Archimage On Helping Stem Diabetes With Nanoswarm- Jason Dobson
When the topic of serious games is brought up, oftentimes the conversation turns to grand schemes and wide sweeping goals, from achieving peace in a war-torn country to stemming the tide of world hunger. However, some games, such as Archimage's Nanoswarm: Invasion from Inner Space, prefer to look within, and offer insight into how to improve an individual's life through healthy eating and exercise. That said, the game's goals do seem to have a more epic goal as well, with Archimage drawing attention to the growing concern surrounding childhood obesity and its link to type 2 diabetes.
Unlike type 1 diabetes, which is a result of mostly genetic factors, type 2 diabetes is primarily associated with diet and physical activity behavior. Diabetes is already the country’s leading cause of new blindness and kidney failure, and is also the nation’s sixth leading cause of death.
Archimage, which is also working on another serious game titled Escape from Diab, has a long history of working on projects both within and outside of game development. Recently we had a chance to speak with Archimage's Victoria Thompson, DrPH regarding the company, as well as Nanoswarm itself, in order to get a better idea of what the game is all about, and what Archimage hopes to achieve with it once it's released.
Hello, and thanks for taking the time to speak with us today about Nanoswarm. What other game development projects have you worked on? How has Nanoswarm compared to these other efforts?
We’ve worked with Baylor College of Medicine for a number of years developing video games as instruments for diet and physical activity behavior change among children and teenagers. Most of these efforts had been web games. Nanoswarm and Diab are full-featured video games that run locally on players’ computers. Like Doom, Half-Life and other AAA-quality retail games, there’s much more opportunity to deliver rich, immersive first-person adventures.
What prompted the development of Nanoswarm?
The worldwide increase in childhood obesity has been related to an increasing incidence of type 2 diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has said evidence shows 1/3 of Americans born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime. Diabetes is the leading cause of new blindness in the US and a leading cause of death. The good news is, a vast majority of diabetes cases are easily prevented by healthy diet and exercise.
A population where 1 in 3 Americans are diabetic will create huge societal and economic burdens. The National Institutes of Health are looking for ways to stem the tide, including funding projects to change the diet and exercise habits of kids. Traditionally, school-based interventions have been used to reach large numbers of children. These interventions, however, have had limited success.
Though still in its infancy, computer-based interventions, including video games, have proven effective in promoting behavior change. This may be due to the ability of video games to challenge players to more effectively use information learned during gameplay and incorporate “virtual experiences” into their daily lives.
Do you see Nanoswarm as filling a currently empty void within the serious games space?
There are several games for health that exist, even in the area of diabetes. While most current diabetes-related games target disease treatment and management, Nanoswarm is about disease prevention.
What was and continues to be Archimage's goal with regarding to Nanoswarm?
Our goal is creating fun and immersive games that achieve desired behavior modification. Of course, that’s much easier said than done. Creating a seamless line from engaging game play to actual behavior change is challenging, to say the least.
Specific to Nanoswarm, we want players to: (1) recognize the role that diet and physical activity play in the development obesity and, (2) adopt healthy diet and exercise behaviors -- specifically, increasing their intake of fruit and vegetables and increasing physical activity.
You mentioned 'fun'. How does Nanoswarm marry the concept of being a fun game with education and awareness?
Kids, (actually, video game players of any age) more than anything else want to have fun. We’re trying to remain very faithful to the implicit bargain we’re making with players: “this is a game, and playing this game will be fun.” It would be easy to make a “game” that overtly delivers didactic knowledge through heavy-handed lecturing and tests.
This, however, would be better defined as courseware, not a video game. Our challenge, and the challenge facing any serious game developer, is figuring out how gameplay interactive storytelling can stealthily change people’s lives.
How has the collaboration between Archimage and experts at the Children’s Nutrition Research Center of Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine helped this project?
We are game developers. Our expertise is story development, game design, art production and programming. Our colleagues at the Baylor College of Medicine are experts in behavioral nutrition and physical activity. They have identified key factors that have proven to influence behavior, particularly childhood diet and physical activity behaviors. Their decades of experience developing interventions that incorporate these influences into strategies that promote behavior change are central components of our games. It’s an interesting interplay and we have both learned a lot from each other.
We have just completed prototype testing of two levels for each game. We are now analyzing the data and will soon be making changes to gameplay as indicated by the test results.
Our prototype testing is for “likeability.” We’re trying to determine if kids enjoy the game? Are they interested in the story, characters, and settings enough to go through all nine levels? Are the activities and game mechanics understandable?
Do you know exactly when you plan to complete this test?
Diab testing completed about a month ago. Nanoswarm prototype testing completes this week.
Assuming that development on Nanoswarm has been a positive experience for Archimage, does the company predict further development efforts within the serious games space?
Absolutely! We’re having too much fun ourselves to stop now. Serious video games is an emerging market and genre. We are honored to be involved in such worthwhile endeavors and we welcome collaborations with other institutions/organization/investigators interested in developing games for the greater good.
Thank you for your time. Is there anything you would like to add?
Some might question the use of passive activity (like playing video games) to increase physical activity and exercise. It seems like a contradiction in terms. Too much playing of video games (or too much watching TV) is frequently cited as a cause of today’s increased childhood obesity rates.
On the other hand, parents telling children not to do homework at night and instead go outside and play is something we rarely hear. Reading and studying are also passive activities but are not considered unhealthy. We’ve purposely designed our games to be enjoyable but also somewhat time limited.
We think playing video games that last 40 or 60 hours is probably not a good idea. But, playing a video game for15 or 20 hours could be time well spent if the game truly changes a player’s life for the better.
