The tremendous growth in the serious games market presents the opportunity to help people learn through playing games. Defying Disaster is a 2D side scroller serious game designed to teach people how to prepare for and handle an earthquake. Players do a series of mini games that provide earthquake survival tips while interacting with a larger world after an earthquake disaster. An evaluation with thirty people compared learning disaster knowledge through reading materials versus playing games. The results show people learn better through playing Defying Disaster than reading materials.

The tremendous growth in the serious games market presents the opportunity to help people learn through playing games. Defying Disaster is a 2D side scroller serious game designed to teach people how to prepare for and handle an earthquake. Players do a series of mini games that provide earthquake survival tips while interacting with a larger world after an earthquake disaster. An evaluation with thirty people compared learning disaster knowledge through reading materials versus playing games. The results show people learn better through playing Defying Disaster than reading materials.

The tremendous growth in the serious games market presents the opportunity to help people learn through playing games. Defying Disaster is a 2D side scroller serious game designed to teach people how to prepare for and handle an earthquake. Players do a series of mini games that provide earthquake survival tips while interacting with a larger world after an earthquake disaster. An evaluation with thirty people compared learning disaster knowledge through reading materials versus playing games. The results show people learn better through playing Defying Disaster than reading materials.

No / The use of serious games and gamification to promote learning has a long history. More recently, serious games and gamification have been used in clinical settings to promote treatment and recovery. Yet there is little evidence to support their use with populations that experience serious mental illness. A scoping review was used to answer the following research question, What is the current state of knowledge about how games and gamification are used to promote treatment of serious mental illness? Scoping reviews clarify, define, and develop conceptual boundaries within a topic area. Twenty studies were identified and reviewed by using thematic content analysis. A range of game types, formats, and technology were assessed. Six themes emerged from analysis. Serious games and the use of gamification to promote treatment have potential to engage persons with serious mental illness in game content and promote treatment outcomes. Game design that supported clear instruction, a coherent narrative, a smooth interface between mechanics and play, and service user involvement early in the process of game design were important for the successful promotion of engagement and learning. Games reviewed offered the opportunity for problem solving, collaboration, and goal-oriented activity that supported the delivery of therapeutic outcomes. The use of serious games and gamification to promote treatment of serious mental illness had high levels of feasibility and acceptability among both users and providers. The potential treatment value of games, however, is dependent on key features related to the games’ design, operation, and rationale.

Educational systems can benefit from Virtual Reality’s (VR) ability to support experiential learning. In particular, VR based games, especially role-playing serious games (RPGs), can promote learning through the simulation of various educational scenarios. This thesis proposes an immersive VR-RPG to educate players about the behavior of honeybees. The player adopts the role of a honeybee and experiences a virtual world mimicking the real one from the honeybee’s perspective. Unlike most studies in educational VR, we assess the impact of immersion on knowledge gain by testing the players’ knowledge on the subject before, immediately after, and one week following the use of the system. We also compare the proposed system with both a conventional and a desktop VR-RPG approach. The results indicate that students significantly gained knowledge in all methods compared to the pre-test. We found that the immersion level for both tested VR-RPGs did not have a significant effect on learning. However, the study showed an improvement in knowledge retention for the desktop VR-RPG users compared to those of the conventional method. Moreover, the results revealed that users of the immersive and desktop VR-RPGs were more motivated and engaged compared to those of the conventional method.

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Master of Arts / Journalism and Mass Communications / Soontae An / This study aims to investigate effects of external aid that can enhance motivation and performance of serious game playing to maximize learning effects. Based on self-determination theory, two types of rationales, intrinsic goal framing and extrinsic goal framing, were examined to know which message type is effective. Also, individual’s level of issue involvement was tested as a moderating variable. To investigate the effects of goal framing on motivation and moderating effects of involvement, this study designed a 2x2 (goal framing x involvement) between subjects with 120 middle school students in Korea. Three procedures involved for the experiment: 1) receiving message for manipulating involvement and goal framing 2) Playing actual serious game, and 3) answering survey questionnaire. Overall, providing intrinsic goal before a serious game was more effective to increase both motivation and performance than presenting extrinsic goal. However, there was no main effects and interaction effect in terms of issue involvement.

<p>Arbetets syfte är att studera om en ansats baserad på serious gaming kan göra ett datorbaserat träningsverktyg mer självständigt och mer motiverande för användaren.  I detta arbete beskrivs erfarenheterna från en fallstudie där ett speciellt träningsverktyg, Eco₂Trainer, utvärderades med hjälp av användartest. Eco₂Trainer är ett träningsverktyg för sparsam körning med buss. Träningen görs framför en dator med en ratt och pedaler. Arbetets syfte är att med hjälp av serious gaming göra Eco₂Trainer självständig och mer motiverande för användaren. Arbetet baseras på ett uppdrag av StageIT AB och innefattar flera intressanta och aktuella delar. Serious gaming är en aktuell ansats som lämpar sig bra för just detta projekt och även psykologiska faktorer som driver en tv- och datorspelare generellt och hur dessa gynnsamma faktorer kan implementeras i ett träningsverktyg som Eco₂Trainer beskrivs. Arbetet innefattar litteraturstudier men också användarstudier i form av två användartest med personer i målgruppen. Under användartesten gjordes observationer och frågeformulär besvarades av testdeltagarna. All information samlades ihop och analyserades för att sedan användas för vidare utveckling. Resultatet av arbetet blev en ny version av Eco₂Trainer som bygger på ett upplägg baserat på serious gaming. Det nya upplägget testades i ett andra användartest och fick gott betyg av deltagarna. Eco₂Trainer visade sig vara självständig och testdeltagarna var motiverade och tyckte det var underhållande. Slutsatsen är därför att projektet har lyckats uppnå sina mål och varit med och skapat en produkt som kan bidraga till en mer miljömedveten framtid.</p> / <p>Eco₂Trainer is a tool for practicing Ecodriving, developed for busses. In front of a computer screen, with a steering wheel and pedals the training is performed. This method has advantages compared to practicing Ecodriving in a vehicle. No CO₂discharge, no exhaust fumes and no fuel expenses makes Eco₂Trainer a tool of today. Making Eco₂Trainer more independent and motivating for the user is the purpose of this paper. The project is an assignment for StageIT AB and contains interesting and current topics. Environmental matters are the background of the whole Eco₂Trainer project. Serious gaming is another current subject that is brought up and adapt to the project as well as the psychology behind what makes a videogame player, play on. The paper includes literary studies and user studies. The result of this project is a new version of Eco₂Trainer were the structure is based on serious gaming. The new version of Eco₂Trainer was well liked at the last user test and therefore the conclusion is that the project was successful. The test also shows that the project reaches its goals and helped creating a tool for a more aware future.  </p>

Inactivity and sedentary behavioural patterns among children contribute greatly to a wide range of diseases including obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. It is also associated with other important health effects like mental health issues, anxiety, and depression. In order to reduce these trends, we need to focus on the highest contributing factor, which is lack of physical activity in children’s daily lives. 'Exergames' are believed to be a very good solution in promoting physical activity in children. Such games encourage children to engage in physical activity for long periods of time while enjoying their gaming experience. The purpose of this thesis is to provide means of directing child behaviour in a healthy direction by using gaming enhancements that encourage physical exertion. We believe that the combination of both exercising and learning modalities in an attractive gaming environment could be more beneficial for the child's well-being. In order to achieve this, we present an adaptive exergaming system, the "ExerLearn Bike", which combines physical, gaming, and educational features. The main idea of the system is to have children learn about new objects, new language, practice their math skills, and improve their cognitive ability through enticing games and effective exercise. Three games have been incorporated to provide children with various educational benefits. The system has personalized features that allow guardians to customize the learning content, skill level, and required physical activity to meet their child’s needs. A stationary bike is used as a gaming controller to encourage children to undertake daily aerobic exercise. A modular design approach was adopted so that it is possible to use any stationary bicycle as an input interface by simply attaching a number of devices to it. This thesis provides detailed information about the design requirements, the design model, the proposed system and its related hardware components, the design and development of the gaming software, and the qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the system’s performance.

Persuasive attitude changing games are a growing genre and a powerful tool when wanting to reach out and affect the opinion and attitude of larger groups in society. But how well do persuasive games actually work and can they be improved further? This article studies persuasive computer games and comes up with the proposal of using the Multiple Identification Theory, an established model for attitude change as a foundation for designing persuasive games. By analyzing every step of the MIT and translating it into the field of digital games, key concepts have been identified and proposed as guidelines for future development of persuasive games. In addition an analysis of existing persuasive games have been made, with the aim to study how well they meet the criteria of the MIT and determinate whether they could have improved by using it or not.