Out of context serious games: Transversal reutilization of games across healthcare domains

摘要

The use of serious games, those not intended for leisure, out of their intended context may have consequences for evoked engagement and for the facilitation of transversal reutilization of developed games. However, the effectiveness and usability of serious games out of their intended context must be questioned. Here, we present two case studies in virtual rehabilitation. In a first experiment, a classical leisure game (i.e. pong) is compared in its ability to propose a valid alternative to games specifically developed for virtual rehabilitation use in terms of compliance with principles required in motor rehabilitation such as movement repetition, feedback, task significance and motivation. The second experiment explores the complementary situation in which a virtual rehabilitation game set is exported as a plausible tool for the cognitive stimulation of elders. Not unexpectedly, our results suggest that transfer of games across realms is, in some cases, a feasible enterprise but their effectiveness and usability may be compromised. In particular, we found that importing pong to a virtual rehabilitation environment is not a valid alternative in the sense that it does not obey rehabilitation principles. However, exporting serious games across related domains, i.e. from virtual rehabilitation to cognitive stimulation, has encountered a high degree of acceptance by the receiving community of users, being perceived as useful and easy to use, and we further establish that this acceptance cannot be explained by expertise in using technology. Qualitative assessment of usersO responses points to the interaction interface as a co-responsible factor for this acceptance of the serious virtual environment. These findings may have consequences for the future development of serious games both in terms of reusing ideas and alerting about possible difficulties during the migration process.