The Magi and The Sleeping Star is the creation of Oklahoma-based Game Equals Life, formed by video game enthusiast and diabetic Adam Grantham. Adam wants to deliver a video game experience that teaches children and young adults to manage their disease, without feeling like they are being force-fed an edutainment title, and he might just succeed.

The Magi and The Sleeping Star looks like your average third-person shooter, with giant boss monster fights, blazing weapons, and a robotic companion named Momo who guides you along your path. The difference lies in the diabetes management portion of the game, which is directly linked to your magic attacks and special moves. By correctly balancing healing food items with insulin, the player can maintain ideal blood sugar levels, making his magic more powerful and his special moves more...special. Fail to properly maintain those levels and your magic and special moves will fail you.

The game, which is still in early stages, also allows players to enter in their own blood sugar information, making for a personalized experience with relevance to each individual person's situation.

Grantham spoke to NewsOK about the feeling of empowerment he hopes the game will convey.

"It's like I can totally kill thousands of monsters just by staying on top of my diabetes. It's a tool for empowerment rather than bringing them down, and we're using game play as a language to teach complex ideas. A kid thinking that way can apply it to real life at school or soccer or anything else."

You can visit the game's official website to see how much work Adam has accomplished with a four-person team. He's currently negotiating with various nonprofit organizations and pharmaceutical companies in order to further develop the concept.

Perhaps one day The Magi and The Sleeping Star will be distributed by children's hospitals as a tool to help kids learn about dealing with the disease. As it stands, it's a heartwarming example of how video games can be used in a positive manner to enrich the lives of those who've been dealt a less-than-optimal hand.

Norman video game company gives lessons on diabetes [NewsOK via GamePolitics]

The colorful new ad is a big change from the campaign's previous efforts, which depicted a sickly-looking young boy sitting on a couch holding a game controller underneath a headline that read "Risk An Early Death, Just Do Nothing". The ads drew a great deal of fire from the games industry at large, which is perhaps the impetus behind the new campaign.

Created by Wallace & Gromit animation studio Aardman, the commercial features a claymation family who change their sedentary ways by setting aside "60 Active Minutes" each day. While video games are still used as an example of sitting around doing nothing, one of the claymation characters later participates in a generic version of Dance Dance Revolution as an example of healthy activities.

You can view the entire commercial by following the link below.

Anti-obesity TV ads to promote 'active videogames' [guardian.co.uk]

The game, titled Missing, follows the adventures of a teen named Zachary Taylor who finds himself in an inappropriate online relationship with someone named Fantasma. Soon Zachary goes missing, and the children must study clues to help find him. According to Paul Hamann, chief information officer for the Jessamine County school district where the program will launch, the game will help students "see how easily they could get drawn into that".

The funding for the $300,000 project comes by way of an earmark secured by U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler as part of the 410 billion omnibus spending bill signed into law by President Barack Obama in March. Chandler defends his decision to procure other people's money to defend the children of Kentucky.

"Earmark is a bad word, you know," Chandler said. "But in this particular case, and I think in the way I try to handle it, we get money for very, very good projects. And this is a very, very good project. Any project that is going to protect our young people, in my view, can be easily defined as a good project."

It really is hard to argue with a man when he has countless stories of children being solicited and abducted via online games and chat rooms to back him up. I suppose I would have felt better had this been developed into a national program, rather than simply benefitting Chandler's 6th Congressional District.

$300,000 game to teach dangers of Internet predators [Kentucky.com]

Unlike traditional video games that use a joy stick or finger controls, the Wii requires users to replicated the action of the sport they are playing. "You can't play tennis with your hand in your lap," Forsberg tells her patient. "You have to move your whole arm."

Far too easy.

With the patient's parents already seeing a marked improvement in their child with only the one session under her belt, it's yet another success story for Nintendo's plucky little console. Anyone else getting the feeling that the Wii will still be used in hospitals around the world long after we've moved on to whatever Nintendo has up its sleeve next? And will the mainstream press ever get over ending their Wii articles like this?

It's hard work, made easier, with a Wii bit of fun.

Wii makes for fun therapy at children's hospital [KARE 11 TV]

"We're honored to have our characters take what sometimes may seem like dry topics and help make them come alive for students," says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "The collaboration provides an opportunity for children to learn 21st century science using 21st century tools with characters they're familiar with."

I went ahead and downloaded the lesson plan that involved building a two-stage rocket, and while the PDF did indeed include a Pokemon-themed header and sidebar, I found no mention whatsoever of pocket monsters in the text. Perhaps you are meant to wave the printouts around to draw the children's eyes towards you. *shrugs*

This isn't the Pokemans first foray into learning, mind you. You can find interactive math, science, language arts and life skills lessons online at www.PokemonLearningLeague.com.

SCHOOL LESSON PLANS USE THEMES FROM LATEST POKEMON VIDEO GAMES TO TEACH SCIENCE

Free Lesson Plans Allow Students to 'Master the Science ... Master the Game'

REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 7, 2007 A new in-school program uses basic characters and themes from Nintendo's popular Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl video games for Nintendo DS to teach elementary and middle school students about science. Nintendo of America, Inc., The National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) and Nortel LearniT, have teamed up to make it fun for students to learn the sciences using imagery they already know and love.

Now through December, a variety of printable lesson plans and classroom activities developed by NIA are available to students and teachers at www.masterthescience.org. For instance, a lesson plan might teach elementary school students how to tell time using a sundial, or middle school students about how the universe is expanding. An activity component is also built in, where teacher and student questions can be submitted and answered by science experts.

"We are thrilled to offer educators a resource program that utilizes popular characters to enhance the learning experience for students in fields of study that will only grow more crucial as we move forward in the 21st century," says Robert Lindberg, NIA's President and Executive Director.

"We're honored to have our characters take what sometimes may seem like dry topics and help make them come alive for students," says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "The collaboration provides an opportunity for children to learn 21st century science using 21st century tools with characters they're familiar with."

"We know through our Nortel LearniT initiatives that technology integration in the classroom makes learning both exciting and engaging," says Greg Farmer, VP, Nortel Government and Community Relations. "As an organization that believes technology can enable opportunity, we are proud to be associated with this project."

Pokemon is no stranger to in-school education. Teachers and students can also visit Pokemon Learning League (www.PokemonLearningLeague.com) to access its award-winning interactive online lessons in Math, Science, Language Arts and Life Skills.

For more information about the "Master the Science ... Master the Game" in-school program, visit the Web site at www.masterthescience.org.

"What we're trying to do is take people into a virtual crack-related neighborhood or crack-related setting and have them experience cravings, just like they would in the real world," Rosenthal said.

It's all a form of classical conditioning, a phenomenon first explored by Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. Pavlov conditioned dogs to salivate when a sound occurred, commonly believed to be the ringing of a bell. By ringing the bell before feeding the animal it began to associate the bell with the anticipation of food.

The main difference here is the use of virtual reality to provide the stimulus, rather than actually putting crack cocaine on a table and hitting the addicts with rolled-up newspaper whenever they reach for it. "Bad crackhead!"

While the program has had some success, Rosenthal doesn't see his work as merely a way to help addicts recover their lives.

"This isn't about cocaine, and this isn't really about substance use," He said. "This is about creating new learning and extending that learning to the real world."

Now that last one would be an interesting forum argument to see, and it could very well become a reality as Peter "Tattooed Love Boy" Moore suggest that Microsoft would strongly consider adding a research application similar to Folding@home to the Xbox 360. In a Q&A session with Mike Antonucci of The Mercury News, Moore tackled the subject.

Then if we truly believe that we can in some way marshall the resources of a much larger installed base of Xbox 360 owners, with a processor that's of equal power to the PS3, then you have my commitment that we'll look at that. And if we believe we can add value to solving a gnarly problem such as the medical problems and the health problems that Folding@home seems to be doing, then we'll certainly look at that very strongly.

This is exactly what I was talking about last November. If we could harness the power and ambition of gamers to achieve high scores and bragging rights and apply it to real world problems, we would be a truly awesome force. Now we're taking real steps. Go us! Michael Fahey

Peter Moore interview, part three [The Mercury News via GamesIndustry.biz]

"When people play action games, they're changing the brain's pathway responsible for visual processing," says Bavelier. "These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it. That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life."

Action Video Games Sharpen Vision 20 Percent [Science Daily - Thanks Michael!]

If you're a guy and have a girlfriend who you're trying to get into gaming, I'd highly recommend picking up a copy of the January/February Women's Health magazine. Inside you'll find an article entitled "Grab the Joystick: Toy with your man in the virtual world", which you can leave sitting around somewhere (not the bathroom, that's our place) where she'll find it. The message couldn't be any clearer.

"Playing video games allows you to bond and learn how to problem-solve as a team," says Susan K. Perry, Ph.D., a Los Angeles-based social psychologist.

The article goes on to list games perfect for bonding, including Guitar Hero II, Lego Star Wars II, Splinter Cell, and Midnight Club 3. The describe MC3 as "foreplay on wheels", which explains why I get bored quickly and just keep trying to crash into things. Michael Fahey

grab the joystick [Women's Health Magazine]

Penny Arcade's Child's Play Charity drive exploded this year, surpassing all expectations completely. Gamers and game companies opened up their hearts and their wallets to collect over a million dollars in toys and monetary donations to children's hospitals around the world. From the update posted today on the Child's Play website:

You guys did it. You broke a million dollars in just over two months. Child's Play started as a way to show how good our community can be, but it's turned into something greater than we could have ever imagined. We're making an impact on lives. See you next year.

Special thanks to all the Kotaku readers who did their part this year, and to those who didn't...we're watching you. Michael Fahey

Child's Play Tops $1 Million [Slashdot]

My parents divorced when I was 7 or 8, and all I can remember is getting toys every other weekend. If only I had had a video game moose to guide me. *sniffles* Michael Fahey

What is Earthquake in Zipland? [Zipland.com]

Students at South Shore High School in New York have been passing up normal after school activities for video games...though not to play them. For the past year they've been meeting after school in order to develop meaningful video games with messages attached. It's all part of a program that melds game development with social awareness, and with the help of Global Kids and local developer Gamelab their first game has just been released online. Called "Ayiti: The Cost of Life," it puts the player in control of a family of five poor Haitians in what can best be described as a family management sim.

As you can imagine, the game is dreadfully depressing. You deal with bad weather, low income, hunger, etc. as you desperately try to keep the family alive. It's not fun, but I suppose that was the point. It shows a level of social awareness you certainly wouldn't expect in a group of American high school students. I think the program a brilliant way to mix gaming and learning with extremely positive results. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go borrow a Zoloft. Michael Fahey

Update: I originally mistook this for a school in North Carolina, when it is indeed in New York. I say thee whoops.

Ayiti: The Cost of Life
Creating games, learning lessons [News 14 Carolina]