ABSTRACT
As mobile technologies and videogaming platforms are becoming increasingly prevalent in the realm of health and healthcare, so are the opportunities to use these resources to conduct behavioral interventions. The creation and empirical testing of game style interventions, however, is challenged by the requisite collaboration of multidisciplinary teams, including researchers and game developers who have different cultures, terminologies, and standards of evidence. Thus, traditional intervention development tools such as logic models and intervention manuals may need to be augmented by creating what we have termed “Game Playbooks” which are intervention guidebooks that are created by, understood by, and acceptable to all members of the multidisciplinary game development team. The purpose of this paper is to describe the importance and content of a Game Playbook created to aide in the development of a videogame intervention designed specifically for health behavior change in young teens as well as the process for creating such a tool. We draw on the experience of our research and game design team to describe the critical components of the Game Playbook and the necessity of creating such a tool.
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Acknowledgments
Preparation of this manuscript was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, R01 HD062080-01.
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Implications
Policy: Resources should be directed toward “games for health” that propose to develop a Game Playbook to guide the development, implementation, and testing of important health behavior change interventions.
Research: Game Playbooks are critical for the creation and empirical testing of videogame interventions because they help to ensure fidelity and reproducibility.
Practice: Game Playbooks may be a critical tool for individuals seeking to develop games for health to ensure that proven mechanisms of change are implemented into the game play.
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Duncan, L.R., Hieftje, K.D., Culyba, S. et al. Game playbooks: tools to guide multidisciplinary teams in developing videogame-based behavior change interventions. Behav. Med. Pract. Policy Res. 4, 108–116 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-013-0246-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-013-0246-8