Two game design majors won $20,000 for a healthy eating app.
Game design students Tara Boonngamanong and Note Nuchprayoon won first place and $20,000 in the second round of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) game challenge for their obesity prevention game, “Well Spent.”
“Well Spent” is a grocery shopping game in which the player must balance money, time and healthy eating. It heeds the game challenge objective of creating a game focused on obesity prevention or weight control for women and girls, but the team also wanted to make sure their proposed game took both a unique and an inclusive approach.
“Our game doesn’t really teach the player how to eat healthy; that’s not the goal,” Boonngamanong says. “Our main goal is to decrease stigma around obesity, and be like ‘Hey, there are a lot of factors that go into someone being obese.’ There’s a link between low-income communities and obesity.”
The students, both second-years when they won in the fall term, were given the rest of the academic year to complete the game. If their final version also wows the judges, they could be eligible for additional funding.