Breaking the Ice with Group Flow: A Collaborative VR Serious Game for Relationship Enhancement

It is usually hard for unfamiliar partners to rapidly 'break the ice' in the early stage of relationship establishment, which hinders the development of relationship and even affects the team productivity. To solve this problem, we proposed a collaborative serious game for icebreaking by combining immersive virtual reality (VR) with brain-computer interface based on the team flow framework. We designed a multiplayer collaboration task with the theme of fighting COVID-19 and proposed an approach to improve empathy between team members by sharing their real-time mental state in VR;in addition, we propose an EEG-based method for dynamic evaluation and enhancement of group flow experience to achieve better team collaboration. Then, we developed a prototype system and performed a user study. Results show that our method has good ease of use and can significantly reduce the psychological distance among team members. Especially for unfamiliar partners, both functions of mental state sharing and group flow regulation enhancement can significantly reduce the psychological distance. © 2023 IEEE.

Conducting educational escape rooms during a global pandemic

PurposeEscape room-based learning is a new educational game-based learning trend which embeds student learning within an exciting escape room scenario. Ordinarily these educational escape rooms are in a table-top format which involves learners decoding clues together around a table. In the age of a global pandemic [coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)] with stringent social distancing and lock-downs, this normal game modality was not possible and so an alternate online approach was required. Thus, this paper aims to study escape room activities during global pandemics.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the authors outline how these escape room activities have been taken online, in an synchronous virtual environment and evaluate the student perception of these escape rooms, in contrast to previous cohorts of students who completed escape rooms together in person.FindingsThe authors' results indicate that although students enjoy the escape room game-based learning environment, the remote nature of the activity means the students take longer to solve the puzzles. The students are also more likely to struggle in the activity and find them less engaging than the in-person escape room challenges.Originality/valueAlthough educational escape rooms have been devised for a variety of subjects and can be run through several different modalities (table-top, full rooms and online), this study compares different modalities (online vs table-top) for identical puzzles taken over different cohorts of students.

The Influence of Serious Games and Gamification in University Students of English as a Foreign Language

Many careers have changed since COVID-19 appeared. In education in particular, the use of ICT tools increased in quite a disorderly manner, and the expansion of these tools opened new opportunities to update the ways of teaching and learning. ICT tools have been used for a long time in education, but they have often been used just as support tools without any academic purpose and without achieving their full potential. If we focus on teaching foreign languages, ICT has given us the opportunity to see and experience other cultures, as well as to live experiences close to a real-life immersion, facilitating the understanding of the use of language and giving everyone a chance to learn in context. This does not only include videos or music;nowadays, we can use and connect many resources including videogames, social media, and blogs, among others. And here is where we can find great potential for development. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to present the plan for a doctoral thesis and its status, as well as some notes on the context, main motivation, literature, and methodology to be used for creating resources that help improve the 21st-century teaching and learning experience. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Research protocol for a preliminary evaluation of a gamified tool for adult wellbeing

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to outline a research protocol for an initial investigation into the efficacy of an early-development gamified intervention ("Wellbeing Town”) designed with potential end-users with the aim of improving adult wellbeing. Rationale for the proposed research is discussed along with a summary of the planned methodological approach.Design/methodology/approachPreliminary evaluation of "Wellbeing Town” is proposed to begin using a quasi-experiment, pre- vs post-intervention repeated-measures design with follow-up. Evaluation of changes in self-reported wellbeing will be supplemented with an investigation into the extent of self-directed play between post-intervention and follow-up, and its implications for follow-up outcome.FindingsAs this paper represents a protocol for future evaluation, no data is reported presently. The authors present the protocol for data analysis.Originality/valueOnce concluded, this study represents an initial evaluation of a gamified tool for adult wellbeing designed in conjunction with potential end-users. Should the game elicit significant improvements to wellbeing when played, proposals for further evaluation and possible future scalability are presented.

Virtual Game Jam: Collaborative Pathway to Serious Games for Health

Game jams are collaborative competitions where participants make games from scratch within a short period of time. Occasionally, these games aim to promote meaningful learning outcomes by embedding functional knowledge into entertaining and engaging gameplay. We wanted to understand if a game jam during a global pandemic could be used as an effective method to facilitate a collaborative, multidisciplinary team's ability to design, develop, and implement a serious game on a health-related topic (i.e., COVID-19). We examined the 2020 game jam hosted by the National Academy of Sciences to evaluate one method to organize a serious virtual game jam and provide a roadmap for implementation using qualitative and quantitative data collection methods to evaluate its efficacy. In addition to identifying best practices and lessons learned from our tools and processes, our results demonstrate that a virtual game jam can in fact be a powerful tool for creating a scientifically sound, population-level, big picture-thinking serious game used for health education, facilitate collaborative multidisciplinary teams and be a practical learning experience for game jammers.

Development of Serious Games for the Rehabilitation of the Human Vertebral Spine for Home Care

With the occurrence of pandemics, such as COVID-19, which lead to social isolation, there is a need for home rehabilitation procedures without the direct supervision of health professionals. The great difficulty of treatment at home is the cost of the conventional equipment and the need for specialized labor to operate it. Thus, this paper aimed to develop serious games to assist health professionals in the physiotherapy of patients with spinal pain for clinical and home applications. Serious games integrate serious aspects such as teaching, rehabilitation, and information with the playful and interactive elements of video games. Despite the positive indication and benefits of physiotherapy for cases of chronic spinal pain, the long treatment time, social isolation due to pandemics, and lack of motivation to use traditional methods are some of the main causes of therapeutic failure. Using Unity 3D (version 2019.4.24f1) software and a personal computer with a webcam, we developed aesthetically pleasing, smooth, and attractive games, while maintaining the essence of seriousness that is required for rehabilitation. The serious games, controlled using OpenPose (version v1.0.0alpha-1.5.0) software, were tested with a healthy volunteer. The findings demonstrated that the proposed games can be used as a playful tool to motivate patients during physiotherapy and to reduce cases of treatment abandonment, including at home.

How do students see the role of serious games in education?

Grabbing and holding student attention was a big challenge even before the Covid- 19 era;however, the coronavirus and the obligatory digital education showed that new methods are needed to resolve these issues. One of them could be implementation of digital serious games. This paper presents the findings of a questionnaire about the feelings of students toward digital serious games. In all, 1755 answers were collected and analyzed and the results showed that most students do not shy away from using these kinds of video games in a classroom environment, although there are various concerns and key aspects educational professionals must consider. © 2022 Infonia. All rights reserved.

Games as Mediating Platforms in an Open and Digital World

The complexity of social interactions has been pointed out as challenges in studies on social development, education, cultural diversity, behavior change, and innovation. The COVID-19 pandemics highlighted important issues of our modern society, especially regarding emotional and psychological issues: humans as artificial beings disconnected from the planet, anxious for socialization, mainly through virtual worlds. Stress, anxiety, hopelessness and depression are sources of concern, while pleasure - a fundamental aspect for human life - loses space. We argue that our society needs to recover the pleasure which relies on the learning aspects of life situations as well as to rebuild the way we interact for social or work purposes. In this chapter, we propose as a challenge for the games research community, to face the sophistication that encompasses how to conceptualize, model, design, evaluate, and play games which can turn our actions in the world more playful. We primarily approach games as enablers and agents for work relations, social change and innovation in organizations, with a special look to the Brazilian context. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Serious Games and Gamification: Health Care Workers' Experience, Attitudes, and Knowledge.

OBJECTIVE: With the rapid advancement of digital technology due to COVID-19, the health care field is embracing the use of digital technologies for learning, which presents an opportunity for teaching methods such as serious games to be developed and improved. Technology offers more options for these educational approaches. The goal of this study was to assess health care workers' experiences, attitudes, and knowledge regarding serious games in training. METHODS: The convenience sample consisted of 223 participants from the specialties of internal medicine and psychiatry who responded to questions regarding sociodemographic data, experience, attitudes, and knowledge regarding serious games. This study used an ordinal regression model to analyze the relationship between knowledge, attitudes, and experiences and the idea or wish to implement serious games. RESULTS: The majority of healthcare workers were not familiar with serious games or gamification. The results show gender and age differences regarding familiarity and willingness to use serious games. With increasing age, the respondents preferred conventional and traditional learning methods to playful teaching elements; younger generations were significantly more motivated than older generations when envisioning using elements of serious games in the future. CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged the use of new technologies and digitalization. This study describes positive attitudes toward serious games, mainly in younger people working in health care. Serious games present an opportunity to develop new approaches for postgraduate medical teachings and continuing medical education.

Designing a Pseudo-Haptics Study for Virtual Anesthesia Skills Development

Pseudo-haptics refers to the simulation of haptic sensations without the use of haptic interfaces, using, for example, audiovisual feedback and kinesthetic cues. Given the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to online learning, there has been a recent interest in pseudo-haptics as it can help facilitate psychomotor skills development away from simulation centers and laboratories. Here we present work-in-progress that describes the study design of a pseudo-haptics for virtual anesthesia skills development. We anticipate this work will provide greater insight to pseudo-haptics and its application to anesthesia-based training. © 2022 IEEE.

Games as Mediating Platforms in an Open and Digital World

The complexity of social interactions has been pointed out as challenges in studies on social development, education, cultural diversity, behavior change, and innovation. The COVID-19 pandemics highlighted important issues of our modern society, especially regarding emotional and psychological issues: humans as artificial beings disconnected from the planet, anxious for socialization, mainly through virtual worlds. Stress, anxiety, hopelessness and depression are sources of concern, while pleasure - a fundamental aspect for human life - loses space. We argue that our society needs to recover the pleasure which relies on the learning aspects of life situations as well as to rebuild the way we interact for social or work purposes. In this chapter, we propose as a challenge for the games research community, to face the sophistication that encompasses how to conceptualize, model, design, evaluate, and play games which can turn our actions in the world more playful. We primarily approach games as enablers and agents for work relations, social change and innovation in organizations, with a special look to the Brazilian context. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Newbie at CUHKSZ: A Voxel Art Puzzle Game for Campus Orientation

Due to the COVID-19 epidemic prevention policy, many university freshmen are unable to visit their schools in person. As a remote campus orientation tool, we propose Newbie at CUHKSZ, a voxel art puzzle game, for the incoming students to explore The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHKSZ) in an interactive way. We crowd-sourced the digital model of the CUHKSZ campus and created Non-Player Characters (NPCs) as digital twins of our staffs in the virtual campus. Furthermore, we designed school traditions related puzzle tasks to lead an interactive campus tour and deliver humanistic values. The design of Newbie at CUHKSZ sheds light on a new way to engage the incoming students in a remote campus orientation event. © 2023 IEEE.

The untapped potential of Games for Health in times of crises. A critical reflection.

Given its promising role in public health to address hard to reach population groups, game-based interventions (i.e., Games for Health, G4H) have experienced growing interest in recent years. Therefore, it is surprising that they have played only a minor role during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, the aim of this paper is to reflect the opportunities and challenges of G4H especially during the pandemic but also with regard to future health crises. As commercial video games (i.e., those that primarily aim to entertain its users) were often used to deal with the containment measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, we call for greater cooperation with commercial game makers to distribute health-related messages via entertainment games. With regard to G4H we see a need to (i) strengthen the intervention theory underlying game-based applications, (ii) to enhance the appeal of games in order to maintain the interest of users in the long term, and (iii) to improve the evidence base using appropriate study designs. Finally, we argue for (iv) greater user involvement, both in terms of developing game-based approaches and as co-researchers in solving complex health problems.

Implementation of game-based training in oral rehabilitation of edentulous patients in an undergraduate dental course.

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease-19 dramatically changed the learning conditions of dental students, with restricted access to training sessions and clinical practice. The "Playdent" project proposed the integration of serious games (SGs) in the third-year curriculum, based on tailor-made scenarios questioning the first dental visit of edentulous patients, and examined whether training with the games would advance students' learning outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Test scores of 89 students, allocated either to a "test" group that accessed SGs during a 4-week test period in addition to conventional lectures or to a "control" group that benefited solely from conventional lectures, were measured before and immediately after the test period. The subsequent satisfaction of students was assessed in the "test" group. RESULTS: Scores obtained after the 4-week period significantly increased within the "test" group (11.1% ± 24.9%, p = 0.04, degree of freedom [df] = 30) while they did not change within the "control" group (p = 0.21, df = 57). Qualitative feedback expressed by students who played SGs during the 4-week period demonstrated that 71% of them rated the SGs as satisfactory and 91% of them judged the consistency of SGs content with lectures to be satisfactory. CONCLUSION: Game-based learning showed a positive impact on the learning outcomes of third-year students. Qualitative assessments provide insights into the pertinence of SGs offered in addition to traditional lectures of third-year complete denture courses. SGs may consolidate skills in oral rehabilitation acquired through traditional passive learning formats proposed in preclinical courses.

Impact of the state of alarm after COVID-19 on the habitual consumption of video games in primary schoolchildren

The health situation resulting from COVID-19 is affecting lifestyles starting from the earliest stages of life. Therefore, the aim was to analyse primary schoolchildren's habitual video game consumption after the end of the state of alarm caused by COVID-19. To this end, a cross-sectional study comprising 125 primary schoolchildren was designed. To measure their video game consumption, the Questionnaire on video game consumption habits was used. The Student's t-test revealed significant differences in all dimensions in favour of the boys (p < .001, for all). Additionally, those aged 11-12 years yielded higher scores in the degree of attraction to video games (p < .05), level of concern about video games (p < .05), and rate of habitual video game consumption (p < .05). In conclusion, the results of this study are in line with scientific literature, indicating greater video game consumption in boys and older schoolchildren.

Extended reality for mental health: Current trends and future challenges

Virtual and augmented reality have been used to diagnose and treat several mental health disorders for decades. Technological advances in these fields have facilitated the availability of commercial solutions for end customers and practitioners. However, there are still some barriers and limitations that prevent these technologies from being widely used by professionals on a daily basis. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a variety of new scenarios in which these technologies could play an essential role, like providing remote treatment. Disorders that traditionally had received less attention are also getting in the spotlight, such as depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder. Improvements in equipment and hardware, like Mixed Reality Head Mounted Displays, could help open new opportunities in the mental health field. Extended reality (XR) is an umbrella term meant to comprise Virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and augmented reality (AR). While XR applications are eminently visual, other senses are being explored in literature around multisensory interactions, such as auditory, olfactory, or haptic feedback. Applying such stimuli within XR experiences around mental disorders is still under-explored and could greatly enrich the therapeutic experience. This manuscript reviews recent research regarding the use of XR for mental health scenarios, highlighting trends, and potential applications as well as areas for improvement. It also discusses future challenges and research areas in upcoming topics such as the use of wearables, multisensory, and multimodal interaction. The main goal of this paper is to unpack how these technologies could be applied to XR scenarios for mental health to exploit their full potential and follow the path of other health technologies by promoting personalized medicine.

How a mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine works inside a Cell: A Virtual Reality Serious Game

Vaccine hesitancy and uptake have been important issues in controlling the current COVID-19 pandemic in many regions around the globe, but the increase in vaccination rates has been slow or even halted in some countries. Therefore, people who have hesitated in getting the vaccine need to be addressed. One driver influencing vaccination uptake is closing the knowledge gap among the public by equipping them with a deeper understanding of how a vaccine works inside our cells to activate the immune system and develop immunity. Viral immunology is highly conceptual and requires an appreciation of molecular biology in the cell. To give individuals an intuitive awareness of the operation of a mRNA-type virus vaccine for COVID-19, we designed and developed a Virtual Reality (VR) based serious game called 'Cell Traveler'. Through this innovative VR serious game, the player can control and interact with a sequence of critical real-life events inside a cell triggered by the injected mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. In this paper, we describe the prototype of the 'Cell Traveler'. We utilize the concepts of serious game to create an experience to encourage students and the public to develop deeper mRNA vaccine knowledge through a memorable and fun experience. © 2022 IEEE.

ARCoD: A Serious Gaming Approach to Measure Cognitive Distortions

Cognitive Distortion, defined as erroneous and in-accurate thoughts [4] can cause fatal mental impairment. Identifying the presence of cognitive distortions is the fundamental initiative to treat mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression. As a consequence of COVID-19 and the other changes in social aspects, there is an escalation in the number of patients with mental illness. Although there are abundant effective psychotherapy strategies available, a substantial number of people avoid them due to misconceptions and stigma. Serious games can be a feasible solution to purvey mental healthcare to a significant percentage of people. The availability of smartphones unveils the opportunity to provide therapeutic facilities via digital gaming. Technology like Augmented Reality with its interactive features, has unlocked numerous opportunities in the mental health domain. In this paper, we have remodeled our previously proposed game, ARCoD, accessible on smartphones to measure Cognitive Distortions. We hypothesized that, through this game, it is possible to assess the level of 5 different Cognitive Distortions (Arbitrary Inference, Catastrophizing, Black and White Thinking, Emotional Reasoning, and Labeling) in an individual playing the game. The experimental outcome demonstrates that the level of Cognitive Distortions assessed from the game is exceedingly similar to the measurement accumulated from an established scale-Cognitive Distortion Scale (CDS). © 2022 IEEE.

Examining the training and education potential of the metaverse: Results from an empirical study of next generation SAFe training

Restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic have forced many to seek alternative means of training and learning, which ended up with increasing investment in the notion of the metaverse. Metaverse is envisioned as the next iteration of the Internet in which the virtual and the real world are blended to materialize a highly immersive experience. Not surprisingly, perhaps, next-generation training and education systems are concerned with methods to integrate themselves into metaverse environments. In particular, participants are looking for more interactive and flexible training while maintaining a degree of educational content and high quality for their training plans and interactive workflows. In this paper, we conducted research to explore the role of metaverse in employee training. To this end, we utilized a variant of PlaySAFe (i.e., a 3D game) to investigate its metaverse adoption and usage. A qualitative design was adopted, using semistructured interviews to explore practitioners' experiences using the new version of PlaySAFe. After having it played in an industrial setting, we interviewed a group of software practitioners to compare the actual and expected features. This research has explored the pros and cons of using the current technologies for the practical groundwork of SAFe training. Findings from this research suggest that the metaverse holds the potential to deliver improved practical alignment in training and education programs, but that at the present time, practitioners expect more metaverse compatible features.

Immersive journalism in times of pandemic. Comparative study between newsgames and interactive journalistic narratives to report on Covid-19

This research studies the immersion techniques used by interactive narratives broadcast by the media and newsgames, hybrids of video games and journalism, when reporting on Covid-19 during the first year of the pandemic. From a comparative perspective, five journalistic pieces made by national and international newspapers and five serious games on Covid-19 have been analyzed, applying thirteen categories of a playful-narrative analysis, which have been gathered in groups focused on the story, the interaction, the realism, the points of view of the narrator and the recipient, as well as in the theme of the narrations. The results show that none of the techniques analyzed to study immersion in the story have stood out in journalistic publications, while in newsgames only factors typical of digital leisure have been used, such as interaction, the assumption of roles and the narrative experience. Despite the advantages it offers as a differentiating channel and to attract the audience in a context of overabundance of information, neither the media nor digital entertainment have taken advantage of immersion when reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic. © 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)