Sun Ming-Xi, Zhao Zhi-Feng, Liu Huan
School of Arts, Soochow University, Suzhou, China.
Front Public Health. 2025 May 14;13:1532603. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1532603. eCollection 2025.
Existing research indicates that life review is a crucial means of enhancing intergenerational communication. However, how to effectively facilitate this process through gamification in family settings remains unclear. This study explores how metaphorical life games can promote communication between older adults and adolescents during life review activities, highlighting the relationship between dialogue themes and game design elements that encourage meaningful interaction.
We played a commercial game by recruiting 24 pairs of family members to play together. Younger partners asked older participants about their relevant memories during the game. The experimental data were analyzed inductively based on thematic analysis.
This study identified the effectiveness of life review through metaphorical games in facilitating communication in intergenerational family relationships by three core mechanisms: communication climate creation, symmetrical intergenerational interaction, and metaphorical expression elaboration. Intergenerational family engagement in metaphorical life games can effectively improve mutual communion and provide game design inspiration for digital games that support intergenerational life review. These findings offer new insights into life metaphor game design strategies and the mechanisms that enhance intergenerational communication.
现有研究表明，生活回顾是加强代际沟通的关键手段。然而，如何在家庭环境中通过游戏化有效地促进这一过程仍不明确。本研究探讨了隐喻生活游戏如何在生活回顾活动中促进老年人与青少年之间的沟通，强调了对话主题与鼓励有意义互动的游戏设计元素之间的关系。
我们招募了24对家庭成员一起玩一款商业游戏。在游戏过程中，年轻的一方询问年长的参与者他们的相关记忆。实验数据基于主题分析进行归纳分析。
本研究通过三个核心机制确定了通过隐喻游戏进行生活回顾在促进代际家庭关系沟通方面的有效性：营造沟通氛围、对称的代际互动以及隐喻表达的阐述。代际家庭成员参与隐喻生活游戏可以有效地改善相互交流，并为支持代际生活回顾的数字游戏提供游戏设计灵感。这些发现为生活隐喻游戏设计策略以及加强代际沟通的机制提供了新的见解。
