Games For Health

Games for Health is a project produced by The Serious Games Initiative, a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars effort that applies cutting edge games and game technologies to a range of public and private policy, leadership, and management issues.

The Initiative founded Games for Health to develop a community and best practices platform for the numerous games being built for health care applications. To date the project has brought together researchers, medical professionals, and game developers to share information about the impact games and game technologies can have on health care and policy.

In addition to the Games for Health conference, the Initiative is working to catalog use of games in health care, to assist current development, collect best practices, share research results, and explore ideas that might improve health care administration and policy.

Friends
Education Arcade
Watercooler Games
NASAGA
Ludology.org

Submit your project

For now to submit a project you'd like us to know about please send an email with a project description and relevant links to bsawyer@seriousgames.org

For further publicity we also recommend visiting Social Impact Games and letting them know of your project as well.

List of Games

We are working on several lists of games.

This includes a study of published abstracts and games related to various health research. This work will be released this fall after it is presented at the first Games For Health Conference.

We are also working to compile a list of non-commercial entertainment games built for healthcare purposes. The best list available publicly right now can be found on Social Impact Games a game catalog site maintained by Marc Prensky.

Commercial Games with Health Themes
One of the first we've compiled are commercial entertainment releases that have used health themes or topics. These games provide an interesting history of how commercial game designers have approached health topics in entertainment form. A formal version of this list with screenshots, links, and more information is being compiled for the Games for Health Conference.

Surgery Sims
  • Laser Surgeon: The Microscopic Mission (Activision)
  • Life & Death I (Software Toolworks IBM/Mac/Amiga)
  • Life & Death II (Software Toolworks IBM/Mac/Amiga)
  • Surgeon (Independent title that became basis for Life & Death Mac and maybe IBM)
  • ER (Legacy Interactive for PC not yet released)
  • Microsurgeon (Imagic published for Intellivision)
  • Virtual Surgeon (PC and published by ISM Interactive which did L&D series and Surgeon)
  • Combat Medic (Legacy Interactive for PC)
  • CodeRed (Legacy Interactive for PC)
  • 911 Paramedia (Legacy Interactive for PC)
System Sims/Sims
  • ThemeHospital (Bullfrog/EA PC)
  • SimHealth (Maxis/ThinkingTools)
  • Epidemic (SSI)
Arcade Games Dealing with Anatomy and/or Health
  • Microcosm (Psygnosis) Released for SegaCD and 3DO
  • Ozzy & Drix (GameBoy Advance)
  • Mindwalker (Amiga) Published by Commodore developed by Bill Williams
  • AlphaWaves (Infogrames)
  • Deus (PC)
  • Robinson's Requiem (PC)
Health Games Commercially Published by Click Health (previously called Raya Systems)
  • BG Pilot (helps kids with diabetes keep track of blood glucose, in a game format), (PC) 1989
  • AIDS Avenger, (PC) 1991
  • Captain Novolin (diabetes self-management), (SNES) 1992
  • Rex Ronan (smoking prevention), (SNES) 1993
  • Packy & Marlon (diabetes self-management), (SNES) 1994; (PC) 1998
  • Bronkie the Bronchiasaurus (asthma self-management), (SNES) 1995; PC 1999
Psychological Interaction
  • Alter Ego (Activision by Dr. Peter Favaro) Two versions Female and Male were released.
  • Mind Mirror (EA by Timothy Leary)