Health games – healthy in what way?

Abstract

Background: Games and gamification for health have become a trending topic. Due to a conceptual confusion about both health and games it can be difficult to use available know-ledge and research about games for health. Researchers may have different conceptions and prior knowledge about health, as well as about games’ potential contribution to health. Objective: The aim of this study was to render a review of perspectives and theories on health and learning in previously conducted studies of health games for children and adolescents. Methods: A systematic literature review searching in the major knowledge databases ERIC, PubMed and IEEE Xplore resulted in 40 articles published in scientific journals and 15 con-ference papers. The main key words used were games, theory, evaluation, children and design, all combined with health using Boolean operators. Results: The perspective of health that is mostly utilized in the studied articles is the pathogenic perspective – a disease-perspective with focus on prevention, rehabilitation, treatment and cure. For instance, the articles were about the desire to, by using games, promote physical activity and healthy eating habits in order to prevent obesity and diabetes. Most of the articles used, or at least discussed the advantages of using, one or more theory/theories in game-based interventions for children and adolescents. Most of the theories were behavioral/psychological theories and communication theories and models. Conclusions: Although a theory-based intervention for games for health is important, right science may not be enough for a successful intervention. The games have to be, among other things, fun and challenging. The games, and especially the game consoles, may preferably be tailored to fit the player’s physical abilities. To empower the children to intrinsic rewards, to increase autonomy and self-efficacy may enable and provide conditions to maintain the changed behavior.