Games About Health

How do commercial games represent health?

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

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

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

Types of Games/Findings

Games with distinct health themes Games with interesting health aspects Games with notable interface ideas “Others”

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.

Ozzy & Drix

Based on movie Basic platformer Inside body battling

enemies (disease) Temperature = health

Microcosm (another Fantastic Voyage Game)

Theme HospitalHealth Sim with some tongue & cheek

Note: Score is $$$$$$

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”

Epidemic

SSI, 1980's Guns, Germ & Steel

sort of setup Epidemics are

wargames

Life & Death II: The Brain

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-

Alter Ego

“be someone else” Separate skus for male

and female Dr. Peter Favaro

Mind Mirror

Electronic Arts Timothy Leary

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

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.

Click Health

SNES games Debra Lieberman Asthma Basic sort of side

scroller

Packy & Marlon

Diabetes

Rex Ronan

Click Health Anti Smoking SNES

Combat Medic

Legacy Interactive

ER Game

Legacy Interactive The Sims meets ER

You’re the resident Keep yourself well while

keeping others well Build Skill Level to heal

more patients

Fable

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

character

Tales of Symphonia

RPG/Adventure for Nintendo GameCube Detailed Nutrition System

GTA San Andreas

Running = getting health back faster

Choices of food affect weight

Pizza vs. Salads

Nutrition

Vegan Blog debates role of meat in games… http://community.livejournal.com/vegetarian/

2792450.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 meat=health 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. “

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.

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…

The Sims

Hygiene is a key aspect of your sims life and social capability

Lifespan issues in Sims 2 Children & Aging

Trauma Center: Under the Knife

Atlus Entertainment Nintendo DS Surgery Sim Background of cases

provided with patient backstory

Becomes sort of sci-fi’ish at the end – very arcade like

Epidemic breaks out

Trauma Center: Second Opinion

Nintendo Wii Launch Title

Uses Wii’s unique controller

BrainAge & Big Brain Academy

Cognitive Exercise Sales Pitch

Aimed at much older demographic (successfully)

Tie in initially with Japanese based SME

Diary & Tips

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.

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

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.

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?

Health in Games

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

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 don’t make the game “educational” Nutrition