Houston Games for Health Day (Regional Meetup!)
Posted by Ben Sawyer on 08-10-20On Thursday, December 4, 2008, the Games for Health Project announces a one day event for Houston, TX. This regional event offers a chance to get a great introduction to the games for health field including an excellent chance for local and regional networking.
Location : Rice University, Duncan Hall : McMurtry Auditorium (Rm 1055)
Schedule
Our single day plenary schedule is still coming together but already includes the following talks:
Barbara Chamberlain, Jeanne Gleason, Pamela Martinez (New Mexico State University) - Exergaming & CYFAR
Jim Bowers (UTHSC San Antonio) : Why Eat in Whyville?
Chuck Hamilton (IBM) : Virtual Environments & Healthcare
Nina Fefferman (Tufts) : Social Behavior and the Dynamics of Corrupted Blood in World of Warcraft
Claudia McDonald (TAMUCC) : Avatars & Diagnosis: Experiential Learning in Virtual Space
Miguel Encarnacao (Humana) : HG4H: Humana's Games for Health Initiative
The schedule will also feature a variety of short project summaries for a variety of regional academic institutions and companies.
Cost : Tickets are $49.00 until November 26, 2008.
After that tickets will rise to $79.00 for all attendees. Cost of attendance includes lunch and after-event reception.
General Public Tickets may be purchased online at: https://www.regonline.com/gfhhouston
Rice Students and faculty may attend the event free-of-charge. Students need to email their intention to attend the event to bbryant@dmill.com
Game Jam Mini Report
Posted by Ben Sawyer on 08-10-18The Games for Health Project held its first ever Games for Health Game Jam this weekend at the University of Baltimore in Baltimore, MD. Seven teams competed for $4,000 in cash prizes. The prototypes they built had to deal with the issue of caloric differential (i.e. many people are eating slightly more in calories then we expend - about 150-200 calroies on average per day.) in just 24 hours.
All seven teams produced some level of prototype. A student team from the University of Baltimore won by designing two mini games (of an envisioned series of mini-games) that were designed to help people think of the ever small number of things they can do to reduce the calorie differential in their daily lives.
Click here for a few photos from the event. We will have a full report later this week with screenshots and more from all the excellent entries. A big thanks to all the participants and the University of Baltimore for making this a great event. Expect more sponsored Jams in the future.
One of the teams posing for a quick photo.
Peter Smith from UCF came up to help with judging and logistics.
The eventual winning team hard at work.
The UMUC team conferring over artwork with their artist for their game Bite Me.
Another shot of the team from UMUC.
A group from Firaxis games + One Friend joined us all weekend and produced their entry Snax!
Team Trollbreath hard at work. They took an honorable mention.
Another shot of the winning team from U. Baltimore.
All game jams have pizza and coffee. We also did have apples, and other healthy snacks.
Back across the room you can see four of the seven teams working.