FEATURED PROJECT
HEALTH in GAMESFaculty: Ian BogostTeam Member(s): Joshua Cuneo First-year Digital Media masters student Joshua Cuneo introduces the Health in Games project. Please briefly explain the project. What is it about? Health in Games is a research endeavor to catalogue past and current trends of health representations in digital games in order to determine new avenues of development and develop a new game prototype along these avenues. This prototype features new ways of exploring health for entertainment or educational value, possibly with the added objective of improving the player`s own health and lifestyle. Who are the team members? I am working under the supervision of Dr. Ian Bogost. What is your role in the project? I am handling much of the actual research and will be primarily engineer behind the prototype's actual technical development. How long have you been working on this project? I have been working on this project since August 2008. Would you describe a typical week for this project? I meet with the professor once a week, where we review our accomplishments and the project's direction. We determine our tasks for the next week, and he and I carry out those tasks on our own time. I don't have scheduled hours otherwise, so I work on the project as it best fits into my schedule. What is the importance of this project? The focus of the project is on the cataloguing effort of representations of physical and mental health and medicine in digital games. Our survey looks at both popular games published over the last 40 years and many obscure titles often overlooked in digital game studies. Any form of digital game is valid, including arcade games, console games, computer games, internet-based games, Flash games, and virtual simulations. Our next focus will be the development of a game prototype that features new ways of exploring health for entertainment or educational value. Eventually, these prototypes may serve as templates to design more sophisticated games with better entertainment and educational value, especially with health education. What are the biggest challenges with this project? At the moment, the biggest challenge is determining the direction we want to go with the prototype, based on our research. Once we have that question answered, the biggest challenge will undoubtedly be developing the prototype and refining it along the way. Why do you like working for this project? I like working for this project because the idea of advancing both the health and gaming industries is interesting and exciting. It helps destroy the bias that playing video games is an inherently unhealthy activity. Dr. Bogost is also an excellent professor. Prepared by Tanla Bilir |
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