment titles.
Among the projects that will be part of this session are Immune Attack! From The Federation of American Scientists, Neuromatrix and Journey into the Brain from Morphonix and Metalloman from University of Southern California.
RESEARCHERS MEETUP
Interestingly in the past two years a number of research projects have been launched or concluded. While not all have achieved incredible scale the results from various DDR studies, pain distraction work, cybertherapy, physical therapy, and training are promising. What hasn't happened still is better coordination among interested researchers in the field and an improvement in the fundamental logistics that will enable more research to be concluded.
The goal of the researchers meet up is to pull together a current who's who of academics and healthcare leaders who are moving forward the games for health research agenda. This meetup seeks four specific outcomes among its participants:
* An update on the progress of individual research projects
* A discussion of how to improve the state of published research
* Ideas on how to achieve more grant activity in the field
* Proposals for new research ideas or scaling up of success smaller trials
GAMES ABOUT HEALTH & HEALTH IN GAMES
In 2004 Ben Sawyer and Johnny Wilson compiled an early list of commercial games that had a health theme or heavy health aspect in them. At the 2004 Game Developer's Conference this work was shared and augmented through audience input. Now two years later this talk returns with new and improved content including a look at health and healthcare in various massive multiplayer worlds.
If we're going to build games about health, and look for ways to combine messaging about health with games we have to look harder at what games have done thus far. We also have to think beyond the common theme of games and violence to see what about health is being communicated to kids via games. Furthermore we must understand better why a medium like games hasn't done as much with healthcare themes when compared to television, movies, or even books.
This talk takes an important look at the mass-market intersection between games and health and draws from that some specific ideas of how to start thinking about ways games could do more with health and how health can do more with games.
MASS CASULTY CARE PANEL
The ability to train for situations that would be impossible or too expensive to do often or wide enough is one of the key reasons organizations are turning to simulations and games. In the case of mass casualty care where resources must be allocated and in some cases decisions made quickly games are a natural fit. During this session attendees will hear from three major projects -- each dealing with how to train administrators and frontline personnel to mass casualty events.
SECOND LIFE & HEALTH: A BRIEFING
From training for doctors and first responders to various therapeutic environments the use of world-building system Second Life is growing in the health and healthcare space. A representative of Second Life producer Linden Lab will present a complete overview of both the service, and the various game-like applications being built by players in the virtual world.
Attendees will get a tour of Second Life, and an overview of how development within Second Life works. This will be followed by an overview of specific health projects in Second Life including Brigadoon Island (therapy for sufferers of Asperger’s Syndrome) training for heart murmur evaluation and more.
PERSONAL INVESTIGATOR: A NEW LOOK
Personal Investigator is a therapeutic game tool for people working on adolescent mental health interventions. A new version of the game has now been developed using a commercial games engine (Torque), with the aim to making the game more widely available to mental health care services and more broadly usable across a wider range of mental health disorders. As with the original game the main therapeutic content is contained in dialogue with game characters and in-game videos of adolescents describing how they overcame difficult life situations. Adolescents playing the game are taken through a structured series of conversations, which encourage them reflect on their own situation and set goals for achieving resolutions.
As well as addressing several usability and reliability features of the initial game, the new implementation comes with a game edit tool, which enables mental health care professionals to both adapt existing therapeutic content and author new therapeutic content. The aim in developing the editing tool is to allow mental health care professionals to:
(1) Adapt the existing game to meet the needs of specific demographic groups and age ranges.
(2) Author new therapeutic content targeting a variety of mental disorders, which can then be delivered in an engaging format within the existing game framework.
An evaluation of the game editing tool with ten experienced mental health professionals demonstrated its usability and suggests that it is sufficiently flexible for use with a wide range of therapeutic approaches and for a wide range of disorders. Experienced therapists evaluating the system suggested an interest in both creating content for broad demographic groups and, in the case of clients who are particularly difficult to engage, tailoring content to address the individual needs of specific clients.
EXERGAMING MEETUP
The sheer number of products and outlets for exergaming is substantial. To foster greater cooperation and business development in the field Games for Health will feature an open meetup for anyone involved in exergaming. Product companies on hand will be given a chance to openly speak about their products and how they can work with organizations to see wider roll out or research collaboration. Researchers can hear more about new products, share feedback with developers, and brainstorm creative ways to collaborate on research, roll out, and other efforts in exergaming.
ACCESSIBILE GAMING: Advice and Examples
Both to make games more broadly available, and to help make games for people with specific disabilities the International Game Developer's Association's Accessibility SIG has been the leading force for accessibility in games. In this tutorial session Robert Florio of the IGDA's accessibility SIG will present a complete overview of both the technologies and techniques that enable game accessibility but also specific projects built for people with a variety of impairments.
OPEN PROJECTS CALL & TOWN MEETING
Every year there are more projects and initiatives in the audience then there are on the program. To help aide as many projects as possible Games for Health 2006 will feature an open projects call session. This session held on day two will allow any project or other worthwhile effort in attendance a chance to provide 2-5 minutes of information to attendees.
The session will also allow for general discussion, comments, and questions to be provided to the Games for Health Project. Representatives from Games for Health and its steering committee will be available to address all of these and provide comments and questions to presenting projects.
PHYSICAL THERAPY WITH GAMES
Like Exercise, Physical Therapy relies extensively on motivation by the patient. While there is no doubt games can supply motivation they can also offer measurement, reduce costs, and much more. In this presentation Skip Rizzo of The Institute for Creative Technologies will showcase a range of personal work and the work of other leading researchers who are testing the potential for games to become a critical part of physical therapy in years to come.
MAKING HOSPITALS FUN
Going to the hospital could be much more enjoyable then it is. Sterile need only pertain to the bacterial exposure not the decor or patient experience. Hospitals can be much more fun then they are and certainly videogames can be a big part of that. This session highlights several projects that are working to bring gaming to hospitals (and not just for kids) and the success and lessons thus far. While games in hospitals should be a no-brainer this panel will push beyond the obvious by asking if this can become about more then just "a PlayStation in every room" effort.
PULSE!! TO DATE
Pulse!! is a multi-million dollar effort to develop a totally virtual representation of a working hospital and healthcare system. Combining both first-person graphics and interface with a novel virtual patient system the goal of Pulse!! is to create a robust platform for training and education covering both combat and non-combat trauma medicine and general health practices.
Last year Pulse!! PI Claudia Johnston detailed the framework and process that had been developed for Pulse!! This year with a year of development behind it Dr. Johnston will present an update on this project including a demo of the current prototype, and a rigorous review of how the assessment process for the project is going to work.
MASS CASULTY CARE PANEL
The ability to use games to simulate, train, and enlighten large audiences about mass casualty events is in full swing. Several projects are working to provide state-of-the-art exposure to events we hope we never have to see in anything but a virtual setting. This panel highlights several of the best game-based mass casualty training games followed by critical questions about what the role of games will and should be for this new but critical healthcare training need.
GAMES & EPIDEMICS PANEL
In 2005 an interesting event occurred. In the popular online game World of Warcraft an unintentional virus broke out. Players became infected with a blood disease that ran rampant through the virtual world. Quarantines of servers began, panic ran through the user community, and rumors abounded. In short - a virtual pandemic ensued.
This wasn't meant to be but in a short moment it was clear that using games to simulate, train, and explore the multitude of issues surrounding epidemics man-made or otherwise is a critical application for games for health. Simulations are o.k. but it is gaming that melds simulation and human behavior better then any other software approach available. It is gaming that is enabling massive-multiplayer worlds which are one of the potentially great platforms through which to research many major issues related to future outbreaks.
This panel brings together several very different groups looking at the intersection of games, and epidemics. Panelists will look at how interfacing real people into decision systems about epidemics can offer an entirely new way to model, train, and perhaps even predict actual outbreaks.
VIDEO GAME DONORS
Gamers are a growing and unique culture. To self-identify as a gamer today and to care and associate as part of a community of gamers is no different then that of NASCAR fans, Red Sox fans, or people belonging to other interest-based associations. It seems sensible then that creating distinct donation and volunteerism campaigns directly to gamers via game-based methods and media is viable and as such already there are two major efforts that work toward this. In this session we will hear about two major efforts within the gamer community that are focused on mobilizing gamers into a new donor and volunteer force.
The Get-Well Gamers Foundation (www.get-well-gamers.org/) is a California-based Non-Profit Organization dedicated to bringing digital entertainment to hospitals so that patients have ready access to a pleasant distraction while recuperating. Gamers support Get Well Gamers through donations of funds and equipment. Their links with many hospitals across the country could also prove useful to new projects looking to find the most game-friendly contacts available.
In 2005 Penny Arcade's (www.pennyarcade.com) Child's Play (www.childsplaycharity.org) effort raised over $600,000 for children's hospitals around the United States. Now the effort is going global and is looking at other means of combining games and health.
One of the most popular Web comic strips, Penny Arcade chronicles the life of hardcore gamers. The sites readership is over 4.5 million world-wide. It is arguably one of the largest community of gamers on the Internet. And Penny Arcade takes its community and the greater community of self-titled gamers seriously. By calling upon its readers and getting them to become gaming activists Penny Arcade has shown how the gaming community can be uniquely organized.
A review of both efforts will help attendees better understand how to work with both efforts, how they are finding hospitals to work with and the unique interests of hardcore gamers as a cultural and activist community.
DEVELOPING RE-MISSION
HopeLab's Re-Mission project is one of the most important current case studies in all of serious games let alone Games for Health. Given that, we've scheduled multiple talks on the game. Critical to the entire discussion of Re-Mission is getting a inside look at the day-to-day task of developing the final title.
In this talk the contracted developer Real Time Associates and HopeLab's producer Tim Ryan will present an extensive discussion of all the issues they dealt with the bring the vision of Re-Mission to fruition.
This discussion will provide great insight into not only what developers must do to handle a project like Re-Mission but also the important roles clients, subject matter experts, and other stakeholders like patients need to play to make the best serious game possible.
MIND BLASTS: COGNITIVE EXERCISE & GAMES
With the debut of Nintendo's BrainAge game and various sequels the general public has been further enlightened to the theory that various basic puzzle exercises may potentially improve cognitive health. In 2006 the Games for Health Project began researching the landscape of cognitive health and games. Findings in research show there is a clear link to active minds and brain health but there is no universal consensus on why, or how this might be, or if it isn't a general form of self-selection taking place. Despite the uncertainty many projects are moving forward and proponents of cognitive exercise are certain that using state-of-the-art game design and production techniques will be critical to making brain exercise as common as a trip to the gym or jog in the park.
To further explore the world of cognitive exercise a session featuring three major projects in the space will offer a look beyond BrainAge into programs backed by further assessment and scientific research.
THE GAME BASED ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORD
Is Xbox Live the future of Electronic Medical Records? It, and other online gaming interfaces and general gaming interfaces might be the key to the future of health records and the subsequent applications they could spawn. In 2005 Games for Health featured a basic outline proposal for a game-based EMR and other derivative applications such as a new means of dealing with patient intake both adolescent and adult prior to ER or OR.
In 2006 we will use the Games for Health conference to take this idea further. On day one a working group of game and health professionals will meet to brainstorm further iteration and definition to a game-based EMR. Artists on hand will work the sketch the ideas into action.
Working periodically throughout the conference the artists and others will refine the ideas into a presentation that will be part of the closing content on day II. These ideas will be used to publicly inform various EMR efforts underway and to further explore how game-based interfaces offer a potential solution to critical information system issues in health and healthcare.
This session will be led by Ben Sawyer of the Games for Health project, and Dr. Stephen Rosenfeld, formerly of NIH, and now CIO, of Maine Medical Center.
GAMES FOR PRE- and POST-OP THERAPY
Dr. Anuradha's work documenting the positive benefits of games during pre-op procedures builds on the basic observation of games as a distraction device for medical purposes. While other media have been routinely used as interventions for pre-op anxiety Dr. Anuradha's work shows that games for today's youth are a great tool with important medical outcomes resulting from less stress and anxiety related to pre-op procedures. In this updated talk Dr. Patel outlines the work and results. In addition the results from post-op usage of games will also be discussed.
TEAM TRAINING FOR HOSPITAL OPERATIONS
Scotland based Games Based Learning Developer TPLD will showcase a new game for hospital staff training related to a critical issue facing all institutions. This unannounced effort which will be showcased at GFH is directed at providing a first-person view of critical staff training related to patient care and hospital quality. TPLD is known for their team based trainer Infinite Teams which combines multiplayer-gameplay with rigorous leadership and team member assessment tools.
Attendees to the talk will not only see a new training application but will understand how such applications must meld critical subject matter expertise, a defined problem area, and the right game-based approach in order to create the best potential for subsequent success.
IMPROVING CANCER PREVENTION BEHAVIORS IN HEALTHY YOUNG ADULTS WITH THE CANCER VIDEOGAME RE-MISSION
Conducted by Games for Health Steering Committee member Debra Lieberman, this session presents results of a study of healthy young adults who were randomly assigned either to (1) play the cancer education video game Re-Mission for one hour, or (2) play an entertainment video game with no health content for one hour. Those who played Re-Mission developed a stronger sense of the seriousness of a diagnosis of cancer, stronger beliefs that that there are effective ways to help prevent cancer, and, as a result, developed stronger intentions to engage in cancer prevention and selfcare behaviors. This study is one of the first to test health promotion theory with a health video game, to identify design principles and game elements that lead to health behavior change.
Attendees to this session will get a better understanding of the potential for how health messaging in games can be used as a general population tool as well as for its target audience.
HEALTH MESSAGING MEETUP
The Hollywood Health & Society Program at USC has been working for several years on the effort to embed accurate and topical health and healthcare content into major motion pictures and television programming. A current goal of this well organized effort is to use its same networking and convening capability to aide in the development of games for health. During Games for Health 2006 representatives from Hollywood Health & Society will host a meetup designed to outline specific approaches unique to games and the game industry that could result in a new generation of games for health and games with deeper health content.
SENELUDENS: GAMES, AGING & ANTICIPATION
The Seneludens Project at the University of Texas at Dallas is designed to look at many issues surrounding, play, gaming, and aging. This is especially true of the area of anticipation, the cognitive skill that lets you see ahead in all aspects of daily life from seeing the inadvertently placed object on the floor to understanding who does what when in a team setting.
Aging is accompanied by a lack of interest in playing. This is often based on the aging individual's decline in cognitive and physical abilities and leads to a vicious cycle: physical inability leads to further cognitive deterioration. Furthermore, the aging individual's anticipatory abilities are weakened, which leaves him/her more open to accident. However, engaging the aging in playful activities could result in a new form of individualized behavioral gameplay to compensate for this decline. In order to mitigate cognitive and physical deterioration, providing the aging with games than engage them to play could turn out to be a new form of individualized behavioral therapy.
Seneludens is focused on designing games and other therapeutic behavioral environments with the specific aim of maintaining anticipatory characteristics during the aging process. Many resources are utilized for fighting aging and its effects at its core (genetic, molecular, neuronal), but few for attenuating the consequences of the basic aging process.
In this session the leader of the Seneludens Project Mihai Nadin will provide an overview of the science of anticipation and how games and the Seneludens project aims to use that science to improve the aging process.
IN BROWSER GAMES: DOING IT RIGHT
Many serious games and games for health projects are being geared for browser-based delivery. Browser-based games have the capability to reach mass audiences via the Web better then CD-ROM distribution and locally executed games. There are drawbacks however to operating as a browser-based product as well including limited processing functionality/speed, and easy ways to do high-end 3D graphics.
Given the importance of browser-based games especially for health messaging Games for Health 2006 includes a 1 hour tutorial on best practices for browser-based game development led by Ian Bogost of Persuasive Games (www.persuasivegames.com) and Georgia Tech University.
The goal of this session is to help researchers, customers, and all prospective users understand how to build meaningful browser-based games and avoid projects that devolve into being nothing more then glorified animated commercials or poorly developed games with overly simplistic gameplay and learning outcomes.
OBESITY & GAMES MEETUP
There are many ways to attack the obesity epidemic through gaming. Games for Health 2006 features a working group session where peers can share projects, research, and brainstorm on methods for utilizing game technologies to help educate and assist the public in its battle against obesity.
The goal of this session is to take full account of the many projects dealing with both obesity itself and the resulting illnesses (especially diabetes) that can result from an overweight lifestyle. In doing so it is hoped that further collaboration can be developed toward putting forward a comprehensive effort to engage people to exercise more, eat better, and manage their weight or associated conditions better.
This session is led by Barbara Chamberlain of New Mexico State University. The University has been working on games dealing with issues surrounding obesity and has put together a core national team that is seeking to produce new game-based solutions for obesity.
During the session relevant projects in attendance will be given a few minutes to summarize work, and then attendees will engage in discussion and brainstorms aimed at providing a basic roadmap and landscape for progress on games and obesity.
HELP WITH DEVELOPMENT
This general meetup session will be held twice during the conference. It is designed as a general Q&A session to help people with specific ideas, projects, or needs get some practical feedback and advice on the development of their effort.
The session will consist of the presence of at least 2-3 development advisory who can help attendees with critical technology, design, business, or implementation questions sort through them. Attendees with prototypes or existing titles can get direct feedback on their efforts as well.
The session will also include people with experience designing studies, promotion, and fundraising.
WEST VIRGINIA: DDR HEALTH CAPITOL
One of the most oft-reported games for health headlines of the last year+ has been the large-scale adoption and roll out of DDR as an exergaming program to West Virginia schools. In this first-ever session at a Games for Health event members of the research team involved in its design will detail the work that lead to the decision to utilize DDR across all West Virginia schools.
Promising research results are not enough. This unprecedented level of activity has involved research trials on DDR, coordination with DDR producer Konami, and lots of training at the school level to support the rollout.
Attendees to this session will see first hand all the elements that have had to come together to launch this effort across 753 public schools by 2008 thus providing some deep insight into how similar projects exergaming oriented or otherwise will have to organize in order to achieve similar goals.
GLUCOBOY NOW!
In 2004 Paul Wessel of Interguidance brought down the house with his impassioned story about his own family's trials with childhood diabetes. Determined to find someway to improve adherence, and remove the stigma tied to diabetes monitoring and health behavior Paul has been on a one-man crusade to combine portable Gameboy videogaming with diabetes monitoring.
Two years later Glucoboy is nearly a reality. The trials of getting this device and software to market is a story in-and-of-itself and thus an update on progress is in order. With working software and (if manufacturing approval cooperates) a working prototype of Glucoboy will be shared with attendees.
Along the way some powerful new ideas have emerged with the plans for Glucoboy including novel approaches to combining it with connectivity, community, and additional curriculum tools designed to make it fit even more of Paul's original vision that young kids can have a glucose monitoring system and support platform all their own.
BRAIN-BASED BIOFEEDBACK & GAMES FOR HEALTH
Biofeedback systems are increasingly becoming a critical part of the games for health space. Uses for biofeedback fit both training and personal health. This session brings together two example uses of biofeedback in gaming to help demystify the opportunities surrounding biofeedback hardware interfaces and software applications.
Randy Brown of Virtual Heroes will demonstrate how they've integrated biofeedback as an assessment tool into recent non-health projects dealing with adaptive thinking & leadership. This presents an excellent overview of both the technical hurdles, and interface approaches toward using biofeedback for training applications.
Domenic Greco of SmartBrainGames will demonstrate their off-the-shelf brain-wave monitoring system that is being utilized both for training and other applications including off-the-shelf efforts to combat ADHD in children and adults using game-based biofeedback.
CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL MEET & GREET
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is one of the 13 major operating components of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is the principal agency in the United States government for protecting the health and safety of all Americans and for providing essential human services, especially for those people who are least able to help themselves.
Since it was founded in 1946 to help control malaria, CDC has remained at the forefront of public health efforts to prevent and control infectious and chronic diseases, injuries, workplace hazards, disabilities, and environmental health threats. Today, CDC is globally recognized for conducting research and investigations and for its action oriented approach. CDC applies research and findings to improve people’s daily lives and responds to health emergencies—something that distinguishes CDC from its peer agencies.
As part of that mission the CDC engages in many public media campaigns and educational efforts, as well as training and more. Recognizing there is potential to use gaming the CDC is coordinating with the Games for Health Conference to host a small meeting that will allow CDC staff to better survey the opportunities for gaming as part of their activities. This includes vetting research results, understanding latest thinking, exploring best practices, and informing the games for health community what challenges CDC is looking to solve.
This informal session and general CDC staff presence at Games for Health 2006 offers attendees to hear from a frontline federal health agency just exactly what is needed for gaming to be seen as a successful viable tool in a comprehensive public health mission.
TACTICAL COMBAT CASUALTY COMBAT CARE TRAINER
The 91W program at Fort Sam Houston trains all combat medics for the U.S. Army. In this session Engineering & Computer Simulations will discuss the design and development of their Tactical Combat Casualty Care interactive course which uses a first-person game-styled view to train students to under the differences between trauma management in the United States and trauma management in foreign country during wartime. Developed for the US Army's Research, Development, and Engineering Command Simulation and Training Technology Center, TC3 focuses on recreating much of the critical pedagogy developed for training 91 Whiskey soldier medics.
DDR RESEARCH & USAGE MEETUP
The number of small studies and researchers investigating the use of Konami's DanceDanceRevolution and similar-styled games is one of the more active areas of research in the games for health field. This special session led by Ann Maloney of Maine Medical Center is designed to pull together DDR focused projects and interested parties for a general discussion on the state of research into DDR and how to replicate not only research but successful rollouts of DDR based programs both small and large.
Researchers attending the meeting will share current and past results, discuss how to duplicate and expand studies, and develop new ideas on possible new studies. Implementation and support ideas will be further discussed and the group will work toward developing a summary report that can inform follow on interest in this winning form of exergaming.
DEVELOPMENT OF A HIV INTERVENTION GAME: A CASE SSTUDY IN PARTNERSHIP
Delivering effective HIV-preventative interventions for adolescents is a task and resource intensive problem. What if a computer-based intervention could help provide a viable means to lessen the strain on resources that are being used to create effective health education intervention?
In this case study, researchers present a pilot study that was conducted to examine the acceptability, feasibility, and measurements of youth perception to a novel intervention method. While the outcomes did not prove statistically significant those exposed to the program reported engaged in safer sex more often. In general some positive results from the study suggest that effective computer-based interventions can be developed but more work is needed.
This session focuses on providing an overview of the program, its results, and how the design process worked. Furthermore, there will be a close look at the unique partnership that brought the game past the development state including the process for translating science and health messages into computerized interactions.
FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE: CREATIVE A SERIOUS GAME FOR DISEASE PREVENTION IN YOUTH
This panel features four presenters who will discuss their combined efforts to develop diabetes prevention games Nanoswarm, and Escape from Diab. Drawing upon their unique backgrounds and combined experiences the goal of the panel will be to provide attendees with multiple viewpoints about the roles and needs of successful games for health projects.
Offering a glimpse into how problems must be solved in unison by researchers and developers this panel showcases Nanoswarm: Invasion from Inner Space and Escape from Diab are sci-fi adventures in healthy eating and exercise. The project is funded by a grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. Archimage is collaborating with experts at the Children’s Nutritional Research Center of Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine on the games.
Each panelist will speak to a specific aspect of the project:
Debbe Thompson, PhD – USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine “Behavior theory: How it can inform game design and development”
Victoria Thompson, DrPH - Archimage, Inc.
“The Player Perspective: Survey and focus group results regarding game story narrative and the availability of gaming technology among rural and urban students”
Richard Buday, FAIA - Archimage, Inc.
“Escape from Diab: Considerations for Game Development”
Tom Baranowski, PhD – Baylor College of Medicine
“Return to Diab: Combining theory and game technology”
Interestingly as well is the background of the developer. Archimage is known primarily as an architecture firm but has taken its architecture background and successfully moved into a number of multimedia and interactive design projects. This unique perspective will further shed light on how the process of game-development can be adopted and influenced by design groups outside the core game design field.
GAMES FOR HEALTH: A JAPAN PERSPECTIVE
The modern day home videogame industry was born in Japan. Two out of the three major videogame consoles are designed and built in Japan. Some of the most important development studios in the gaming industry are based in Japan. Several breakthrough games including DanceDanceRevolution and BrainAge were developed by Japanese game studios.
Publishing giant Namco also runs senior centers, and game giant Konami owns a large chain of health clubs.
In this session Serious Games Japan founder Toru Fujimoto provides an overview of the intersection of games and healthcare both from a commercial, cultural, and research perspective as it exists in Japan.
There will be a specific focus on several titles as well. Japanese game companies have been producing medical and health-related COTS games for years regardless of the emergence of the Games for Health domain. There are several un-introduced unique game titles which may inspire the Games for Health community. Though some of those efforts have been introduced at previous events, there are several others which have not been covered much to date. This session will thus especially review those COTS games from the health communication viewpoint. The game titles include “Maidan Love Revolution (PS2)”, “Click Medic (PS1)”, “Martial Beat (PS1)”, “Kenshuui Tendo Dokuta (DS)” and so forth.