Wed Jan 9, 2008 5:02PM EST
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The creators of Re-Mission, the video game designed to help kids with cancer visualize their chemo treatments zapping cancer cells and inspire them to stay on track with their treatments, is taking on a new health issue via a video game: childhood obesity.
HopeLab has a booth at the CES Sandbox Summit to showcase its online competition to drum up ideas for a video game that will get kids moving, keep them active, and turn back the tide on childhood obesity. The competition is called Ruckus Nation.
Ellen LaPointe, HopeLab's vice president of Strategic Initiatives, says the company challenged teens to come up with ideas for games that will appeal to middle-school-age kids. Think a new Dance Dance Revolution that will get limbs moving and hearts pumping. There were 429 submissions, and judges are now sifting through the proposals to find their way to the winner.
The winner with the best idea will win $75,000 in March.
Join in the discussion. Here you'll see the comments in the order they were posted.
Child obesity = Fast Food and no Sports. Too many families dine out 4 days a week or more. If your excuse is that work is too busy or you don't have time at home then you shouldn't have had kids. Get out and play baseball and soccer or tennis with your kids and they won't be fat.
doing a hopelab project for anyone from young child to senior adult that will be tailored to specific goals and exercise and diet challenges - the title: hopelab is very excellent for our struggle to turn the tide of obesity of anyone everywhere
to turtletracks . . . what issue are you referencing? i was referring to apathetic and ignorant parenting . . . and childhood obesity is just one tragic result of myriad issues that result from bad parenting . . . it is myopic to think that tossing another video game into this mix even remotely addresses this issue . . .
childhood obesity starts and ends with apathetic parenting . . . kids start learning their habits from their parents from day one. it is the parents feeding twinkies to their children to stop a tantrum . . . this positive reinforcement will lead to more tantrums . . . and more twinkies . . . this video game concept, however noble . . . does not address the issue . . . bad parenting . . . childhood obesity, delinquency, etc are the result of bad parenting . . . they are not due to a lack of technology . . . at the turn of the century (1900), the average daily diet was greater than 5,000 calories and obesity was not the problem it is today (video games were still 75 years away!?!?). the solution is not more video games . . . it is less video games and more parental involvement. this video game is merely a band-aid. besides . . . buying this game would most likely cut too deeply into the twinkie and smokes budget!!!
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1 Posted by magpagbst on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:03PM EDT Report Abuse
it is a sick society that we must now turn to video games to compensate for woefully bad, apathetic parenting . . . wouldn't it be more appropriate to come up with a video game to promote better parenting?? . . . ah . . . forget it . . .