The following chapter will address the use of gamification (specifically serious games), as well as its results and conditions of use, as an assessment and intervention tool for people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia diagnosis. These games are effective for cognitive skills, such as attention, memory, executive functions, and speed processing. Besides this, physical (related to motor coordination and movement), social, psychological, and emotional (related to motivation, anxiety, depression, and stress) skills can be improved by serious games. It will be considered the contexts of the use of different games, such as Episodix, Panoramix, and some other games that are applied as serious games, like exergames. Besides, it will be also referred the different platforms associated with these games, such as mobile applications, videogames, virtual reality, and augmented reality.
TopGamification For Dementia And Mci
Taking into consideration Gamification, this term refers to “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (Alsawaier, 2018; Sailer et al., 2017; Sardi et al., 2017). The idea of this concept is to use the game aspects in real life situations, in order to improve the motivation and performance in a specific activity. Gamification is being used in different areas such as health, marketing, education, social network and environmental protection. Even though Gamification is being more used nowadays, a limitation that its evidence still has is that it wasn’t studied sufficiently until now (Sailer et al., 2017). Serious Games in the last years have become a matter of notice in various subjects, such as education, healthcare, marketing, and training (Manera et al., 2017; Zucchella et al., 2014). It must be referred that Gamification and Serious Games are different concepts that can have similarities, however, Gamification focuses on games elements, while as Serious Games focuses on the use of the system of gaming to achieve the goals wanted (Sanmugam, 2014).
Gamification is a plus when being used because it promotes the acquisition of knowledge and stimulates the brain, while promoving the social integration, auto-satisfaction, self-esteem and pride. These facts were appealing to the healthcare because Gamification has good results with the lack of adherence in treatments and the increase in the healthcare costs (Sardi et al., 2017).
Noticing Serious Games in the healthcare, it is important to mention, that some Serious Games refer to the term of computer games that are meant to be used in the health domain (Manera et al., 2017; Zucchella et al., 2014). This term can also be used for games that were made and designed with no recreational purpose (Sardi et al., 2017). They are a novel intervention strategy that focuses on applying games aspects to healthcare and that can be used as a tool for assessments, rehabilitation, and stimulation (Manera et al., 2017). It is known that gamified interventions are efficient because they work with various types of rewards, being some of them the scores, the achievements/badges, the likes, the animated feedback (Lewis et al., 2016).
Considering that games can potentially assess a variety of factors associated with diseases such as MCI and dementia, by keeping individuals active and stimulated, while potentially slowing the rate of cognitive decline (Tong, Chan & Chignell, 2017). Considering the cognitive-enrichment hypothesis (that was mentioned before), a video game used as a Serious Game can be utilized as an enriched environment, because it involves physical exercise while using entertaining aspects (Ben-Sadoun et al., 2016). Besides this, Serious Games are also able to enhance cognitive functions and neuroplasticity at any age (Ben-Sadoun et al., 2016; Kühn et al., 2014). The cognitive function stimulated by the videogame depends on the type of the game (Ben-Sadoun et al., 2016).
Taking into account the game design, it must have the characteristics of the target group. The games that already exist strive towards community and interaction goals so that the older person can collaborate with their peers to achieve the goal that they might have in common. Besides this, it is also important that the game makes the elderly feel empowered about their healthcare and that they can control the system (Groznik & Sadikov, 2019). It is to notice that the games should not have a competitive environment nor make comparisons between the users because if someone is having lower scores than the peers, it might harm the motivation and can trigger negative emotions regarding health (Mora et al., 2016). Besides this, they also should not display distracting elements because they might induce stress (Groznik & Sadikov, 2019; Mora et al., 2016).
Even if several studies prove that Serious Games have beneficial outcomes for older people and people with dementia, there still exist problems on using some Serious Games available, because of the design tools used in the game and the technological illiteracy that some people might have (Manera et al., 2015).