Obesity in recent years has captured a flood of media attention, prompting news articles and broadcasts, talk shows, reality shows and the documentary Super Size Me. Independent game developer Ian Bogost takes on the topic with a new project he hopes will bring the now-familiar dialogue on America’s health crisis to a new level.

FATWORLD, currently in development, is a game that constructs a small-scale society where players decide what to eat, how much to exercise, what foods should be sold, and what regulations should be imposed to determine their own health and that of their community. The game will be available for free download, and an accompanying website, like that of the successful Sims games, will allow players to exchange ideas and game strategies.

FATWORLD is the fifth project to emerge from ITVS’s Electric Shadows initiative, a special fund for innovative Web-original projects that offer untold, provocative stories by today’s independent storytellers. Electric Shadows projects include OFF THE MAP, the Webby Award–winning site that takes users on a multimedia tour of works by backyard visionary artists, and BEYOND THE FIRE, an interactive project designed for teens that explores the human cost of war through the stories of 15 teenage war refugees. All Electric Shadows projects are available online as a special feature of the Independent Lens site at PBS.org. Last year, ITVS Interactive developed a special Electric Shadows call for proposals targeting independent game developers. FATWORLD was the top project selected by a panel of game industry leaders and marks the first online game funded by ITVS.

“This project affords a unique opportunity to partner with a new kind of media maker to create something that is truly experimental,” says Cathy Fischer, senior producer, ITVS Interactive. “It is critical that those of us working in public media look beyond traditional broadcast as a way of reaching audiences. The power and popularity of games, especially among young people, is undeniable and the fact that independent game developers are using this medium for education and social change is very exciting.”

Bogost is a co-founder, with Gerard LaFond, of Atlanta-based Persuasive Games and is an assistant professor of digital media at the Georgia Institute of Technology. For the past 12 years, he has been at the forefront of the burgeoning field of what he calls “games with an agenda”—a field alternately called “social issues games,” “serious games” or “games for change,” depending on whom you ask.

“I use the terms ‘persuasive games’ and ‘video games with an agenda,’” Bogost says. “I’m interested in the general idea that video games of any kind can take on important themes and express something about those themes.”

Bogost’s website, watercoolergames.com, has become a leading source for information and dialogue around this relatively nascent field. His company’s most recent projects, including Airport Security, in which players act as security officials screening passengers, Disaffected! a parody of working practices at Kinko’s copy stores, and Dean for Iowa, a project commissioned by the Howard Dean campaign, have won critical acclaim and national press coverage for Persuasive Games.

As an independent game developer, Bogost cites commonality with the field of independent filmmakers, particularly in conquering the challenges of funding and distribution. “For the past two years we’ve exhibited games at Slamdance in Park City, which started a game festival in 2005. We have much more in common with the filmmakers there than we do with most commercial videogame developers,” says Bogost. “Most indie developers have to find some way of financing their studios and projects. We use a model that’s not unlike a lot of indie filmmakers—we use paid work, like advertising and educational games, to fund our independent projects.”

As for distribution, Bogost feels that getting games out to a wide audience is “very hard, much harder than distribution for films. It’s nearly impossible to get products into stores unless you’re among the top 50 titles.”

So Bogost and his fellow indie game developers are primarily distributing their work online, although he cautions that making money through online distribution poses an added challenge.

Given this, Bogost calls his recent ITVS funding “a huge relief. Not just to have the funding, but to know that an organization like ITVS is interested in our medium.” Bogost finds public broadcasting a good match for the type of work he does. “And it’s wonderful not to have to sell the idea of social commentary. Believe it or not, we often have to do that in the games business.”

Working within public broadcasting should prove beneficial to reaching FATWORLD’s target audience of families. Bogost hopes that parents and their children will play the game together. “Most food decisions are made, implicitly or explicitly, in this kind of context, and we hope people will form discussions around what they eat and how they exercise in response to the game,” Bogost says.

At the same time, he and his team are interested in examining policy level solutions to the problems of nutrition and obesity. “The main social change we’re interested in stimulating through the game is the idea that personal responsibility should not be the primary answer. We need higher-order interventions, including certain regulations, to really change our collective well-being.”

FATWORLD launches at the Independent Lens website on PBS.org in Spring 2007.

Explore Electric Shadows projects on the Web >>

Elizabeth Meyer is a staff writer for ITVS.