The untapped potential of Games for Health in times of crises. A critical reflection

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Kevin Dadaczynski
  • Daniel Tolks
  • Kamil J. Wrona
  • Timothy Mc Call
  • Florian Fischer

Given its promising role in public health to address hard to reach population groups, game-based interventions (i.e., Games for Health, G4H) have experienced growing interest in recent years. Therefore, it is surprising that they have played only a minor role during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, the aim of this paper is to reflect the opportunities and challenges of G4H especially during the pandemic but also with regard to future health crises. As commercial video games (i.e., those that primarily aim to entertain its users) were often used to deal with the containment measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, we call for greater cooperation with commercial game makers to distribute health-related messages via entertainment games. With regard to G4H we see a need to (i) strengthen the intervention theory underlying game-based applications, (ii) to enhance the appeal of games in order to maintain the interest of users in the long term, and (iii) to improve the evidence base using appropriate study designs. Finally, we argue for (iv) greater user involvement, both in terms of developing game-based approaches and as co-researchers in solving complex health problems.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1140665
JournalFrontiers in Public Health
Volume11
Number of pages6
ISSN2296-2565
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28.02.2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 Dadaczynski, Tolks, Wrona, Mc Call and Fischer.

    Research areas

  • COVID-19, emergency situation, games for health, gamification, health inequalities, serious games
  • Health sciences
  • Psychology

Documents

DOI

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Globalization’s limits to the environmental state? Integrating telecoupling into global environmental governance
  2. The pace of life for forest trees
  3. Skill learning as a concept in life-span developmental psychology
  4. From the plurality of transdisciplinarity to concrete transdisciplinary methods
  5. The impact of auditor rotation, audit firm rotation and non-audit services on earnings quality, audit quality and investor perceptions: A literature review
  6. Note on the Lingen case
  7. Hidden in full view
  8. Values shift in response to social learning through deliberation about protected areas
  9. Cognitive and affective processes in multimedia learning
  10. Diversity as Polyphony
  11. Sampling
  12. Insect decline in forests depends on species’ traits and may be mitigated by management
  13. Initiative in work teams
  14. Analysis of Kinetic Dynamics of the Multipole Resonance Probe
  15. The promise and challenges of computer mouse trajectories in DMHIs – A feasibility study on pre-treatment dropout predictions
  16. Remaining time and opportunities at work: Relationships between age, work characteristics, and occupational future time perspective
  17. Balancing the Boundary
  18. Technological change and the dynamics of industries, theoretical issues and empirical evidence from Dutch manufacturing
  19. Umweltverträglichkeitsprüfung
  20. Calling and career preparation
  21. Recognizing Guarantees and Assurances of Non-Repetition
  22. Long-term drought triggers severe declines in carabid beetles in a temperate forest
  23. Die Welteislehre
  24. Conjectural variations equilibrium in a mixed duopoly