Chapter Preview
TopBackground
Digital games have become present artifacts in the life of most people with access to various forms of information and communication technologies (ICT’s), such as video game (VG) consoles, cell phones, computers, paid TV and tablets. In the ITCs world, the combination of acquiring knowledge while entertaining with fun activities has come to be known as digital game-based learning. The objective of digital game-based learning is to promote active learning to students using digital gaming. According to Abt (1970), digital game-based learning allows for life experiences to interact with knowledge facilitating even more the learning process instead of only convey knowledge in a abstract way as is now in formal education.
The oxymoron “serious games” is used to designate digital games in which goals go beyond playfulness. These games seek assimilation of concepts and attitudes based on experiments and simulations in the virtual world (Charsky, 2010). The ability of SG to reproduce life situations can be used as a tool in prevention, diagnosis and, as an aid for treatment of diseases. SG can also be used for the training of health care professionals through different venues including, but not limited to game simulations at home or in clinics, TeleHealth systems, game sensors, and others.
The focus of this chapter was to review and to discuss the applicability of SG on health promotion. The US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, Association for Computing Machinery and IEEE Xplore Digital Library, Google were searched using the key words health games, serious games applied to health, digital games, VG, health, treatment and rehabilitation. The websites specialized in serious games applied to health http://www.seriousgamesinstitute.co.uk were also used in this review of literature. Only games classified as serious and published studies that used DG applied to HP were included in this review. Games developed with the goal of promoting training for health care professionals, simulators of physiological systems, or software used in telemedicine for patients’ data evaluations were excluded from this review.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Serious Games: A physical and mental contest, played with digital tools involving story, art and software, where goals go beyond fun. They serve to teach, train, inform, memorize, develop skills and all aspects of education.
Health Promotion: Is a comprehensive social and political process of enabling people to increase control over the determinants of health and there by improve their health ( WHO, 1998 ). In this context, health is seen, therefore, as a way of life, not a goal.
Health Education: Would be learning opportunities, with the objective of disseminating information, motivate, develop skills and sense of self-efficacy in individuals, to adopt actions that promote their health ( WHO, 1998 ). It aims to develop in people a sense of responsibility as an individual member of a family and a community, to health both individually and collectively.
Game Based Learning: The process of learning, formally or not, mediated by games and mainly by the fun.
Chronic Conditions: Are health problems that require ongoing management lifelong. With cover an enormously broad category of what could appear on the surface as disparate health concerns as: persistent communicable disease (e.g., HIV/AIDS); noncommunicable diseases (e.g., cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes), certain mental disorders (e.g., Parkinson Disease, depression), and ongoing impairments in structure (e.g., amputations) ( WHO, 2011 ).
Serious Games Applied for Health: Are the digital games that try modifying the behavior, expanded of knowledge and improve the health care, may be directed to the prevention or disease management, professional training, acquisition of healthy habits, among other.
Video Game: Softwares developed for digital fun. The set of rules that aims to promote exciting challenge between real and virtual gamers, by manifold technologicals resources, usually executed in computers, video games’s consoles, cell phones, and others.