Gamers' Strokes To Move The World
I certainly hope you’re having a pleasant weekend, gays and gamers, or at least sleeping off last night’s assault on your liver. Don’t ever forget to take care of yourselves, gentle readers. It is with that benevolent thought in my beatific, nigh-unto-saintly mind that I turn to a more thoughtful topic: Games that help people. Our fearless leader made this post last week about the more realistic Trauma Center: Second Opinion, which will be a launch title for the Wii. And just yesterday Gamasutra mentioned an actual real-world incarnation of Trauma Center by developer Archimage, called Nanoswarm: Invasion from Inner Space, which will be used in a clinical setting for no less ambitious a purpose than combating diabetes. The idea of so-called Serious Games has been knocking around for many years (Ender, anyone?), but hasn’t produced a whole lot of pragmatic content. Nanoswarm, however, wants to change that; it “blends sci-fi action and adventure with evidence-based behavior modification theories,” and aims to lower rates of type II diabetes, which is “primarily associated with diet and physical activity behavior [and is] the country’s leading cause of new blindness and kidney failure.” Yikes. It sounds like a lot to take on with a gamepad, but it’s nice to see pixels being used for good instead of pure profit. Check out the whole story plus interview at Gamasutra’s sister site, Serious Games Source.
tiny dancer
Posted to Video Games on 12 August 2006
Other stuff like this: diabetes, nanoswarm, serious games
