The same week McDonald's is blaming videogames for obesity, we're preparing to release a videogame about that topic.

On Monday January 14, Fatworld will be released. It's a game about the politics of nutrition created at my studio, Persuasive Games, published by ITVS Interactive, and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting . We don't blame McDonald's for it, at least we don't believe it's that simple. The whole idea behind the game is to complicate the issue.

As we explain in our creator's statement, Fatworld explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S.. The game’s goal is not to tell people what to eat or how to exercise, but to demonstrate the complex, interwoven relationships between nutrition and factors like budgets, the physical world, subsidies, and regulations. In Fatworld, you create a world, design a character, and live out an accelerated life in that world. By choosing your character’s dietary and exercise habits, you can experiment with the constraints of nutrition and economics as they affect your character's general health. Will it be wheatgrass and soy? Or fried chicken at every meal? How much can you afford to spend on food, and how does that affect your general health? Characters who eat poorly will get fat. Characters who don’t exercise will move around the world more laboriously. Disease and death will eventually ravage players with poor health, while those with good health will live to a ripe age.

While you're waiting, don't you want to buy a glossy poster with the design at top right?

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