The White House Wants Videogames to Encourage Healthy Eating

One of the most interesting initiatives presented at the Game Developers Conference, which took place in San Francisco, has been that Apps for Healthy Kids program that the White House initiated, aiming to use videogames as a direct and powerful way of educating a young audience about the way they should eat and exercise.

Entries for the Apps for Healthy Kids contest must be delivered between March 10 and 30 and those who win will get cash prizes in addition to an invitation to attend a social event at the White House.

Aneesh Chopra, who is the Chief Technology Officer at the Barack Obama lead White House, told videogame creators that “We're hoping this might strengthen the ties with Washington.”

A message from First Lady Michelle Obama said, “You know better than most the power of games to deeply engage our nation's youth. Today I'm asking you to dedicate your creative energy skills to address one of America's biggest challenges and help make healthy living fun, exciting, and relevant for kids.”

Prizes are offered for both tools and games created that can integrate nutritional data posted on the various government sites in order to make them easy to understand for kids. The panel of judges that will rate the various videogames entered into the competition includes Mark Pincus, the Chief Executive Officer of Zynga, the company behind social gaming success FarmVille, and Mike Gallagher, the CEO of the Entertainment Software Association.

It's interesting to see the White House directly reaching out to game developers, especially indie ones, in an effort to find a simpler, clearer way to communicate with a very specific audience. Nutritional data can be quite boring, so it will be interesting to see how it can be implemented in a videogame. Maybe FarmVille will feature info for each of the crop grown.

More information on the program can be found on the official government website.