Games About Health

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Games About Health

• How do commercial games represent health?

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Process

• Remember Research 30 years of commercial gaming
  history
• Discuss with other game historians
• Johnny Wilson, Ian Bogost, Noah Falstien
• Present at 2004 Games for Health
• Collect more examples
• Watch market as new games debut

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Why?

• Games for Health must draw upon insight and
  inspiration from commercial games
• Understanding how health is represented in games
  is an important audience issue
• Trying to figure out how health messaging can
  work in commercial game releases

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Health, Media...Games?

• Health is great content for other media
• TV especially
• Doctors are common main characters
• People get ideas for the occupations in health
  from TV Film
• Health shows on radio (Lovelines)
• Games are in general... woeful at health subject
  matter and themes
• Compared to TV we're pitiful

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Types of Games/Findings

• Games with distinct health themes
• Games with interesting health aspects
• Games with notable interface ideas
• Others

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Other Notes

• RPGS show poison, disease, potions, healers.
• Ultima IV allows the player to give blood to show
  sacrifice.
• Many sports games now have injuries.
• Grand Theft Auto has an ambulance, and also has a
  representation of endurance (run more, gain
  stamina).
• Team Fortress, BF1942, and America's Army have
  medic characters who have specific roles.

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Ozzy Drix

• Based on movie
• Basic platformer
• Inside body battling enemies (disease)
• Temperature health

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Microcosm (another Fantastic Voyage Game)
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Theme Hospital
Health Sim with some tongue cheek
Note Score is
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SimHealth

• Markle Foundation Funded
• Maxis/John Hiles
• Agent based modeling
• 1993 Healthcare debate
• Does not run on current systems (

A Democracy and Society Computer Simulation
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Epidemic

• SSI, 1980's
• Guns, Germ Steel sort of setup
• Epidemics are wargames

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Life Death II The Brain
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Robinson's Requiem

• Offbeat
• Lots of healing issues for your character

in addition to the mundane tasks of hunting, you
must deal with diseases that strike inexplicably
and amputated limbs. The game claims to monitor
over 100 variables from your temperature to
malaria and poisoning, but thank god if you know
what levels they are-
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Alter Ego

• be someone else
• Separate skus for male and female
• Dr. Peter Favaro

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Mind Mirror

• Electronic Arts
• Timothy Leary

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AlphaWaves

• Infogrames
• AKA Continuum

Mindwalker Amiga by Bill Williams
You are a physics professor gone mad. Your course
of action? Delve into your Mind, to inspire
"Ideas" by tracing "Paths of Coherent Thought",
with the help of your split ego. Then through
opened-up Tubes, enter your Brain, to retrieve
"Shards of Sanity". Finally, put them back
together in Subconscious
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Laser Surgeon The Microscopic Mission

• Activision
• In this difficult game that could make you go
  blind, you're shrunk to the size of a cell and
  injected into a patient's body (hrm... where have
  we heard that before?) to perform surgeries on
  different body parts. The not-so-intuitive
  controls takes some getting used to (using
  joystick is much better), and the graphics
  (low-res EGA) is really hard to see. Still, it
  turns a (cliche?) concept into hours of gameplay.
  Not as good as the classic Life Death games,
  but isn't bad.

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Click Health

• SNES games
• Debra Lieberman
• Asthma
• Basic sort of side scroller

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Packy Marlon

• Diabetes

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Rex Ronan

• Click Health
• Anti Smoking
• SNES

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Combat Medic

• Legacy Interactive

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ER Game

• Legacy Interactive
• The Sims meets ER
• Youre the resident
• Keep yourself well while keeping others well
• Build Skill Level to heal more patients

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Fable

• Life spans young to old
• Food Health
• Food has caloric value
• Fat foods fatter character

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Tales of Symphonia

• RPG/Adventure for Nintendo GameCube
• Detailed Nutrition System

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GTA San Andreas

• Running getting health back faster
• Choices of food affect weight
• Pizza vs. Salads

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Nutrition

• Vegan Blog debates role of meat in games
• http//community.livejournal.com/vegetarian/279245
  0.html
• But I must say that in Grand Theft Auto San
  Andreas, I got a little pleasure from feeding
  Carl primarily salad meals at the restuarants.
  Salad meals actually gave you a ton of health and
  zero fat which was necessary when I was
  concentrating on building muscle and stamina,
  hehe.
• I agree with what everyone else stated above,
  but I can see how all this meathealth in games
  fits into existing stereotypes. It's programming
  kids that meat is better for you. Would be nice
  if video games would allow certain
  vegetables/tofu or something to equal the
  "health" of meat.

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Lost in Blue

• Konami
• Nintendo DS
• Health is categorized by hunger, thirst,
  stamina, and hit points.
• If any of the first three categories hits zero,
  the character's hit points will begin to drop.
• Passing out due to lack of stamina, to occur.
• Necessary for the player to monitor the health of
  both characters and make sure that they eat and
  drink plenty of food and water and also get
  plenty of rest.

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Fight Night Round 3

• EA Next Gen/PS2
• Great human modeling
• NO Health Stats
• Player must discern health by evaluating the look
  of the boxer
• Cut man aspects

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The Sims

• Hygiene is a key aspect of your sims life and
  social capability
• Lifespan issues in Sims 2
• Children Aging

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Trauma Center Under the Knife

• Atlus Entertainment
• Nintendo DS
• Surgery Sim
• Background of cases provided with patient
  backstory
• Becomes sort of sci-fiish at the end very
  arcade like
• Epidemic breaks out

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Trauma Center Second Opinion

• Nintendo Wii Launch Title
• Uses Wiis unique controller

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BrainAge Big Brain Academy

• Cognitive Exercise Sales Pitch
• Aimed at much older demographic (successfully)
• Tie in initially with Japanese based SME
• Diary Tips

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Viruses in Games

• World of Warcraft
• Corrupted Blood Disease
• In May 2000 many players of The Sims were
  outraged when their game characters died because
  of an infection contracted from a dirty virtual
  guinea pig.

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Health in Games

• Often Fairly Binary
• Dead or Alive
• When you deplete your health, your game is over.
• Health 0-100
• Pick up health pack Healed
• Food Health
• Nutrition via Recipes
• Caloric Values
• Example of pushing decisions/actions a few more
  levels

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Health in Games

• Heath is omnipresent in games, but highly
  abstracted.
• It's often linked to failure you can't get to
  110 health typically (except in Doom).
• Healing is usually about finding objects or
  making a purchase only when you must... but
  rarely do you practice preventative treatment in
  games.

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Health in Games

• Healing is usually about finding objects or
  makeing a purchase only when you must...
• but rarely do you practice preventative
  treatment in games.
• IRONICALLY
• doesn't this seem a lot like healthcare in the
  real world?

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Health in Games

• We often lack emotion for most game characters
  therefore we lack passion and empathy for their
  conditions.

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The Next Opportunity

• Make games offer more decisions about health
• Even a couple other levels of decisions could
  offer lots of rich opportunity
• Tighten the accuracy a bit to improve the
  representation and messaging but dont make the
  game educational
• Nutrition