For my final project in my stereography/virtual reality class I will be making a primitive, strategy, web-based game using Unity 3D software. This program is designed for making game applications for the I-Phone, Wii, Web and a few other
platforms that I will fail to mention just for simplicity. Unity 3D supports three different scripting languages: JavaScript, C# and a dialect of Python to program interactivity of buttons and other gaming assets.
You’re probably wondering by now, “Why is someone in Biomedical Visualization trying to make a game?” If I can be so bold to surmise your inner dialog. Well, part of what is essential to my graduate program is thinking in an innovative way along with with knowing how to do many innovative things.
This brings me to the discussion of edutainment. If you have not heard this expression before it is merely a form of entertainment designed to educate as well as to amuse (Wikipedia). Edutainment seeks to instruct individuals by embedding lessons in some familiar form of entertainment such as: television programs, computer and video games, films, music, websites, multimedia software, etc (Wikipedia). So teaching information about science or more specifically medical topics should no longer be considered boring, hard or not fun right?
The topic of my Unity 3D edutainment project is looking at how a part of your bones, spongy bone or also known as trabecular bone, repair itself after it has undergone stress and has cracked. Here is a link to a six page PDF of the essential concepts outlining my game. Let me know if you don’t understand or have any other ideas. Thanks and enjoy!
Click here to open PDF of game concepts
Interested in seeing more examples of edutainment?- Here is a youtube video describing the heart and more specifically EKGs (Warning: contains heart dissection images)
- Here is a CNN video detailing a doctor training environment
Artemisia tridentata 
