Serious Gaming for Behavior Change: The State of Play

Abstract

U n d e r s t a n d i n g a n d C h a n g i n g B e h a v i o r serious gaming for Behavior Change: the state of Play S erious gaming is often described as the use of digital gaming technology to address a specific set of learning objectives or behavioral goals. Such games seek to build on the increasingly pervasive role games play as an entertainment medium, providing an engaging and entertaining way of communicating educational content along with efficient behavior analysis. As Richard Lingard once said, "If you would read a man's Disposition, see him Game; you will then learn more of him in one hour, than in seven Years [of] Conversation." 1 In this sense, serious games hold great promise for behavior analysis of human players. Moreover, they can encourage positive behavior change in a playful and pleasant way-something games have sought to achieve in a variety of ways. Common is the central role the game plays as either a medium for conveying educational messages or for encouraging certain activities through game-based elements, such as competition or rewards. However, a significant challenge has been getting the players to apply the changed behavior in the real world. Pervasive computing can help overcome this gap, letting players at times learn the behavior in the environment in which it must be applied.Furthermore, although serious games show great application potential for individuals on the autistic spectrum or for other target groups that experience difficulties in human-to-human communication, current games for behavior change rarely address human-to-human interaction. This would require a holistic approach that takes into account behavioral cues from multisensory input-possibly including speech, video (facial expressions and gestures), and physiological sensors.In this light, we first examine the state of play in serious games, focusing on affective analysis-that is, the recognition and analysis of players' emotions. We then present two exemplary case studies from the context of teaching appropriate behavior in human-to-human interaction and consider how to exploit mobile computing for automatic, multimodal analysis of human behavior. Behavior analysis and FeedbackHere, we explore how knowledge transfer, gamification, and social learning can help induce behavioral change. Two unique traits of games make them particularly interesting as tools for analyzing and changing player behaviors. The first is their universal appeal and ability to reach certain demographics traditionally resistant to other forms of direct messaging or intervention, such as adolescents. The second Serious gaming guides targeted behavior change to improve behaviors in everyday living. This survey of the field focuses on two case studiesone game aims to improve the social behavior of autistic children, and the other helps migrants interact with locals.

Implementing an online pharmaceutical service using design science research

“…However, training provided on a web-platform with game-based learning, practicing with cases from daily activities, is a future possibility [59, 60]. Moreover, the social abilities that these professionals do have may provide the basis to improve the interaction experience with patients in a new online service [51, 61].…”

Serious games referring to the brewing industry – a case study

“…Są też głosy, że gry szkoleniowe (stanowiące jeden z rodzajów gier serio) nie spełniają warunku dobrowolności udziału w rozgrywce, tym samym nie powinny być nazywane grami (Łączyński, 2011, s. 72). Jednak z punktu widzenia zarządzania ludźmi w organizacjach wykorzystanie gier serio jawi się jako doskonała metoda szkoleniowa, pozwalająca w interesujący, nieszablonowy sposób przekazać istotne treści oraz jako narzędzie mające na celu wzrost zaangażowania uczestników szkolenia, motywując ich do zmiany zachowania w kierunku pożądanym przez pracodawcę (Ntsweng, Tan, 2016;Schuller, Dunwell, Weninger, Paletta, 2013).…”

Innovation in Energy: Dissemination of Energy Culture Via Serious Gaming

“…Furthermore, these procedures of implementing behavior modification have been criticized by some researchers because a specific level of training is required and these trainings are time consuming and the procedures are not practical in terms of aligning with real life. In contrast to behavior modification which is made through imposing or removing a certain stimulus to lead behavioral change, serious games are claimed to achieve same results by creating an engaging experience using the elements of game Moreover, serious games relate such habit changes to positive emotional feedback and encourage positive behavior change in a pleasant and playful way (Schuller et al, 2013) III. METHODOLGY Serious games can be of any genre, use any game technologies and be developed for any platforms (Kankaanranta et al, 2009).…”