Thanks to generous support from some of our sponsors Breakaway Games, Muzzy Lane, and Virtual Heroes, we have a limited number of student passes now more widely available for Games for Health this June.

Student passes are 50% off normal pricing.

To register as a student:

1. Visit registration here.

2. Enter STDNT10 after choosing your pass.

3. These are limited on a first-come first-serve basis.

4. Once registered we will request a proof of student status. Failure to produce an acceptable student proof-of-status will result in your ticket being cancelled.

Valid forms of student status include a scan of your student ID, tuition receipt, or faculty advisor letter with contact information. This is open to students in 2-yr, 4-yr, graduate, and Ph.D. programs in any discipline.

Games Accessibility Experts Gather To Develop Public Briefing Book for Federal Government & Industry Leaders.

On June 12 at the Games for Health Conference, experts on games accessibility with gather in Boston, MA for Enabled Play — the longest running event specifically focused on understanding and improving the state of games accessibility.  

This year’s event features a special program of events in place of formalized sessions and speakers.  Instead the focus is on a daylong effort by leaders in the accessibility community to compile a briefing book and document that will be posted publicly the following day and presented to all attendees and speakers of The Games for Health Conference including leaders, a cross-section of health, games, and government leaders active in exploring new uses for games in health and beyond.  The goal of this effort will be to aid policymakers and industry professionals in helping foster improved games accessibility practices, technologies, and research in the years to follow.

The briefing book and executive summary will also be posted online to various Websites to provide the same advisement to industry and the public at-large.

“In the past Enabled Play has featured many excellent talks, workshops, and discussions which has showcased the brilliant, often grassroots, efforts that researchers, advocates, developers, and player’s themselves undertake to make games more accessibile to everyone.” said Games for Health organizer Ben Sawyer, “This year’s event is a time-out from that agenda so we can compile a current state-of-accessibility report, and provide recommendations to federal policy makers, and others, about how we can bring games accessibility further along.

Enabled Play starts Tuesday June 11 at 9:30 am. Moderated by games accessibility community leaders Tara Voelker, and Eleanor Robinson (7128 Software), attendees will develop an agenda, and a process to compiling the briefing book.  Critical to this effort will be a series of moderated roundtables where Enabled Play attendees will have a chance to assess the current state of accessibility and provide specific recommendations for policy, funding, collaborations, and technology development.

Recommendations and calls-for-action will be designed to help game developers worldwide make their games more accessible for people with lifelong, acquired, chronic, or temporary disabilities.

To register for Enabled Play and offer your input into what we is compiled please register for our emerging markets and communities day (June 12) via our conference registration system.

For more about Enabled Play you can visit www.enabledplay.com

I. KEYNOTE UPDATE

We’ve had great reaction to our announced keynotes.

As a result we’ve added some extra time with some of them. Dr. Bill Crounse from Microsoft will have a standalone Q+A session following his talk. We’ve added extra time to Jane McGonigal’s Day II keynote to allow for extended Q&A. Jane will also be part of a panel on resilience and games which will be held Thursday at 11:30am.

We’re still finalizing our final closing speaker but we’re hopeful to have this sorted out by middle of May. We like this to be a last second surprise so stay tuned!

II. GROUP ACTIVITIES

1. An updated version of last year’s “What’s Your Game Prescription?” activity. We’ve now built this into an electronic Web based form you can submit through today. We’ll be posting and sharing the best ones throughout the conference.

See more at our Game Prescription subsite.

2. Ask The Experts will be a series of sessions held throughout the conference where members of our speaking faculty will be coming together to answer your general questions. You can actually submit them now, on-site at the event, or participate in the sessions.

See more here.

3. Help Design a First Aid Game

If you’re interested in first aid we’ve added a fun session where you can work with 1st Playable’s (www.1stplayable.com) Tobi Saulnier to help design ideas for a game or games that would teach people first aid skills.

The session: “Improving First Aid with Games: Group Design Challenge” will be Wednesday June 13 at 1:15pm after lunch.

4. Watch a Build

In partnership with Virtual Heroes (www.virtualheroes.com) we’re going to have a small team of on-site developers working to build a game-based simulation using Epic’s Unreal Engine technology. If you’ve ever been curious what it takes to build things like 3DiTeams, or Zero Hour: America’s Medic (http://virtualheroes.com/portfolio) then you’ll have a chance to see this unfold during the conference, and even lend your ideas to the prototype.

III. PIONEERS, PROMISE & POSSIBILITIES: FITTING TOGETHER VIDEOGAMES & HEALTH

In February 2011 Paul Tarini, senior program officer of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio, presented a talk at the 25th Annual Game Developers Conference. This important talk focused on the changing nature of health and the changing nature of the games for the health field. An adapted form of that speech is presented here in full-length article form and was included in our 2011 Games for Health Program Guide.

With the upcoming conference in June of 2012 we wanted to make sure we’d posted a version up on our site for you to read as the ideas it contains are still very much a big part of what’s in store for this year’s event and other activities the Games for Health Project is undertaking this year and beyond.

Read Pioneers, Promise & Possibilities here.

IV. TUTORIALS

We have three distinct tutorials being added to the event this year.

1. Ben Sawyer (co-foundr of Games for Health) is providing a tutorial for early arrivals on Monday June 11. Full details are here.

2. We’re pleased to announce designer Jessica Hammer (who worked on Lit2Quit) has agreed to do a free workshop in the late afternoon of June 12 for our Pre-Conference attendees and early arrivals. We’re still working out details for this but it will be from 4pm-6:30pm and will be RSVP only. If you’re interested now please email me.

“The conversation about health often focuses on the wrong human motivations. We tell people to get healthy because of fearful consequences, we turn healthy behavior into a social and moral obligation, and we focus on outcomes instead of processes. All three of these approaches have serious problems when it comes to getting people to change. I’ll explain why, and make the case for the alternative: desire-based (“It’s what I want”), identity-based (“It’s who I am”), and process-based (“It’s what I do”). Next, we’ll dive into collaborative work. I’ll begin by dividing people into groups and giving each group a health behavior problem to work on, such as quitting smoking, medication compliance, or daily exercise.

Groups will be asked to identify sources of desire, describe possible identities, and break down the processes involved in their problem. We’ll spend some time designing systems to support desire, identity and process, and then work to turn those ideas into game mechanics, and games that deliver on the goals we outline. At the end we will all share-back and discuss of what we’ve collectively learned.”

For more on Jessica see here web site.

3. Sensing Tutorials

Didier Combatalade of Thought Technology who spoke last year about biometric sensing technologies is going to provide mini-sessions during breaks, lunch, and other points for people interested in processes for detecting, measuring, and recording phsyiological signals in and from games. This includes a live demonstration and subjects to be covered will include signal detection methods (transducers), digitizing methods, signal processing algorithms, defining goals and giving appropriate feedback, tracking success.

For those of you interested in using these techniques for games, or for research on games Didier is quite the expert.

Didier Combatalade is in charge of biofeedback software development for Thought Technology Ltd. (http://thoughttechnology.com/) Didier has over 20 years’ experience in health science and in the biofeedback area. He regularly participates in many professional seminars and conferences giving presentations and specialized training courses. He is also co-author of a biofeedback introduction manual published by the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback

V. The Art of XVIVO

If you’ve been to a previous Games for Health or seen their work at TEDMED, or online you will know that XVIVO is one of the best 3D art and animation studios focused on biology, health, and medicine. Their film “The Inner Life of the Cell” is amazing.

Michael Astrachan, president and creative director of XVIVO will be with us during the conference and will be presenting and answering questions about their work and the art of rendering health, biology, and medicine in 3D during an open Q&A segment.

For more on XVIVO please see www.xvivo.com

VI. TUESDAY UNCONFERENCE ROOMS

We are also offering using our open rooms during our pre-conference day for a serious games unconference. Small groups of attendees can use the rooms to discuss any topic they wish. To the extent we have one or two small rooms on Wednesday and Thursday free we’ll be offering a similar setup as well.

In 2009, the current Chief Creative Officer of Electronic Arts Rich Hilleman was asked, “What game are you most jealous of?”

His answer?

“Brain Age. I would like to be in a business where my game is prescribed by doctors – like Bayer Aspirin was to my dad after his stroke. This is how you impact the world (and the bank account).”

See Citation Link

That answer has stuck with me for some time. Having a health care provider instruct their patients to play video games to improve their health would be a sign that games have arrived.

A prescription is much more than just an endorsement. It’s the assessment of a need and the placement of a solution in a situated context relevant to the target of the prescription. It’s about why to play them, when to play them, dosage levels, and more. Prescribing a video game isn’t just “go play some DDR.” It’s more like, “DDR three times a week on level 3, for 30 minutes a time, for 20 weeks, to help improve bone density.”

Today we want to pursue a thought exercise inspired by Mr. Hilleman’s 2009 interview. We call this “What’s Your Game Prescription?” It’s your chance to envision a moment in the future, when some health professional writes you or someone you care for a prescription to play a video game to improve a specific component of your health.

Many of us aspire towards a day when health professionals are at ease to integrate games into their everyday recommendations. By thinking about that ideal future now and thinking backwards from it, we are provided with the ability to better identify the right paths, the best targets, and the important work that’s needed to make your game prescription a reality.

So join us in this effort, share your thoughts and help envision this future.

In February 2011 Paul Tarini, senior program officer of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio, presented a talk at the 25th Annual Game Developers Conference. This important talk focused on the changing nature of health and the changing nature of the games for the health field. An adapted form of that speech is presented here in full-length article form and was included in our 2011 Games for Health Program Guide.

With the upcoming conference in June of 2012 we wanted to make sure we’d posted a version up on our site for you to read as the ideas it contains are still very much a big part of what’s in store for this year’s event and other activities the Games for Health Project is undertaking this year and beyond.

Download the PDF Here…

This year at Games for Health 2012 we’re adding small sessions designed to bring together our expert faculty to answer basic questions about building games for health. If you plan to attend you can ask questions on-site. For those who can’t attend you can use the form below to submit your own questions.

If the form below has trouble displaying try this version.

Games for Health 2012 takes place June 12-14 in Boston, MA. The second annual Games for Health Europe Event takes place November 5-6, 2012 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Working together with our friends at Games for Health Europe we want to reward those of you who are going to join us at both events.

Today, we’re offering a special discount of 20% off BOTH conferences if you register for both by June 1, 2012.

Here is how the discount works:

1. Register for Games for Health 2012 with the discount code SUPERPASS12

You will receive 20% off the event.

2. Once registered you have until June 1, 2012 to register for Games for Health Europe.

If you fail to register at the discounted price for Games for Health Europe by June 1, 2012 we will refund your Games for Health 2012 registration and you will need to re-register at the normal price to attend.

IF you cancel your registration later for Games for Health Europe you will be refunded minus the cost of your discount to Games for Health.

If you have any questions contact Beth Bryant (bbryant@dmill.com) for further information.

This last weekend Ben Sawyer from the Games for Health Project went up to Canada to participate in an interesting high-school student game development program run by Algoma University. The program brings in various talents from around the game industry to work with local students to help them explore ideas in game development.

The theme of this weekend was serious games and we chose to inspire them by watching two interesting viral videos put out by heart associations in the U.S. and Britain. You can see those videos here and here. They’re both great and promote hands-only CPR which can save lives.

After showing them the videos we inspired them to work with game development tools and engines to come up with their own games. We’ll show more of this work at our June Games for Health Conference but wanted to show a preview of the “winning” project for the weekend here. It’s a pretty good prototype using the OSU rhythm game engine. Many of the assets were re-skinned by the team who hand-built the beat-map for the song.

We’re hoping the students continue the work and finish off the prototype soon. Given license issues to music and video, we won’t be able to release it but hear’s hoping the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation takes notice of the local student’s work and picks up the project and makes it real.

The program in Canada is called ProtoLaunch and you can find them on Facebook here. Be sure to vote for them as best project here as well.

The Eighth Annual Games for Health Conference is June 12-14, 2012 at the Hyatt Harborside Hotel in Boston, MA.

Our keynotes are announced!

Constance Steinkuehler Squire, senior policy analyst for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will discuss the opportunities for videogames to address national challenges, including those in health, health care, and biotechnology.

Bill Crounse, MD, senior director of worldwide health for Microsoft, will present “Connecting & Kinecting Health and Health Care,” which will explore how Microsoft and its partners are merging its information and game technologies to create global solutions for personal health and professional health care.

Jane McGonigal, New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of SuperBetter Labs, will highlight the design and release of SuperBetter, a game-based social application designed to help people boost personal resilience and lead healthier, longer, and more positive lives.

Jay Walker, curator and chairman of TEDMED, a global community of people who passionately believe that the future of health and medicine is here, will provide the end-of-conference special guest keynote: “Gaming the System”.

Read the full Press Release

Registration is now open!

For complete details visit our 2012 Conference Pages.

What we’re planning on to improve over past events includes the following:

If you’d like to register now for Games for Health you can go directly to registration now.

Ubisoft sent three people including two of the world famous Frag Dolls to Games for Health to demo Just Dance for our attendees – many of whom joined in…

You can find the official Just Dance website on Facebook here.