Overcoming the Barriers to Uptake: A Study of 6 Danish Health-Based Serious Games Projects

Overcoming the Barriers to Uptake: A Study of 6 Danish Health-Based Serious Games Projects

Damian Brown
Copyright: © 2013 |Pages: 9
DOI: 10.4018/ijgbl.2013070101
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Abstract

Serious gaming for health benefits is moving out of the realm of being potentially interesting, and the authors are starting to see a growing maturity in the field. This study of six serious gaming projects based either wholly or partly in Denmark investigates the changes taking place in the healthcare area based on experiences with serious gaming projects, the likely development of the field, and the lessons which have been learned in the area of designing to overcome barriers which exist at various levels and throughout the delivery chain. This is done from the perspective of developers and service providers, primarily using interview and game analysis techniques. The results indicate a growing maturity amongst service providers in a number of key areas, such as understanding of the most appropriate uses of games, designing for usability, and a better understanding of the process of making a successful game for health. There is a clear expectation that games will continue to diversify and penetrate the health space, while at the same time many are looking to developments in the United States as a primary driver for uptake in Europe. There are high hopes for the mobile/app area, and a number of interesting cross-disciplinary initiatives are identified.
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Methodology

The study pursued three main avenues of investigation. Serious Games Interactive operates a project post-mortem as part of its standard production procedure. The procedure results in standardised document in which the production team (project manager, developers, designer, and artists) reflect of the strong and weak points of the product. We revisited these post mortem templates for all health projects and reflected on the contents from the new perspective of more time having passed since the project ended.

A survey of users and service providers was designed and interviews conducted by telephone and Skype calls. The number of respondents was low enough that the few statistical oriented questions have been omitted from the results below. The remaining qualitative areas were retained. The questions were as follows:

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