Hi Programmers, Gamedevelopers and entrepreneurs!

I am working on a project to launch a healthy nutrition gaming platform for children ages 5 - 10 years.

The main objective is to educate and help children maintain their healthy nutrition behavior through games featuring the “virtual self” (avatar). (Gamification as concept by NASA: http://km.nasa.gov/game-on-for-knowledge/ )

Why? 1 out of 3 children in the US is overweight.......

To succeed, top quality games is a must to keep children involved, excited, and exposed to healthy nutrition and lifestyle. The game is the link that support healthy decisions taken by the kids (supported by parents).

The question is, how to keep a kid entertained with an App or game, considering the short-mid term goal objective ?

Are kids (5-10 years old) loyal to a particular game or can easily shift to the next new thing?

As ideas, we thought about crowdsourcing the game development to the community (?), similar for example to Threadless business model:

https://www.threadless.com/infoabout/

As a game developer, you could greatly help us to better tailor our platform by giving answers to the questions below (or replying your thought to the forum)

The game developer community is the important stakeholders on this project, making your valuable feedback paramount to us.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TLTHR6K

Are kids (5-10 years old) loyal to a particular game or can easily shift to the next new thing?

From a parent's point of view - this is the age that kids still explore the world. They examine what is possible, what they are allowed to do and how things work. As such they tend to have quite short attention span (especially the ones closer to 5) and you may have hard time keeping them interested for more than few minutes. For the kids closer to 10 you may keep them longer (like 30min - 1h) but don't expect they will come back daily for more than few days.

Even for games they like a lot there are "periods of interest" - few days they play it daily then 2 weeks they don't even look at it.

All of above is with assumption that their parents allow them to play (almost) daily (some of my friends think computers are pure evil and their kids are allowed to play about 1h WEEKLY!)

Thanks Deflinek for your feedback.

I think without been my field of expertise (game dev.) that the holy grail (App, web based, etc) is a perpetual attractiveness (or really low dilution rate)for the game attractiveness.

That is the key point of gamification as a mid or long term tool used for improving kids poor dietary choices (sugar related mainly). It needs to be attractive for users, to have using it and hence learning in the process about new habits.

The initial concept we had is to use an avatar type character that reflect the inputs of food selections the kid makes. The better the choices, the more attractive will be the avatar to the kid.

But if the game is not attractive enough, the good cause will vanish. Hence, we thought about developing a continuous feed of new games developed either by a company or by crowdsourcing it with the community.

What are your (or other) thoughts about it? Any experience or thought you will like to share?

For the kids closer to 10 you may keep them longer (like 30min - 1h) but don't expect they will come back daily for more than few days.

Are kids (5-10 years old) loyal to a particular game or can easily shift to the next new thing?

I suspect that what you propose will effectively be similar to a virtual pet app of some kind. You might want to look for some kind of research into which ones retain a kid's interest the best and what elements are the most appealing.

I think it's a big assumption that kids have a significant amount of input into what they eat everyday. Wouldn't it be fair to say that for most kids it's their parents or schools that decide what's on their menu? I don't imagine kids keeping an interest in something that's effectively punishing them for something that's beyond their control.

Thanks kseh for your feedback.

We have taken a look into some games that sort of have a business arrangement that assure longer term continuity. I wad particular interested on My Penguin Club or MoshiMonster as game developed and supported by other tools so that the experience for the kids is more than just playing an App. Their business structure is interesting.

http://www.moshimonsters.com/welcome.

You are correct by saying that kids have low control over what they eat everyday. We think that part of this problem happens because of (some) factors that collide into a perfect storm scenario: easiness to have junk or poor food choices, addiction of sugar (and fat / salty products that we as human are design to crave for) and parents poor selection of choices. This creates a loop between sugar addicts and a system design to feed it back to them.

This is were we want to make a change. Our gamification idea focus on improving the self awareness of kids about the selections they made and change parents-kids food chain selection. Of course we need proactive parents so we work on the fair assumption that most parents want the best for their kids.

But gamification is still a sort of new subject. It is about change habits by the virtues of gaming. There is a great TED talk that describes a bit this sentiment

Hence, you game developers as community can help a lot for this kind of initiatives. It goes into the deepness of game design and structure of the gamification to keep a community linked to a learning fun environment that also helps them learn or improve.

Any other feedback or comment is welcomed! Thanks a lot

I've noticed that people who are excited about "Gamification" are really, really excited about it. But I don't see why "Gameified" implementations of mundane and tedious things wouldn't themselves become mundane or tedious or otherwise trivialize what they were implemented for.

Even with the "perfect storm" you've identified, it seems to me that those elements you've pointed out are still more within the parent or adult's domain of control. It's certainly a good thing to get a kid excited about and ask about eating healthy foods but if the adults don't follow through the results won't be there. If inspiring better eating habits is a primary goal, you might want to take that into account.

From what I remember of my niece and nephew playing on Moshimonsters.com, the site rewards players for successfully completing games such that they will be able to buy interactive upgrades to their pet monster. However I don't recall any penalties for failing to complete a game. The games available on the site appeared to have been licensed from external developers and new games would be rotated in to keep things fresh. These were games that could be found on other websites that offer free browser gaming. I don't recall seeing examples of negative reinforcement with respect to their pets, though I haven't observed them playing for much longer than a couple of hours.

I don't have any research to back this up but I don't imagine that kids will maintain much interest in logging their eating habits (assuming they would do so truthfully in the first place) and see the results reflected in some way in their avatar. Especially if the results that they're seeing are on the negative end of things. Further I would expect that when food choices are beyond the control of the kid, the negative feedback seen in the avatar will be demotivating to continue playing.

But one thing I remember about being a kid that probably hasn't changed much is a strong desire to do what the adults are doing. So I might approach such a project as yours from that angle. My first thought is a game where kids go shopping, prepare a meal, and then somehow the player character is affected by those choices. Maybe the PC then has school, a job, or other activities to go to and situations occur such that the previous food choice comes into play or a new food choice needs to be made. Maybe the last meal wasn't satisfying enough and a snack is needed, maybe the PC doesn't have enough energy at work or school and performance is affected requiring that some other choice is required. Cause and effect would be more within the child's control and they can get the lesson that you're trying to impart on them in one play session regardless of their ability to control their own meals and snacks.

Olimac, given that you posted this in the Game Design forum, I have to assume that what you are looking for, primarily, are ideas about how your game should work (how it should be played - ideas for gameplay to achieve your societally useful goal). You didn't post this in the Business forum, so you must not be looking (primarily) for business advice, and you didn't post this in For Beginners or any other programming forum, so you must not be looking (primarily) for technical how-to advice.

I fear that the broad way you posed your words initially may be getting you feedback that does not zero in on your actual question. This (below) is your primary question, is it not?

how to keep a kid entertained with an App or game, considering the short-mid term goal objective ?

The best thing (given the above assumption) would be for you to post your gameplay ideas to get the discussion going in the direction you need the most. Surely you have some ideas about how the game can show characters who eat healthy food and benefit as a result?

Thanks Tom for your feedback. I do agree, let's discuss the game design concept.

Characters

The main character of the game is an avatar. The kid can select from a range of characters, such a human , monster (cute way), animals or fictional types. The idea in the selection is the kid to identify with an avatar and finds it fun. The kid will be the owner of the avatar and can interact with him as standalone and play with it at a village of avatars. The avatar evolution will depend on the inputs the user makes about its eating habits and fitness activities done.

The character and player interaction

The avatars can be dressed, colored, educated (new skills, features to use in the village) . We want to add cool features that can keep the kid engaged on improving its avatar. Selection of clothing, fun props, tools to used in the village and teaching skills to support other Avatars. The option to have accessibility to some of these features will depend on the kids inputs as they eat healthier options or decide to make exercise or get involved on fitness activities. We have the discussion about the inputs control to avoid the kid bypassing the system, so we need to establish a link with the parent and orient the inputs with guidance of the parents (but not involved at all with the Avatar development). This could be done by requesting a parents email when the avatar is created. The email is only to keep the parent involved with the game concept, so we can send an initiation email of what we want to achieve and how they can support. We do not intent to have a continuous feedback of the kids development with the parent at this stage.

In order to keep the game attractive, some of the features of the avatar and the village will be accessible free. If free, it will take time to have them available (days, weeks), hence there is always possible to speed this up by improving your eating and exercise inputs.

Also we thought that to keep the game momentum changes to the avatar and village (Described bellow) will need to happen when the kid is not playing. The idea is that every time the kids return to the game, he realized that something new in the village happen or that its avatar learn a new healthy eating tip from another Avatar member, or that new clothing , props are available for use.

In case the kids makes a poor eating selection (that for sure they will) we do not intend to make the avatar worse. The idea is always a positive reinforcement of the good decisions.

Village

The avatars will live in a community that will involve other players avatars. The community is a fictional town that had different attractions to go and play at. We thought about including a school, a fun activities house, a disco dancing house, a mini avatar Olympics and a grocery store for the entry level access . More can be access as your avatar improve, hence it will be accessible only for healthier avatars.

The access to the houses will be free but others will remain locked. The locked one access will depend on the evolution of the avatar and or tools, props acquired as the kid makes healthier selections.

At the village interaction among users happen and skills can be used on other avatars. For example, the avatars will be able to transfer tips- recommendations (like "instead of a Soda, I select natural juice or water at school") to other avatars, that the kid could read once he gets back to the game. The transfer of tips will come with a improvement on the avatar, such as temporary color changes or new props or tools that will expire within days. The idea is to create the network interaction, give the users the taste of new tools so that the make an effort to gain them.

Many of this interaction can happen when the users at not playing so that when the pick up back the game the y have news about their hometown, new members that they can give to and get points and news of the most recent houses available at other levels.

Other ongoing discussions

The timing for playing: We want this avatar community app to be a supporting tool, hence not create a game that keeps the kid at home for long period when instead we could be at the park or doing exercise. Hence, we might think to restrict the playing time or constraint the access by answering the questions : " Could you be playing outside or doing exercise instead of playing now? Remember, it is always better to choose activities that makes you stronger!, we can wait until you return! Go champ, the Avatars"

Well, that is sort of the skeleton of our idea. Any feedback is valuable, we want to reinforce / change it based on your expertise.

Thanks!