Health Games: Using Play to Prevent Illness and Promote Behavioral Change

2023-06-09 00:04:47

An important area of application for health games is prevention and behavioral change. If patients playfully learn more about their own illness or what a balanced diet looks like, this helps them to make their lives healthier or to become healthy in the first place.

Prevention in childhood

This digital support starts in childhood. An example of this is the free app “Kibalou”, which comes from the start-up battyRabbit. According to the developers, the game is aimed at children between the ages of five and seven and is intended to encourage players to lead a health-conscious lifestyle. For this they have to spend a day making important decisions for the main character Kibalou. Should she drive to the supermarket or walk? What’s on the table in the evening? Does she wash her hands before eating and how thoroughly does she brush her teeth before bed?

The young players have to guide the character Kibalou through his everyday life. © battyRabbit

For every health-conscious choice, the game rewards kids with stars, which they need to move up the ranks in nutrition, hygiene, and exercise.
This reward system is intended to ensure that the children have fun while playing and internalize the messages of the game.

And that obviously works like Koni Schaefer from the day-care center in Mainz-Laubenheim reports, in which the game was tested: “We are always surprised how much the children can integrate from the game scenes into their everyday life. So now many of the little ones wash their hands as a matter of course before eating or proactively ask for apples or bananas and completely forget that they still have a chocolate bar with them as provisions.”

Fewer emergency room visits thanks to diabetes game

While health-promoting games like Kibalou are aimed at children in general, there are also games designed specifically for children with chronic illnesses. This included “Packy & Marlon” from 1995. It was intended to give children with type 1 diabetes information about their condition and teach them to take their medication regularly. The children play as Packy and Marlon, two elephants with diabetes. Your camp was invaded by rats that stole all the food and medicine. Now it’s up to the elephants to bring back the supplies.

But at the same time, the animal heroes must also remember to control their blood sugar levels, take insulin, eat a balanced diet of three meals and three snacks a day, and deal with diabetes emergencies. Other animal characters in the game also ask Packy and Marlon questions about their diabetes from time to time, which players must answer correctly.

Elephants Packy and Marlon must answer questions about diabetes as they search for camp supplies. © 10min Gameplay, Raya Systems 1995, WaveQuest

The diabetic children who played Packy and Marlon have proven to benefit from this. A study from 1998 found that children had to go to the emergency room significantly less often because of diabetes because of gaming. The number of hospital visits they had reduced by 77 percent within three months. With the children who hadn’t played Packy and Marlon, however, everything had remained the same.

Shooting game against cancer

However, the goal of health games for sick children is not always that they learn to live with the disease. Instead, some diseases require a great deal of fighting spirit and determination to defeat them. Not an easy task, especially for children with cancer. But the shooting game “Re-Mission” is supposed to help them fight cancer.

The word fight is to be taken quite literally, because the video game is a third-person shooter-style shooting game. Players steer the nanobot Roxxi through the human body and must fight against certain cancer cells or infections such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Weapons such as the Chemoblaster, Radiation Pistol and Antibiotic Rocket are at their disposal for this purpose. At the same time, the children learn how different cancer therapies work and why it is so important to follow them closely.

This is having an effect: A clinical study was able to prove that children with cancer followed their therapy more conscientiously through “Re-Mission”. For example, they took their medication more reliably and regularly. This was shown, among other things, by the fact that a significantly higher concentration of medically prescribed drugs and chemotherapy preparations could be detected in their blood. In addition, the small patients were able to gain more knowledge about their illness through gaming and perceived their own quality of life as better.