School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia.
Research and Development, Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Transfusion. 2024 Apr;64(4):585-589. doi: 10.1111/trf.17794. Epub 2024 Mar 19.
With a decrease in young and first-time donors, applying gaming elements to blood donation may provide a novel means of encouraging young donors. In August 2023, the online game DiabloIV launched the Blood Harvest in which players were encouraged to donate blood products in the United States to receive virtual in-game rewards. Given the novelty of this independent initiative, our aim was to capture Diablov IV players opinions of the Blood Harvest through thematically analyzing their online discourse related to this blood donation campaign.
We captured publicly available Twitter/X posts (n = 78) and engagement (n = 390) relevant to the Blood Harvest posted during and immediately after the campaign (October 13, 2023-November 27, 2023).
Using thematic analysis, we identified 5 themes relating to the Blood Harvest campaign: (1) Positive perceptions and community motivations to donate, (2) Negative perceptions of the initiative and online game, (3) Players' inability to donate and participate in the initiative, (4) Incentives and incentive comparisons, and (5) Benefiting from positive associations focusing on the reputational gain that may be accessed through promoting blood donation.
Situating a donation campaign in an established video game provides a novel opportunity to engage young donors. Through capturing public data, we provide a unique snapshot of how an online gaming community perceives and reacts to an independently initiated game-integrated blood donation campaign. This highlights key strengths of the approach as well as identifying potential risks for blood collection agencies.
随着年轻献血者和首次献血者的减少，将游戏元素应用于献血可能提供一种鼓励年轻献血者的新方法。2023 年 8 月，在线游戏《暗黑破坏神 IV》推出了“血猎”活动，鼓励美国的玩家献血以获得虚拟游戏内奖励。鉴于这一独立倡议的新颖性，我们的目的是通过对与该献血活动相关的在线讨论进行主题分析，来捕捉《暗黑破坏神 IV》玩家对“血猎”的看法。
我们捕获了在活动期间和活动结束后（2023 年 10 月 13 日至 11 月 27 日）发布的与“血猎”相关的公开的 Twitter/X 帖子（n=78）和互动（n=390）。
通过主题分析，我们确定了与“血猎”活动相关的 5 个主题：（1）积极的看法和社区捐赠动机；（2）对该倡议和在线游戏的负面看法；（3）玩家无法捐赠和参与该倡议；（4）激励措施和激励措施比较；（5）通过强调通过推广献血可以获得的声誉收益而受益的正面关联。
将献血活动置于成熟的视频游戏中提供了一个新颖的机会，可以吸引年轻的献血者。通过捕获公共数据，我们提供了一个独特的视角，了解在线游戏社区如何看待和对独立发起的游戏集成献血活动做出反应。这突出了这种方法的关键优势，同时也确定了血液采集机构的潜在风险。
