For Whom the Games Toll: A Qualitative and Intergenerational Evaluation of What is Serious in Games for Older Adults

Abstract

The aim of this study was to engage older adults in discussions about digital serious games. Using a qualitative exploratory approach, we report observations from more than 100 h of conversations with individuals in the age range 65-90, in a study entitled "Finding better games for older adults" (June 2017-December 2019). Phase 1 (19 older participants, 3 young research students) involved conversations around a quantitative study of cognitive benefits of digital playing (minimum 6 h/person). Phases 2 and 3 involved a focus group in the form of a community class (10 weeks, 2 h per meeting), involving introduction to digital game genres, playing, and discussing motivations and obstacles for current and future play. Cognitive stimulation, emotional distraction and physical therapy were initially stated as the motives for game play. However, with growing familiarity and voluntary exchanges of personal stories between older and younger participants, the cultural significance of the medium of game (especially with story-telling and VR technology) became more important to older adults. More than mechanical inaccessibility, lack of access to the cultural discourse about games presents barriers for older adults. To create a safe, comfortable and accessible space for intergenerational learning and play is of primary importance both for users and designers, should serious games be considered for the future of digital care.

What Media Helps, What Media Hurts: A Mixed Methods Survey Study of Coping with COVID-19 Using the Media Repertoire Framework and the Appraisal Theory of Stress (Preprint)

“…In other words, the appraisal of media in relation to individual's needs motivated their approach to passive viewing but led to active avoidance and filtering of the negative content out of one's life. This is consistent with a common finding in media studies that choice and self-determination can affect the evaluation of the situation and perceived satisfaction with media [6,14,[33][34][35].…”

Double-Bind of Recruitment of Older Adults Into Studies of Successful Aging via Assistive Information and Communication Technologies: Mapping Review

“…Among the general concerns expressed by older adults are fear of reducing the complexity of human experience with machine learning and artificial intelligence [50], fear of misinformation [51], fear of stigma [52,53], fear of surveillance [54,55], fear of losing control over their lives [56], and general technostress [39,[57][58][59][60]. Of course, these concerns are not specific to older adults, and research suggests that there is a significant pushback against the notion of assumption that older adults are either unwilling or incapable of technology adoption [39,40,61,62].…”

Model-Driven in Serios Games and Serious Games with User-Centered Design in the Last Decade: A Review

“…The increasing familiarity and age ranges play an important role in this type of classification. In most of the works it is concluded that the creation of a safe, comfortable and accessible space for learning must be considered for serious games, as a valuable tool for learning [35], [41]- [43] Most of the research presented a model-driven engineering that helps serious game developers with tools that reduce development times and abstraction of concepts for serious games. Considering that a video game developer does not know the concepts that a serious game must have incorporated so that the users have an experience with playability.…”