Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded. This week, Ian Bogost and Gonzalo Frasca decided to close their seven year old serious games blog, Water Cooler Games.  In a nutshell, they believe that the idea of games for more than entertainment is no longer novel.  The blog sphere on this topic...

Junior game designer challenges the term. Each week Gamasutra features an article from their member blogs.  Once in a while a member blog will write something on serious games or health games that really hits home.  This week’s Standout Member Blog is Raymond Ortgiesen’s Blog, views from...

Adam Bishop’s feature post last week for the Gamasutra blog entitled Things Games “Must” Be takes an interesting stance on the conventional wisdom that video games should be fun, non-political, and interactive.  Adam basically says “Let’s not pigeon-hole games.” ...

Orange, a European operator, recently organized a Serious Game development contest called Whosegame that ended on March 31st.  The hosts of this contest created an on-line platform allowing users to publish and share their completed games or assets used for the game they had designed. The devil is...

France is a very paradoxical country.  Recognized for its rich and highly caloric foods, is a great paradox that France has a low prevalence of cardiovascular diseases. It is interesting to study the game market, especially health games, where the existing French health system is often considered by...

Healthcare gaming making medical history. The discipline and art of medicine has made a swinging 180 in the past few decades.  What used to be a patriarchy/matriarchy of “I am the medical professional, just do what I say” is now an Internet fueled “I am the patient, I’ve researched my options,...

A word from the editor. We are honored to present our first guest contributor today, Dr. John La Puma, MD.  He is going to share some of his insight on the world of cooking games for weight loss.  A big thanks to Dr. La Puma for this article.  -Melanie L. The top four. When Dr. Mike Roizen and I taught...

Should the food pyramid really be a food pie? We’re in the process of creating a health game about the food pyramid at the Playnomous office.  And it hasn’t been easy.  In my opinion, from a graphical standpoint, the latest edition of the USDA food pyramid (or MyPyramid) is nonsensical. ...

Part 8 of 8. I cannot believe we are to part eight of eight in our series!  It’s been quite a journey, but here is the last piece of the puzzle.  Great Game Tenet #8: a great health game needs to be intelligently designed. Designed to do amazing things. This is an excellent tenet to wrap things...

Sounds good to me. Continuing on with our series, today’s great game must is music to my ears.  You guessed it, Great Game Tenet #7: a great health game has great sound.  This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill sound effects.  Sound includes the sfxs, music, and voices.  All are crucial. Sounds...