Health Education Projects

Nutrition Game in Second Life

Goals

The overall focus of the game is to emphasize the impact fast food has on health. This is done by allowing players to experiment with different eating styles to learn the health impacts in both a short and long term context. The goal for an individual player is to make healthy choices that will result in a high score for the game and a positive effect on health.

Brief Overview of Single Game

• Time frame of game is one day
• Player creates three meal during the course of the day from a selection of food items available based on the health content of the items. A player can browse through available food items to view nutritional content before selecting a food to "eat".
• The game ends after three meals have been created and "consumed"
• An overall score reflecting the decisions made through the day is given, along with data illustrating the health effects of continuing this style of eating over a longer period of time

Details of Game Play

• Upon beginning the game, each player will give certain statistics about themselves to be used by calorie intake calculator to give a personalized caloric budget for the game.
• A meal will consist of three items: main dish, side dish, and drink. An example meal could be a burger, fries, and a coke. The player can choose to eat a food in each category or not.
• Each player will wear a HUD that will keep track of health statistics throughout the day. The items that will be displayed and recorded by the HUD are: caloric budget, fat content, cholesterol content
• After one day has been completed and the game ends, total statistics for the day will be shown and compared to desired statistics. Statistics will be given illstrating the health effects of continuing this type of eating for a one month and one year. Possible statistics that could be given are weight gain, energy levels, cholesterol build up, effects on heart, etc., but this depends on further research.
• A total score will also be given at the end of the game which reflects all of the decisions the player made over the course of the day. This will give players a way to directly compare different runs of the game. The score will be out of 100 possible points.

Optional Implementation Details

• Have the avatar change body shape to reflect health desicions made through the course of the day

Ideas for Future Revisions

• Increase time from of game from one day to one month. A player could design three meals, eat those three meals everyday for a week, and then see how their health has been affected. They could then choose another three meals for the next week, etc, for a total of four weeks (approximately one month). It would then be possible to attempt to make the user's avatar's body change from week to week to reflect the choices made.
• Create more versions of the game which reflect the health impact that different ethnic foods have
• Record more information about the food consumed for use in calculating health effects and score, for instance protein, calcium, vitamins, etc.
• Have the HUD also record certain statistics about that avatars current state based on the health content of the food being consumed, for instance energy level