Adopting Best Practices from the Games Industry in Development of Serious Games for Health

Ushaw, G; Davison, R; Eyre, J; Morgan, G

doi:10.1145/2750511.2750513

Adopting Best Practices from the Games Industry in Development of Serious Games for Health

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Gary Ushaw, Dr Rich Davison, Professor Janet Eyre, Professor Graham Morgan ORCiD

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Abstract

We describe how developers with extensive experience in the entertainment video game industry approach the creation of rehabilitative games. A key element a game for health shares with a game from the entertainment industry is the ability to engage over long periods of time: the longer a commercial game engages the more popular it becomes, improving its revenue; the longer a game for health is played the more extensive an intervention, improving patient outcomes. As such, having worked on a number of successful titles for over twenty years we explored transferring player engagement techniques in games for entertainment over to games for health. This we achieved in a series of rehabilitative games for different patient conditions and demographics. We present our findings as a number of design and implementation practices that bring a heightened sense of engagement and replay value to games for patients that do not distract from the main health benefit.