Why Games Matter

Posted by Derek Yu Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:36:00 GMT

Fat and Sassy

Changemakers is an initiative set up by Ashoka, an international network of “social entrepreneurs,” and one of the projects they’re working on is an online community that holds competitions to “surface the best social solutions, and then collaborates to refine, enrich, and implement those solutions.”

Recently, they held a competition called “Why Games Matter: A Prescription for Improving Health and Health Care,” which, unfortunately, is practically over (just got wind of it recently). But you can still check out the 14 finalists and 74 total entries. The winners will be announced tomorrow.

All competition finalists will win the opportunity to go to Baltimore, Maryland, in May 2008, to present their work at the Changemakers Change Summit held in conjunction with the RWJF-sponsored Games for Health Conference. Competition winners will receive a cash prize.

The finalists are pretty various, and include the previously covered Ayiti: The Cost of Life, and Persuasive Games’s Fatworld (depicted above in all its childboob glory). There’s also a series of mobile games to bring AIDS/HIV awareness to cellphone users in India. (As well as a massively multiplayer online Bollywood-themed dancing game WTF?)

I’m always interested in hearing about the application of games to areas other than entertainment! These kinds of initiatives warm my jaded game-maker’s heart. It still seems like there’s a lot of growing to do, however, before we start seeing some truly compelling “social games.”

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Comments

  1. Exoduster said about 2 hours later:

    When is Fatworld coming out, anyway? I heard about it a while ago, and the site says early Fall, but it’s bordering on late Fall.

  2. Skyleak said about 5 hours later:

    I would like to pass a law that parents that get their kids fat to the point of unhealthy degree should be held accountable of child abuse.

  3. Alex Waterston said about 14 hours later:

    Can you imagine massively multiplayer dance dance revolution? It’d be monstrously awesome.

  4. Patrick said about 16 hours later:

    Derek, you may be interested to know I designed the core interface for a Bollywood-themed dancing MMO, but not that one…

  5. FireSword said about 17 hours later:

    Shake, shake shake…

    Shake shake shake..

  6. FireSword said about 17 hours later:

    Sorry forgot to post this in the previous comment.. lol

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT4inJLr-ks (get down)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuI2wdcoxrw (shake)

  7. rinkuhero said about 18 hours later:

    I actually get the Ashoka newsletter, so I’m familiar with them, they’re a great group.

    If I were to have made a game for that contest I probably would have made one about the evils of the FDA and how high fructose corn syrup and other industrial waste products are destroying our health by pretending to be food :(

  8. Susan Promislo said 6 days later:

    Hey - thanks so much for the post on the Why Games Matter competition that we co-sponsored with Changemakers. You might also want to know that RWJF just announced an $8.25 million grant to create a new national program, Health Games Research, and continue the work of Games for Health. The new research program will look at specific design elements of health-related games and what about them makes a difference in people’s health behaviors and outcomes. More info. is available on our blog at http://rwjfblogs.typepad.com/pioneer/2007/11/announcing-heal.html.

    >

    Thanks! Susan Promislo, Communications Officer Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

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