#Exergaming Co-Play: Friends with Benefits

I know this is an older video but I wanted to show what some great Canadian researchers did with the idea that exergaming together (co-play) can be mutually beneficial. Last summer Tad Stach was presenting his and the EQUIS group's work on using one player on the bike while the other was standing and another study where your playing partner would be cycling from a different location. Great stuff! Last year at GFH 2011 -Ben Sawyer and Ben Heck did a great video and product to allow 2 players to co-play using 2 Xbox controllers modded so that one player worked the joystick/control pad while the other partner did the button mashing (See GameShare Controllers)

Frozen Treasure Hunter from Nick Graham on Vimeo.

Two players cooperatively play the game by sharing control of a single avatar. One player, the cyclist, steers and drives the avatar. This is performed using a gamepad and pedaling a recumbent bicycle. The other player, the swatter, defends the team from snowballs. Snowballs are swatted away by physically swinging a Wii Remote and Nunchuk, controllers that capture gestures via accelerometer data.

Hello Current and Past Games for Health Conference Attendees,

Games for Health 2012 is just under a month away.

This is a special email sharing exciting updates to our schedule and also a reminder those of you who haven't registered yet and/or booked their hotel for this June.

***EXCITING UPDATES***
We're happy to preview the following exciting news which we will share more widely later this week:

1. TEDMED CEO Jay Walker will be joining the conference as our closing special guest. 
Jay Walker, Chairman of TEDMED, LLC is a longtime TEDster and TEDMED supporter, having made over a dozen well-received presentations at the two conferences. One of America's best-known business inventors and entrepreneurs, Jay has founded multiple successful startup companies that today serve more than 75 million customers and holds more than 200 U.S. patents. He is chairman of Walker Digital, a privately-held R&D lab founded in 1994 and based in Stamford, Connecticut. The company specializes in creating innovative applications that work with large-scale digital networks such as the Internet. Jay is best known as the founder of Priceline.com, the "name your own price" service that has brought a new level of value to the travel industry.

Jay is also known for the Library of Human Imagination:

https://www.ted.com/talks/jay_walker_s_library_of_human_imagination.html

We're crossing our fingers he might bring a few cool things to share with us.

There are rumors Jay may also join us during our mobile pre-conference on June 12 but I can neither confirm/deny that as of this writing. 
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2. Our Mobile Pre-Conference Schedule is now live!

See our 3rd Annual mobile day schedule here:
http://bit.ly/ooasched12We have a GREAT lineup.  A lot of innovative work and maybe 1-2 more late surprises left.  Usually we feature a few non-health items but the health work in mobile games is becoming so prevalent we're going to need to extend this track going forward.

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3. Child's Play Charity
Penny Arcade's Child's Play Charity (www.childsplaycharity.org) will be speaking at the event and they're going to be involved in brainstorming with attendees about new places to invest their funding/fundraising abilities in the games for health space.  Last year Child's Play raised over $3.5 million in donations and donated goods!
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4. Tutorials
We previously have discuss several tutorials we're hosting starting with my own tutorial for early arrivals on Monday June 11.  You can sign up for this tutorial during registration.  I've pasted the schedule and information on it below as well.


Designer Jessica Hammer (http://replayable.wordpress.com/about/) (who worked on Lit2Quit) has agreed to do a free workshop in the late afternoon of June 12 for our Pre-Conference attendees and early arrivals on June 12 from 4pm-6:30pm.  If you wish to take part in this tutorial please email STAFF@DMILL.com with subject line Hammer Tutorial and you will be added to the limited but available spots for this session.