Interview: Gaming and Health with Ian Bogost

We as experts are supposed to oversimplify things. Sound bytes, inches on Newspaper, two minute YouTube video, the bulleted blog post, and the 160 character txt msg. Counter to this is the video game. Full immersion into a very complex world.

Animal Crossing, Nintendo game for 3+ Start with nothing, navigate the world get a job, get a mortgage, real time clock. Ian and his 5 yr old played a lot over a year. His son came to him at one point totally stressed about how much stuff his character had accumulated and how he was stretched on his credit.

Persuasive Games:
Work through Modeling, role play, a medium, and examples

Procedural Rhetoric: The art of using processes persuasively

Process the logic by which things operate in the world

Rhetoric: making claims

Make and experience claims about how things are made. Leads to role play, the act of simulating an experience, constrained by rules. The power being the way to generate empathy, living in someone else s shoes as well as complete immersion allowed by the genre. Finally Expertise being achievable.

Examples of use of games outside of typical stuff: Corporate training, exercise, relaxation, health, politics, pornography, religious discipline...

Places you might take games...
Fatworld: PBS produced game to bring about health thinking. Birth through death. Goals can change "I want to see how fast I can die from what I eat" "I want to see how long I can live"

They did a game based upon Kennedy immigration plan. As they were reading about the topic the decided a game would be useful. They included scenarios from the legislation itself and modeled how it would work (obviously thinking it through further than the legislators)

Connecting social media to video games:
Facebook has a platform on which third parties can build applications. Some people are making games to fit there and use the social data to alter the game. Parking Wars. Earn money by parking your car on other people's streets. If you park illegally, you can be ticketed and the person who owns the street gets your money. It is interesting from the perspective of simulating something from the world. Playing with your friends, you learn how they live their lives, what their values are, by the way they play. "I know bob is working on deadline, therefore he's not paying attention, so I'll game him"

Hope labs made a game about having cancer for children to help them prepare what they will undergo when the take on a disease. They have shown improved self efficacy and improved health outcomes via improved compliance rates. Inputs: confidence of the child to face it and compliance with the therapy.

Nancy asks about whether you could teach CPR with a video game. Since much of the exercise is tactile, perhaps that would be complicated, but if you could teach emergency response. Somebody fell down and isn't breathing, react now!

Through role playing, you can get people to think through things...