Nutrition Game

From VitalWiki

1 News
2 Specification of the Nutrition game
3 Visual design
4 Credits

[edit] News

4/11/2007, Ohio University Outlook, "Virtual food workshops will be held to celebrate minority health month," http://www.ohio.edu/outlook/06-07/April/502n-067.cfm

[edit] Specification of the Nutrition game

[edit] Purpose

This game has been created to compete in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Games for Health Competition. The game has been created entirely in Second Life, an online virtual world. Information about Second Life can be found at http://www.secondlife.com. The game is open to the public and can be played on the Ohio University Sim at 188, 175, 27.

A team from Ohio University consisting of Dr. Chang Liu, Christopher Keesey, and Tessa Cooper created this game. Any question can be directed to cooper.tessa@gmail.com.

[edit] Submission Page

The following link is for the submission of this game to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Games for Health competition. The page contains all information relevant to the game needed for submitting it to be judged. Details about the competition can be found here:

http://www.rwjf.org/newsroom/newsreleasesdetail.jsp?id=10441

[edit] The submission page for the game can be found here

[edit] Events

Two events have been planned featuring the game. The following link will give you more information on the events:

Nutrition Game Events
Presentation Slides From the April 12th Event
Screenshots From the April 12th Event

[edit] 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 in simulated fast food restaurants 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.

[edit] Brief Overview of Single Game

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
Time frame of game is one day
At start of game the player enters personal statistics consisting of height, weight, age, gender, and how many days a week the player exercises. This information is used to calculate how many calories the player should consume in one day.
During game play, the 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"
At the end of the game information is given to the player on how they did based on how close they came to the number of calories they should consume in one day, how much of their diet came from fat, and how much cholesterol the consumed over the course of the day.

[edit] Machinima

There is a short machinima about the Nutrition Game on YouTube. To view it, follow this link:

Nutrition Game Machinima

[edit] Ideas for Future Revisions

These are all ideas that we would like to be able to implement in future revisions

Have the avatar change body shape to reflect health decisions made through the course of the day
Show an animation of an avatar eating the chosen food
Increase time frame of game from one day to a longer time span
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.

[edit] Comments/Suggestions/Running Dialog

Please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions you might have, or respond to anything someone else has written in this space.

All text used in the game can be found here

[edit] Items Currently Being Worked On

Create signs for entrance area of game to let players know what is going on
Finish game instructions

[edit] Milestones for the next 6 weeks (due date for game)

Week of 2-19 - move third restaurant to ground level, finish furnishing both restaurants, test game on new people and create survey to get feedback from testing experience, give player option of using the avatar stats instead of personal stats.
Week of 2-26 - Come up with menus for two new restaurants, create food objects for two new restaurants, get menus set up in those restaurants, start creating teleport maps from one restaurant to another
Week of 3-5 - Work on methods to make game more fun (hopefully using results of survey), start paper work necessary for game submission (team name, objectives, etc.), possibly add new textures to the game for different restaurants and new food objects, work on odds and ends with code (error checking, commenting, make more robust, etc.), finish teleport maps
Week of 3-12 - Continue to work on methods of making game more fun, continue to work on submission form, start writing up game instructions and instructions on HUD use, begin putting up signs surrounding game area that advertise the game, explain the game, and give out game objects, if possible do another round of testing to check functionality and check for any possible bugs
Week of 3-19 - Finish putting up signs and writing up all instructions, put finishing touches on everything, finish up odds and ends, fix bugs if any are found, finish paperwork, finish any items not previously completed
Week of 3-26 - double check everything, and submit!