Games Against Health

Linehan, Conor; Harrer, Sabine; Kirman, Ben; Lawson, Shaun; Carter, Marcus

doi:10.1145/2702613.2732514

Cited by 25 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Harry Brignull introduced Dark patterns when he cataloged, on darkpatterns.org, the different types of user interfaces that trick users into doing things that are not in the user's best interest [14]. Zagal et al, researched dark game design patterns, and these design patterns could be seen as questionable and unethical [62], e.g., Linehan et al developed dark design patterns for anti-health games [37]. The negative experiences for players are likely to happen without their consent and against their best interest.…”

Section: Dark Patterns and Gamificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Darkness of Gamification: You Want It Darker?

Nyström

2021

Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems

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Both academia and industry have shown an increased interest in gamification. To enhance the design and understanding of gamification there is a need to explore the negative aspects of the concept. Negative sides, "the darkness" of gamification is in this paper further explored. Through a systematic literature review the darkness of gamification is mapped and categorized into seven problem domains. This new information could help both industry and academia to acknowledge problem domains of gamification and develop better frameworks for designing gamification. It will also reignite the call to conduct more research about negative sides of gamification in order to improve the gamification experience.

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Section: Dark Patterns and Gamificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Darkness of Gamification: You Want It Darker?

Nyström

2021

Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems

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“…Linehan et al's concept of "Games Against Health" [35] argues that the Games for Health movement goes against the ideas of user-centric design, in that large communities of users clearly enjoy behaviors such as playing sedentary video games and eating junk food, and that in aiming to discourage such behaviors, designers are deliberately going against what users actually want. Even if we do not accept their view that trying to encourage healthy behaviors is patronizing "cultural imperialism", we need to approach claims that HCI work is aimed at societal good in a critical manner.…”

Section: Hci Must Promote a Culture Of Respect For Other Fieldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Misrepresentation of Health Research in Exertion Games Literature

Marshall

Linehan

2017

Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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HCI often requires scholars to build upon research from fields outside their expertise, creating the risk that foundational work is misunderstood and misrepresented. The prevailing goal of "exergames" research towards ameliorating obesity appears to be built on just such a misunderstanding of health research. In this paper, we analyse all citations to a single influential study, which has been extensively cited to justify research on exergames. We categorise the 375 citations based on whether they represent the findings of that study accurately or inaccurately. Our findings suggest that 69% of exergames papers citing this study misrepresent the findings, demonstrating a systematic failure of scholarship in exergames research. We argue that exergaming research should cease focusing on games as treatment for obesity, and that HCI publications should demand more critical and scholarly engagement with research from outside HCI.

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“…Dark patterns is when an intervention has an intended and negative outcome for users but a positive outcome for stakeholders (Brignull, 2013). Scholars have for example reported instances of dark patterns in game design causing negative experiences for players without their consent (Zagal et al, 2013;Linehan et al, 2015). An intervention can also have backfiring effects (Stibe and Cugelman, 2016;Nyström and Stibe, 2020) that occurs when the target audience adopts the opposite target behavior.…”

Section: Persuasive System Research and Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Congratulations! You are severely underweight—Exploring negative consequences of persuasive system design

Harr,

Öhlund

2023

Front. Comput. Sci.

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Personal health and wellbeing have grown as an object of study within HCI research and many individuals undergoing weight loss journeys use persuasive systems, such as weight loss apps, to guide them. These systems rely on various principles to persuade users toward their health goal and have in much research been considered having positive effects. There are however also parallel findings indicating unwanted effects. To explore the effects of persuasive system design, we conduct a longitudinal exploratory expert evaluation of 10 free weight loss tracking apps by emulating drastic weight loss for an extended period of time. The objective of the exploration is to unravel potential negative effects of using such systems. Our findings highlight risks of negative effects as some apps take a passive stance toward drastic weight loss, while others actively encourage it through design. We contribute to a growing strand of health related HCI research by mapping out the relation between design and negative consequences of persuasive system use.

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Games Against Health

Cited by 25 publications

References 18 publications

Exploring the Darkness of Gamification: You Want It Darker?

Exploring the Darkness of Gamification: You Want It Darker?

Misrepresentation of Health Research in Exertion Games Literature

Congratulations! You are severely underweight—Exploring negative consequences of persuasive system design

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