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Leveraging Play to Promote Health Behavior Change: A Player Acceptance Study of a Health Game

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Virtual, Augmented Reality and Serious Games for Healthcare 1

Part of the book series: Intelligent Systems Reference Library ((ISRL,volume 68))

Abstract

Games have become a prominent medium for empowering individuals to manage their health. However, the use of games for health behavior change remains largely understudied; little is known about the mechanisms through which games can effectively engage players or how such mechanisms can affect behavior change. This chapter presents SpaPlay—a game designed to motivate players to adopt healthy eating and exercising behaviors. To evaluate the effect of the mechanisms embed in SpaPlay, we conducted a mixed-methods study to assess acceptance and adoption of the game. Using game telemetry data and corroborating it with repeated and weekly participant interviews, we document the extent to which rewards to incentivize healthy eating and exercise in the game remained effective. Based on our findings from our study of SpaPlay, we also tackle several challenges that remain inherent to designing pervasive health games that can impact long-term motivation and persistence for sufficiently bringing about health behavior change.

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Acknowledgements

This study was made possible through Tier-I grant from Northeastern University. We also extend our thanks to designers and developers at IgnitePlay, who built SpaPlay for their time and insight in crafting the questions for player interviews, in addition to providing access to the game telemetry data of users analyzed in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northeastern University, Boston, USA

    Shree Durga, Magy Seif El-Nasr, Mariya Shiyko, Carmen Sceppa & Pamela Naab

  2. IgnitePlay™, Vancouver, Canada

    Lisa Andres

Authors
  1. Shree Durga
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  2. Magy Seif El-Nasr
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  3. Mariya Shiyko
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  4. Carmen Sceppa
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  5. Pamela Naab
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  6. Lisa Andres
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shree Durga .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Digital Design Studio, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, United Kingdom

    Minhua Ma

  2. Faculty of Education, Science, Technology & Mathematics, University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia

    Lakhmi C. Jain

  3. Digital Design Studio, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, United Kingdom

    Paul Anderson

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Durga, S., El-Nasr, M.S., Shiyko, M., Sceppa, C., Naab, P., Andres, L. (2014). Leveraging Play to Promote Health Behavior Change: A Player Acceptance Study of a Health Game. In: Ma, M., Jain, L., Anderson, P. (eds) Virtual, Augmented Reality and Serious Games for Healthcare 1. Intelligent Systems Reference Library, vol 68. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54816-1_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54816-1_12

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