By Healthymagination Team | Posted May 11 2010
We’re pleased to introduce our new guest blogger, Ben Sawyer. Ben is one of the leading experts on the use of game technologies, talent and design techniques for purposes beyond entertainment. His firm, DigitalMill, specializes in bridging the technical and cultural divides between organizations outside and within the video game development industry. In 2004, Ben founded the Games for Health Project and its annual conference, which supports community, knowledge and business development efforts to use cutting-edge games and technologies to improve health and healthcare.
Can video games make you healthy? It’s a question on the mind of 400 researchers, video game developers and health professionals every year at the Games for Health Conference, which launches its sixth edition in Boston on May 25. The idea behind it is that breakthroughs, big and small, happen when you put people of diverse backgrounds in the room together around a common conversation – in this case health.
To some, games and health don’t necessarily overlap. But for the millions of people playing “exergames” like Wii Fit and EA Sports Active, video games already play a role in improving personal health and well-being. Worldwide sales of exergames now top one billion dollars, but games for exercise are only one of many concepts for improving health that Games for Health tracks. The project has showcased over a dozen different types of games, covering everything from new ways to educate patients and health professionals, to studying epidemics, improving the utility of personal health records, searching for new drugs and the rehabilitation of people from injuries or stroke.
While Games for Health works year-round hosting smaller events, the conference has expanded to three days of activities and just over 400 participants who take in over 75 sessions on subjects across the spectrum. This year’s conference takes place at the epicenter of health and video games, where the creators of games like RockBand, Zoo Tycoon and Bioshock can cross paths with doctors from Massachussets General Hospital and Harvard & Tufts medical schools, along with many other leading research and healthcare companies.
This year’s keynotes include researcher Richard Marks, who led development of Sony’s new Move technology and Chaim Gingold, who helped create Spore for Electronic Arts. And at the end of the day, if just a little sliver of this work can help people stay healthy, heal faster when they are sick or injured and in general maintain a healthier well being, then we will have shown that games can go beyond entertainment, just as many other wonderful forms of media have as well.
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