Abstract: "The purpose of this research was to develop and test smartphone game application for physical
activity promotion in adolescen
ts. The first study included various user
-
centered approaches (e.g.
qualitative data, idea sessions)
to get feedback on what was desired from the adolescents in terms of game
development and design. The second study examined the degree to which mobile heal
th studies reported
on internal and external validity indicators. The last study evaluated the smartphone game applications
through a mixed
-
methods approach.
The results of this research showed that ph
ysical activity while playing
smartphone game
applica
tions can yield moderate physical activity intensity. Moreover, adolescents had moderate
perceptions of the games and recommended specific changes to the games.
Likewise, t
he data suggest that
smartphone physical activity game applications
can be enjoyable
if they are aesthetically appealing, easy
to use,
and
foster social peer interactions
. Overall, t
his
research
demonstrated that smartphone games that
were developed and designed based on adolescents' preferences and persuasive technology design
principles
could increase physical activity in adolescents and provides a
tool for further exploration."
From the abstract: "This chapter will
make a case that games are not necessarily the exclusive domain of game professionals. Rather than enforcing
teachers to get acquainted with and use complex, technically demanding games, we will discuss approaches that
teachers themselves can use to build games, make use of existing games and even one step beyond use tools or
games that can be used by learners to create their own designs, e.g. games or virtual worlds."
Abstract: "Persuasive games are an effective approach for motivating health behavior, and recent years have seen an increase in games designed for changing human behaviors or attitudes. However, these games are limited in two major ways: first, they are not based on theories of what motivates healthy behavior change. This makes it difficult to evaluate why a persuasive approach works. Second, most persuasive games treat players as a monolithic group. As an attempt to resolve these weaknesses, we conducted a large-scale survey of 642 gamers' eating habits and their associated determinants of healthy behavior to understand how health behavior relates to gamer type. We developed seven different models of healthy eating behavior for the gamer types identified by BrainHex. We then explored the differences between the models and created two approaches for effective persuasive game design based on our results. The first is a one-size-fits-all approach that will motivate the majority of the population, while not demotivating any players. The second is a personalized approach that will best motivate a particular type of gamer. Finally, to make our approaches actionable in persuasive game design, we map common game mechanics to the determinants of healthy behavior."
"Driven by an initiative of the Adult & Paediatric Diabetes Psychology Service of New Zealand, research has been performed to develop new mechanisms, in the form of computer games, to educate children and teenagers about living with diabetes. Aimed at achieving maximum education effectiveness, the ultimate goal of our research is to develop innovative machine learning algorithms that can be used in games to improve their ability to learn about the changing needs of children and to incorporate this intelligence into the game interface. We also plan to collect and report on the information collected from testing our computer games within a small group of children who have been diagnosed with type I diabetics. "
"On May 29th, 11am-1pm PDT (2-4pm EDT), you'll have the chance to join leading experts in health and health care games-including game designer Jane McGonigal, Lygeia Ricciardi of Health and Human Services, and researchers from IFTF-in a live Webinar discussion to explore opportunities for using games to improve health outcomes."
Abstract: "Commissioned by the campus Office of Admissions, we have built a series of three campus tour and orientation games over the past academic year with undergraduate student project teams. Based on well-established game industry practices we followed an iterative agile process with Scrum and managed to avoid many classical pitfalls in game development. While we achieved some measure of success, in post-project analysis, it becomes obvious that our process would have benefited from the heavy emphasis of "users" in the User-Centered Design (UCD) methods. In this position paper, we propose that the serious game development community continue to critically analyze the results from the UCD projects to benefit from its lessons, well-understood good practices, and development paradigms."
"Our group formed around the common theme of piracy, and after iterating through several
different subthemes, we finally settled on two distinct persuasive objectives in our game.
First of all, we intended to persuade the player that piracy is not theft. Secondly, we
intended to convey the message that the media industry hides and distorts the reality
of the situation for its own benefit. The game is meant to inspire critical thinking and
discussion about the topics being discussed in the game."
Abstract: "With the advent of the increasingly participatory Internet
and the growing power of the crowd, "Serious Games" have
proven to be a fertile approach for gathering task-specific
natural language data at very low cost. In this paper we outline
a game we call Doodling, based on the sketch-andconvey
metaphor used in the popular board game Pictionary
®2, with the goal of generating useful natural language
data. We explore whether such a paradigm can be successfully
extended for conveying more complex syntactic and
semantic constructs than the words or short phrases typically
used in the board game. Through a series of user experiments,
we show that this is indeed the case, and that valuable
parallel language data may be produced as a byproduct.
In addition, we explore extensions to this paradigm along
two axes - going online (vs. face-to-face) and going crosslingual.
The results in each of the sets of experiments confirm
the potential of Doodling game to generate data in
large quantities and across languages, and thus provide a
new means of developing data sets and technologies for resource-
poor languages."
From the summary: "This thesis reviews and utilizes concepts from cognitive psychology, developmental psychology and game design to bring forth a number of design principles for educational games that may improve students' motivation to learn. The main contribution of this thesis is a novel approach to serious game design, namely envisioning play and learning as a restructuring practice. This change of perspective, from a formal game design approach (focused on rules and regulations) towards a more activity centered approach (focused on process and style), may help designers to leverage the motivational potential of games, in order to make education more engaging to students."
"The high cost of launching resources from the Earth's surface is a significant barrier to future long-
duration human space exploration. A future resource economy in space may allow resource production,
processing, storage, and transportation at distributed locations, but will have many stakeholders with var-
ied and potentially competing objectives. Simulation games provide a medium for communication and
learning richer than papers or linear presentations by combining the technical capabilities of simulation
models with human interaction. Building on technology powering military wargames, federated simulation
architectures such as HLA-Evolved use independently-developed simulation models connected over a dis-
tributed network of computers. This paper presents an approach for developing a multi-player simulation
gaming environment where human players take on roles of organizations or government agencies within
scenarios designed to address the design and operation of a resource economy in space. The game design
addresses the number of players, time advancement, level of abstraction, scenario selection, and other de-
cisions based on past simulation games in the domains of military-political, educational, disaster response,
and business-management games. Future research will focus on evaluating game executions to analyze
human decision-making under various scenarios. Quantitative analysis of decisions using game logs com-
bined with qualitative analysis of interviews and surveys will contribute to strategies for a future resource
economy in space."
"Strokes are a leading cause of death and disability and have been described as a "worldwide epidemic" [5]. Strokes cause disability, partial paralysis and leave up to 85% of their victims with some form of motor impairment. Stroke rehabilitation starts as soon as possible and involves repetitive movement which people find repetitive and boring. A study [1] has found that as few as 31% of people complete their exercises as recommended. Adding to this the high cost of one on one therapy and transport to see specialists, stroke rehabilitation is a major problem. Games have been trialed for stroke rehabilitation to increase patient motivation and reduce costs. This literature review aims to find out to what extent games have therapeutic value and further, what characteristics make a good game for stroke rehabilitation. We find that in order for a game to be successful it must be based on solid therapeutic principles as well as game design principles including "challenge" and "meaningful feedback". Different hardware and software can be used as long as it follows game design principles to encourage patients to perform therapeutic exercises. Games must also take into account the low morale of recent stroke victims and avoid discouraging beginners."
From the abstract: "The proposed methodology aims to
study the viability
of using a game that recreates a fire drill in a 3D
environment using Serious Games. The information
acquired through the player's performance
is very
valuable and will be later used
to implement an artificial
population. A sample of 20
subjects was selected to test
the application.
Preliminary
results are promising,
showing that the exercise had a positive impact on
users. Moreover, the data acquired
is of great important
and will be later
used to demonstrate the possibility of
creating
an artificial population based on human
behaviour."
Abstract: "following paper presents an experimental study. In the study a course for Basic Life Support training has been
evaluated and two game design patterns have been applied to the course. The hypotheses evaluated in this paper
relate to game design patterns that have been used for learning functions, expected to enhance the learning
outcome and user experience. An experimental design has been carried out in order to get insight about effects
of individual and combined game patterns in a Basic Life Support course. Based on the according educational
objectives, the effects of two different game design patterns relevant for learning (a timer pattern and a score
pattern) have been evaluated. This game was prototypically developed targeting the application on the
healthcare domain (basic life support). The results show a significant interaction effect of the two patterns on the
learning gain, as well as a strong covariate influence of the learners' age."
Abstract: "People with motor disabilities have a limitation or a loss of capacity carrying out
activities considered as normal for human beings. This may incline the relationship
with the society and thus it is essential for these people to undergo therapeutic
treatments. However, rehabilitation is a tedious process that often fails due to that
patients drop treatment. For this reason, this thesis investigates if music in a serious
game for rehabilitation can make the experience to become more engaging and,
accordingly, whether positive experiences from playing such a game can encourage
the rehabilitation process of a patient i.e. to make the rehabilitation process less
tedious for the patient. The results, based on a pilot study conducted in a
rehabilitation center, indicates that this is the case and further research on the matter
is suggested."
Abstract: "As computational capability continues to increase, the tools
available to designers of digital games have become more robust, allowing
high fidelity graphics and sound to become common, and resulting
in a market saturated with kinetic-based games. However, consumers
and educators are eschewing such games for more complex and
immersive stories, the creation of which has proven a difficult mountain
for designers to climb. A central reason is that story-immersive
games rely on dialogue between the player character (PC) and nonplayer
characters (NPCs), the writing and coding of which is time consuming
and inefficient. This paper documents the author's experiences
with complex, branching dialogue systems, and examines the possibility
of system automation through natural language processing (NLP)."
FORT WALTON BEACH - Video games are not just for fun any longer. A local business recently received a contract to develop a new serious video game for the Army. Goldrush77.com/Caruth Central Business Advisory & Education Service, which recently moved into a new 3,000-square-foot office on Mar Walt Drive, was contracted to develop instructional design programs and a video game for training purposes. ... One of the main purposes of the game will be to help the Army work with groups that may not want its help for fear of retaliation from enemies. (20 new positions available)
Abstract: "Adolescent obesity is an increasing challenge, and
pervasive social health games hold much promise for promoting
sustained healthy behaviors.
Researchers and d
esigners of
these
systems
have many potential theories and existing best practices
at their disposal.
Our study, grounded in participatory design,
shows which ones matter
-
both for pervasive social health games
and within the cultural context of a community
we studied over
the course of three years.
We worked with 112 US middle school
students from a lower
-
income community in a series of
participatory design exercises focused on social rewards for
everyday physical activity.
In our analysis, we
discuss
design
implications in four key areas
: social presence, gender effects,
incentives and competition. We show how these themes
manifested in students' designs and why they
were
particularly
important to our participa
nts. We then use
our findings to
suggest
design strategies for youth
-
focused pervasive social health
games."
Abstract: "The CHERMUG project aims to develop a digital game to support
students in acquiring methodological and statistical expertise. This
deliverable describes a literature review which was carried out to
identify papers which describe digital games which aim to teach
research methods and statistics. Search terms included varied
terms for digital games, terms relevant to the twin goals of games
for learning and engagement and terms for methodological and
statistical knowledge. Search terms identified 38 papers which
were considered relevant. The literature review confirmed that
there are relatively few papers describing the use of games for
teaching research methods and statistics and even fewer which
carried out rigorous evaluations of their success, although several
e-learning applications and animations to teach research methods
and statistics were identified as well as papers looking at how
statistics should be taught."