University of Baltimore, Games For Health To Host Health Game Jam

The University of Baltimore and the Games for Health Project will host the Health Game Jam, a development session challenging teams to rapidly prototype games that educate players about improving their health, on October 18th. Designers, programmers, and artists work together round-the-clock to create small and playable health-aware games in short amounts of time. Competitors then showcase their work, which will be critiqued and judged by a panel of game developers and educators. Students in University of Baltimore's game development program, led by Stuart Moulthrop and Kathleen Harmeyer, will form the core of groups expected to participate. Once participants are gathered, the Games for Health Project will reveal a simple challenge and set of goals for games to be developed over the course of a weekend. Beginning Friday evening, teams will incubate an idea, draw up basic supporting design and art, and then program it into a playable prototype. Winners will be judged not only on the originality, quality and playability of their resulting work, but also by how well the game potentially addresses the problem presented at the outset. The Games for Health Project will award the Health Game Jam's winner with $3,000 in prize money. The Baltimore County Department of Economic Development will reward the best student-built game an additional $1,000 prize. "The goal of Games for Health is to use all the resources that exist in the greater game development field to provide solutions to health and health care challenges,” says Games for Health Project co-founder Ben Sawyer. “Experimental game jams, which owe their heritage to demo jams in Europe, have become popular events in the past five years. We want to tap into the incredible creativity these jams foster and put that to use in health domain." For more details on the event, including information on how to qualify and register, visit the official Games For Health site.