CES 2008

At first glance, Re-Mission comes across as a stylishly produced, anime-influenced video game. But the targets in question are cancer cells, which the character Roxxi the nanobot blasts with the Chemoblaster, the Radiation Gun, and the Antibiotic Rocket.

Re-Mission is specifically designed as a health improvement intervention for teens and young adults who have cancer. Game producers at HopeLab start with a desired health outcome, and then reverse engineer a game that encourages positive behaviors, adding motivation and fun into something as scary as a kid's battle against cancer.

Re-Mission helps teens fight cancer

HopeLab Vice President Ellen LaPointe spoke at the Sandbox Summit conference on Tuesday, and I was amazed to learn that the game producers actually test the effectiveness of their games through controlled clinical research studies. HopeLab followed 374 kids with cancer, at 34 hospitals in several countries, playing the game in English, Spanish, and French. The kids who played Re-Mission showed measurable improvements in their attitude (sense of self-efficacy) and healthy behavior (taking medications as prescribed).

It's interesting to see a nonprofit with a health-improvement mission embrace video games in this new way. It is crucial that Re-Mission looks as well-designed as any game out there on the market. Deborah Manchester of the kids' science Web site Zula, another panelist at the Sandbox Summit, said that one pitfall of educational media is that we can get stuck in a rut trying to put the same boring content into a digital format. Re-Mission shows what can be accomplished when designers break out of that box to create a product based on what kids and teens really enjoy playing.

What's next for HopeLab? Ruckus Nation, whose underlying goal is to look for new solutions to childhood obesity. Students from all over the world entered Ruckus Nation's online competition for new product designs that are cool and fun enough to get kids moving.

HopeLabs will support the development and testing of winning products, providing a real opportunity for kids to not only win a contest, but to see their innovative ideas come to life.

A group of video game giants that changed the way people play in the '80s, '90s, and 2000s were honored with technology and engineering Emmy Awards during a ceremony Monday night in Las Vegas amid the Consumer Electronics Show, according to Sony Online Entertainment.

The awards were handed out in two categories. The first was development of massively multiplayer online role-playing games. The winners were Sony Online Entertainment, Blizzard Entertainment, and AOL/Time Warner for EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and Neverwinter Nights, respectively.

In the user-generated content and game modification category, Electronic Arts, Id Software, and Linden Lab were honored for Pinball Construction Set, Quake, and Second Life, respectively.