Mindbloom Partners With Insurance Provider Aetna For Game Promotion

Seattle-based social game developer Mindbloom announced a deal with Aetna to provide the healthcare provider's members with an enhanced version of its Life Game. Launched last July, Life Game is designed to inspire and help players "live healthier, more balanced lives" by presenting them with goals related to health, spirituality, relationships, leisure, lifestyle, finances, creativity, and career in a game-like experience. Players grow and maintain a "Life Tree" meant to represent the life they want to have (branches and leaves representing specific goals). As they reach their goals, their tree grows, and they are rewarded with virtual currency to unlock new features and content. Beginning this fall, Aetna will offer the social game to its members as a way to "[engage] people in achieving personal health and wellness goals." Mindbloom is collaborating with Aetna to make significant enhancements to Life Game and add mobile features. This isn't the first time a health insurance company has experimented with social games -- last November, Humana's internal Health Entertainment team launched a similar title called FamScape that is designed to "motivate families to achieve healthy-living goals". "Considering that Americans are spending over $200 billion a year on healthy living products and services, but the rates of chronic health conditions and obesity continue to rise, the time is right for a new approach to engaging people in achieving better overall health," says Aetna's medical director of health and wellness Kyra Bobinet, MD, MPH. "We think the Mindbloom Life Game will provide a fun, rewarding and effective way for Aetna's members to make lasting improvements in their physical and emotional well-being."