Serious Games for Health: Features, Challenges, Next Steps

Fran C. Blumberg, Lauren C. Burke, Celia Hodent, Michael A. Evans, H. Chad Lane, Jesse Schell

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

As articles in this journal have demonstrated over the past 3 years, serious game development continues to flourish as a vehicle for formal and informal health education. How best to characterize a "serious" game remains somewhat elusive in the literature. Many researchers and practitioners view serious games as capitalizing on computer technology and state-of-the-art video graphics as an enjoyable means by which to provide and promote instruction and training, or to facilitate attitude change among its players. We invited four distinguished researchers and practitioners to further discuss with us how they view the characteristics of serious games for health, how those characteristics differ from those for academic purposes, the challenges posed for serious game development among players of different ages, and next steps for the development and empirical examination of the effectiveness of serious games for players' psychological and physical well-being.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)270-276
Number of pages7
JournalGames for Health Journal
Volume3
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 1 2014
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Health(social science)
  • Rehabilitation
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

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