Richard Buday, FAIA

Richard Buday, FAIA

Serious Games

27 years

50 Awards

27 years

50 Awards

Websites

Architecture

Interiors

Graphics

Animation

Television commercials

Videogames

RICE UNIVERSITYCenter for Technology in Teaching and Learning

NIDDK NATIONAL INSTITUTE OFDIABETES AND DIGESTIVEAND KIDNEY DISEASES

27 years

1973

1973

Atari

2011

$12 billion / yearVideogame industry

VideogamesRPG

FPS

MMOG

ARG

ETC

Serious Videogames

Entertain +

Teach

Train

Change

Serious VideogamesPacky and Marlon - Type 1 Diabetes Maintenance

1995 SNE Nintendo

Serious VideogamesWii

Nintendo

Serious VideogamesWii Fit - Disease Prevention

Nintendo

Serious VideogamesBrain Age - Disease Prevention

Sony

Serious VideogamesDance Dance Revolution - Health promotion

Konami

Serious VideogamesDance Dance Revolution - Exergame

Konami

Serious Videogames

Rock Star Games

Bully - Social behavior change game

Serious VideogamesTactical Iraqi - Troop training software stresses interaction, not fighting

Epic Games

Serious VideogamesAmerica’s Army - Recruitment

United States Army

Serious VideogamesAmerica’s Army - Training?

United States Army

Serious VideogamesPulse!! - A training tool for health care workers

BreakAway Games, Texas A&M-Corpus Cristi

Serious VideogamesRe-Mission - A videogame for young people with cancer

Hope Labs

Serious VideogamesRe-Mission - A videogame for young people with cancer

Hope Labs

Serious VideogamesAmazing Food Detective - Nutrition Education

Kaiser Permanente

Serious VideogamesFatworld - Nutrition Education / Social Change

Persuasive Games

Obesity is the leading cause of preventable death, exceeding tobacco.

66% of Americans are overweight or obese.

Including children.

Combating childhood obesity...

...is now a national priority.

Combating childhood obesity...

“Obesity is estimated to cause 112,000 deaths per year in the United States…”

“… one-third of all children born in the year 2000 are expected to develop diabetes during their lifetime.”

The current generation may even be on track to have a shorter lifespan than their parents.

Childhood obesity is estimated at $3 billion per year in direct medical costs.

Healthcare

OBESITY | VOLUME 16 NUMBER 8 | AUGUST 2008 1809

nature publishing group ARTICLESBEHAVIOR AND PSYCHOLOGY

Overweight Is Associated With Decreased Cognitive Functioning Among School-age Children and AdolescentsYanfeng Li1, Qi Dai2, James C. Jackson3–5 and Jian Zhang1,6

Objective: Childhood overweight and obesity have increased substantially in the past two decades, raising concerns about their psychosocial and cognitive consequences. We examined the associations between academic performance (AP), cognitive functioning (CF), and increased BMI in a nationally representative sample of children.Methods and Procedures: Participants were 2,519 children aged 8–16 years, who completed a brief neuropsychological battery and measures of height and weight as a part of the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a cross-sectional survey conducted between 1988 and 1994. Z-scores were calculated for each neuropsychological test, and poor performance was defined as z-score <2.Results: The association between BMI and AP was not significant after adjusting for parental/familial characteristics. However, the associations between CF remained significant after adjusting for parental/familial characteristic, sports participation, physical activity, hours spent watching TV, psychosocial development, blood pressure, and serum lipid profile. Z-scores on block design (a measure of visuospatial organization and general mental ability) among overweight children and children at risk of overweight were below those of normal-weight children by 0.22 (s.e. = 0.16) and 0.10 (s.e. = 0.10) unit, respectively (P for trend <0.05). The odds of poor performance on block design were 1.97 (95% confidence interval: 1.01–3.83) and 2.80 (1.16–6.75), respectively, among children at risk or overweight compared to normal-weight peers.Discussion: Increased body weight is independently associated with decreased visuospatial organization and general mental ability among children. Future research is needed to determine the nature, persistence, and functional significance of this association.

Obesity (2008) 16, 1809–1815. doi:10.1038/oby.2008.296

INTRODUCTION�e prevalence and severity of overweight is increasing dra-matically in children and adolescents (1). �e short- and long-term associations between overweight and a range of adverse health-related outcomes are well established and raise the level of importance for understanding overweight as a major public health concern for children and adolescents. Few studies have been speci�cally designed and conducted to examine the asso-ciation between overweight and cognitive functioning (CF), possibly because of the general assumption that overweight or obesity per se is not a primary risk factor for poor cognitive performance, but merely predisposes or exacerbates other risk factors for cardiovascular diseases (2). Limited number of stud-ies have provided some evidence that increased body weight status per se is associated with lowered CF in men (2,3). It is

less clear whether these �ndings hold true for children because of inconsistent conclusion from previous studies. Li observed that among Chinese elementary school children, severely obese children had signi�cantly lower intelligence quotient than the controls (4). Mo-suwan et al. found that an association between overweight status and poor school performance existed among �ai children from grades 7 to 9 but not 3 to 6 (ref. 5). However, Datar et al. concluded that among American kindergartners, signi�cant di�erences in test scores by overweight status were explained by parental education and home environment rather than overweight status per se (6). �ese inconsistent �ndings may be related to the biosocial complexities of childhood over-weight, academic performance (AP), and CF. Parental factors, such as the provision of a stimulating home environment, play critical roles in the development of overweight, less satisfactory

1Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, the Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, South Carolina, USA; 2Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center, Institute for Medicine and Public Health, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Vanderbilt School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA; 3Clinical Research Center for Excellence, VA Tennessee Valley Health Care System, Nashville, Tennessee, USA; 4Division of Allergy, Pulmonary, and Critical Care Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA; 5Department of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA; 6Division of Health and Family Studies, Institute for Families in Society, University of South Carolina, South Carolina, USA. Correspondence: Jian Zhang (JZHANG4@cdc.gov)

Received 27 February 2007; accepted 22 September 2007; published online 12 June 2008. doi:10.1038/oby.2008.296

“Overweight is associated with decreased cognitive functioning among school-age children and adolescents”

HealthcareSchools

Academic achievement is the basis of school funding.

Billions have been spent trying improve children's diet and exercise behavior.

HealthcareSchools

Nothing has worked.

Healthcare & education as entertainment.

Intellectual property portfolio

$22 million

Proving clinically effective.

Roleplaying Video Games

Animated Feature Films

Casual Web Games

Children’s Websites

Family Websites

iPhone / iPad Apps

eBooks

UIWindow 768 x 1024

UIWindow 768 x 1024

Books & Graphic Novels

Review and Special Articles

Playing for RealVideo Games and Stories for Health-Related Behavior ChangeTom Baranowski, PhD, Richard Buday, FAIA, Debbe I. Thompson, PhD, Janice Baranowski, MPH

Background: Video games provide extensive player involvement for large numbers of children andadults, and thereby provide a channel for delivering health behavior change experiencesand messages in an engaging and entertaining format.

Method: Twenty-seven articles were identified on 25 video games that promoted health-relatedbehavior change through December 2006.

Results: Most of the articles demonstrated positive health-related changes from playing thevideo games. Variability in what was reported about the games and measures employedprecluded systematically relating characteristics of the games to outcomes. Manyof these games merged the immersive, attention-maintaining properties of storiesand fantasy, the engaging properties of interactivity, and behavior-change technology(e.g., tailored messages, goal setting). Stories in video games allow for modeling,vicarious identifying experiences, and learning a story’s “moral,” among other changepossibilities.

Conclusions: Research is needed on the optimal use of game-based stories, fantasy, interactivity, andbehavior change technology in promoting health-related behavior change.(Am J Prev Med 2008;34(1):74–82) © 2008 American Journal of Preventive Medicine

Background

Usual school health curricular and other behavior-change interventions targeted at children havehad limited effectiveness.1,2 New channels are

needed to reach children that offer promise of promot-ing substantial health-related behavior changes. Onesuch new channel is the video game, since manychildren spend numerous hours playing them.3 Usingvideo games to promote behavior change could capi-talize on the children’s pre-existing attention to andenjoyment of them. No review has appeared of health-related behavior-change video games. A common com-ponent of games is “story.”4 For those not familiar withgames and stories, a simple glossary of terms appears inTable 1. This paper emphasizes the use of theory toenhance the possibilities for behavior change in thedesign and creation of stories and video games. Thefocus is on behavior change, because creating knowl-edge structures, while laudable in educational venues,is not sufficient to induce behavior change.5

What is a game? Children and adults have playedgames since prior to written history,6 suggesting thatplaying games meets enduring psychological needs.7 Agame is a physical or mental contest with a goal orobjective, played according to a framework, or rules,that determines what a player can and cannot do insidea game world.8 A video game is any game played on adigital device and encompasses a wide range of gamesplayed at arcades, over the Internet on personal com-puters, or on dedicated game consoles (e.g., NintendoGameCube, Sony PlayStation, or Microsoft Xbox) orhandheld units (e.g., Nintendo Game Boy, Sony PSP).Games are played primarily for entertainment or

“fun,”9 but what constitutes “fun” is not well under-stood. Typical measures of enjoyment (or fun) haveused synonyms of fun (e.g., enjoy, like, interested,pleasurable, energizing),10 which do not elucidate theconcept. In one study, statements of what constitutedfun while being physically active (e.g., playing withfriends, talking with friends, doing something daring,being really good at something) did not lead to sepa-rate factors in a principal components analysis (R. Jago,personal communication). In another study, six factorsof fun in action video games included: novelty andpowerfulness, appealing presentation, interactivity,challenging, sense of control, and rewarding.11 Otheraspects of a game that children likely find enjoyable arefantasy (e.g., imaginary characters, virtual worlds)12

and interactivity.13 Games satisfy the player’s needs for

From the U.S. Department of Agriculture/ARS Children’s NutritionResearch Center, Baylor College of Medicine (T. Baranowski,Thompson, J. Baranowski); and Archimage, Inc. (Buday), Houston,TexasAddress correspondence and reprint requests to: Tom Baranowski,

PhD, Professor of Pediatrics (Behavioral Nutrition & Physical Activ-ity), Children’s Nutrition Research Center, Department of Pediatrics,Baylor College of Medicine, 1100 Bates Street, Room 2038, HoustonTX 77030-2600. E-mail: tbaranow@bcm.tmc.edu.

74 Am J Prev Med 2008;34(1) 0749-3797/08/$–see front matter© 2008 American Journal of Preventive Medicine • Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2007.09.027

14 peer-reviewed journal articles

25 invited lectures at medical/scientific symposia

6 television reports

NIDDK NATIONAL INSTITUTE OFDIABETES AND DIGESTIVEAND KIDNEY DISEASES

NIDDK NATIONAL INSTITUTE OFDIABETES AND DIGESTIVEAND KIDNEY DISEASES

Increased fruit & vegetable consumptionby a full serving a day

Intellectual property portfolio

$22 million

SocialCognitiveTheory

Self-determination Theory

Inoculation Theory

Tailoring Theory

ImplementationIntention Theory

Social Problem Solving Theory

SocialCognitiveTheory

Self-determination Theory

Inoculation Theory

Tailoring Theory

ImplementationIntention Theory

Social Problem Solving Theory

0

175

350

525

700

May-08 May-08 Jun-08 Jul-08 Aug-08 Sep-08 Oct-08 Nov-08 Dec-08 Jan-09 Dec-09 Jan-10 Feb-10 Mar-10 Apr-10

1/2 million unique visitors per year148 countries

Google ranked #1

Referring Websites

2%

15%

8%

11% 65%

Schools Other Health Media Government

Family Entertainment

Education Healthcare

Family School Health

Subscription platforms

2011

$12 billion / yearVideogame industry

2011

$7 billion / yearEdutainment market

2011

Health care industry17% GNP

Career?

• No proven marketplace yet

Skills

• Videogame enthusiast

• Programmer (C, ActionScript, Coldfusion, PHP, Javascript)

• 2d fine and computer arts

• 3d modeling and animation

• Film and audio production

Education

• 2-year+ CG degree programs

• Cross-overs & self-taught

• 4-year+ art or IT degree programs

• Game development graduate programs

Richard Buday, FAIA President

RBuday@Playnormous.com713.523.3425