Lessons Learned Building Games with Health Impact. Bradley Tanner, MD HealthImpact.studio Chapel Hill, NC

Transcription

1 Lessons Learned Building Games with Health Impact Bradley Tanner, MD HealthImpact.studio Chapel Hill, NC

2 Create a Winning Strategy Recognize the unique challenges associated with creating a game that seeks to have impact Identify strategies to avoid time and dollar wasting efforts and the win game creation game

3 Bradley Tanner, MD, ME Physician by Training Psychiatry and Obesity Medicine Studio Head, HealthImpact.studio 20 years experience in NIH funding and running a small business Specialty: Skills development and behavior change Online training -> simulations -> games

4 HealthImpact.Studio Goal: Create games that can impact health. Strategy: Start from an interesting game concept and add health impact on top. Technology: Immersive Headset-based VR and 3D Game Engine: Unity HealthImpact Focus: Obesity and Quality Food

5 Games and Intended Impact Food Fight! Kids practice rejecting (throwing) unhealthy food and accepting healthy food in a variety of environments (Cafeteria, Food Court). Grocery Hunt: Young adults practice selecting healthy foods to add to their pantry/fridge. Hunger Battle/Inside the Brain: The role of brain in hunger and satiety. Future: Cooking skills, meal preparation, hosting, and presentation. Exercise/Fitness

6 Food Fight Focus: Food Acceptance & Rejection

7 The Asset Store: Friend or Foe? Incredibly inexpensive for what you get Functionality (code) and image assets Some with motion High quality and usable Easy and quick to integrate Difficult to further customize Not (exactly) what you wanted Some graphics are too complicated and may tax the power of the computer.

8 Custom Assets Tuned to the game context and purpose Higher quality Problems Graphic artists care a lot about how good it looks Expensive ($$) and time consuming Defining done is hard Updated graphics need to be reintegrated

9 Environments Custom Made 3D Environments

10 Asset Challenges Assets from the store are inexpensive, simple and great for prototyping to show to customers and other stakeholders or an early demo But they aren t enough Assets vary widely in their quality, ability to scale and ability to synchronize with each other. Custom assets are far more expensive to produce Graphic assets can quickly become a labor of love and an exercise in perfection

11 Game Mechanics Watch people play Don t explain Ask questions! Are they struggling? Are they confused? Why does it do that? Who wanted this? Does it make sense?

12 Cool Functionality A way to ignore bad mechanics (video)

13 Tutorials Explaining How to Play the Game

14 Tutorials and Gameplay An easy solution just tell them what to do Problems Varying Game Skills Varying VR Skills Varying Controller Skills Not fun Poor First Impression Time Consuming to Create If you have to explain it, it s too hard!

15 Grocery Hunt Grocery Shopping Skills for Young Adults

16 Grocery Hunt Problems More Asset Lessons cheap and easy to implement Not quite right for the purpose. It s really a convenience store not a grocery store No vegetables First player did not aim correctly Foods varied in size and quality Strange Proportions Tutorial confusing purpose

17 Gameplay Functionality with impact is harder to integrate than cool functionality need strict control

18 Inside the Brain Exploring Neuroanatomy and Neuroactivity

19 Where is the Game? Cool graphics can seem good enough Beware the desire to move back to didactic mode

20 Complicated Graphics Implementation is time consuming Increased communication effort. Developers: It s hard to understand limitations of graphics (e.g., transparency) Artists need to work with Unity and understand code. Do you understand graphics?

21 Graphics vs. Code Where is the intelligence?

22 BurntOut Human Interaction and Assessing Stress

23 Stunning Graphics VERY expensive and time consuming

24 People and 3D Are they in Sync?

25 Adding in Humans Photorealistic backgrounds create an immersive experience Creating 3D Photorealistic people is more challenging Emotions in 3D people -> even more complicated 3D people that move and express changing emotions is the stuff that movies are made of.

26 Testing Internal testing is key but coworkers are often unwilling to bring up problems Include stakeholder input early and often Seek input from a wide range of players Seek a variety of skill, age, technical background, and game orientation

27 Teamwork Stay Agile or stick to a plan? Varying skills need to work in concert Coordinate the project both the technology and the people A supportive team is good But can lead to an echo chamber and sugar coating

28 Staying on Track Being Agile demands regular sprints, meetings, and tight control over the project Schedule regular release dates for accountability and to ensure meaningful progress.

29 Lessons Use Asset store for prototyping Custom assets are essential but can take the project off track in terms of time and $$$ Tutorials often attempt to hide a bad game Mechanics must be relevant and functional Human elements are a challenge Be Agile AND highly involved Get input and establish accountability points

30 Have Fun! Don t get bogged down with frustrations Remember why you came up with this crazy idea Take a break and play your game!