Wehbe Rina R, Whaley Colin, Eskandari Yasaman, Suarez Ally, Nacke Lennart E, Hammer Jessica, Lank Edward
Human Computer Interaction for Social Good (HCI4GOOD), Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
Methods Group, Human Computer Interaction Lab, Cheriton School of Computer Science, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
JMIR Serious Games. 2022 May 19;10(2):e21376. doi: 10.2196/21376.
Although in many contexts unsuccessful games targeting learning, social interaction, or behavioral change have few downsides, when covering a sensitive domain such as mental health (MH), care must be taken to avoid harm and stigmatization of people who live with MH conditions. As a result, evaluation of the game to identify benefits and risks is crucial in understanding the game's success; however, assessment of these apps is often compared with the nongame control condition, resulting in findings specifically regarding entertainment value and user preferences. Research exploring the design process, integrating field experts, and guidelines for designing a successful serious game for sensitive topics is limited.
The aim of this study is to understand which elements of game design can guide a designer when designing a game for sensitive topics.
To carefully probe the design space of serious games for MH, we present Above Water (AbW), a game targeting the reduction of stigma surrounding MH, now in its second iteration. The game, AbW, serves as a consistent research probe to solicit expert feedback. Experts were recruited from a range of topic domains related to MH and wellness, game design, and user experience.
By using this deployment as a research probe, this study demonstrates how to synthesize gained insights from multiple expert perspectives and create actionable guidelines for successful design of serious games targeting sensitive topics.
Our work contributes to a better understanding of how to design specialized games to address sensitive topics. We present a set of guidelines for designing games for sensitive subjects, and for each guideline, we present an example of how to apply the finding to the sample game (AbW). Furthermore, we demonstrate the generalizability to other sensitive topics by providing an additional example of a game that could be designed with the presented guidelines.
尽管在许多情况下，针对学习、社交互动或行为改变的非成功游戏几乎没有负面影响，但当涉及心理健康（MH）等敏感领域时，必须小心避免对患有MH疾病的人造成伤害和污名化。因此，评估游戏以识别其益处和风险对于理解游戏的成功至关重要；然而，这些应用程序的评估通常与非游戏对照条件进行比较，从而得出关于娱乐价值和用户偏好的具体结果。探索设计过程、整合领域专家以及为敏感主题设计成功的严肃游戏的指导方针的研究有限。
本研究的目的是了解游戏设计的哪些元素可以在为敏感主题设计游戏时指导设计师。
为了仔细探究针对MH的严肃游戏的设计空间，我们展示了《浮出水面》（AbW），这是一款旨在减少围绕MH的污名化的游戏，现在是第二代。游戏AbW作为一个一致的研究探针，以征求专家反馈。专家们从一系列与MH和健康、游戏设计以及用户体验相关的主题领域中招募。
通过将这种部署用作研究探针，本研究展示了如何综合从多个专家视角获得的见解，并为针对敏感主题的成功严肃游戏设计创建可操作的指导方针。
我们的工作有助于更好地理解如何设计专门的游戏来处理敏感主题。我们提出了一套针对敏感主题设计游戏的指导方针，并且对于每个指导方针，我们都给出了一个如何将该发现应用于示例游戏（AbW）的示例。此外，我们通过提供一个可以按照所提出的指导方针设计的游戏的额外示例，展示了对其他敏感主题的可推广性。
