Jörg Niesenhaus

Serious games for health: An empirical study of the game “Balance” for teenagers with diabetes mellitus

Abstract In addition to a broad range of different application areas, health games differ in the level of abstraction of the game’s message or goal and the way to achieve game benefits. Most games focus on teaching knowledge or prevention topics. Furthermore, some games focus on strengthening motivation of patients to attend a specific medication or to change their daily behavior in order to live healthier. In this paper we present the health game “Balance”, developed to optimize the self-management of teenagers with diabetes mellitus type-I. Two versions of the game were implemented: A version explicitly referring to diabetes and an implicit version of “Balance” with no diabetes content in order to reduce diabetes related reactance among juveniles. In a between-subjects experimental study with a clinical sample the two versions were compared. Results demonstrate, contrary to expectations, that the explicit game version yielded higher game enjoyment than the implicit version.

Measuring the impact of game controllers on player experience in FPS games

An increasing amount of games is released on multiple platforms, and game designers face the challenge of integrating different interaction paradigms for console and PC users while keeping the core mechanics of a game. However, little research has addressed the influence of game controls on player experience. In this paper, we examine the impact of mouse and keyboard versus gamepad control in first-person shooters using the PC and PlayStation 3 versions of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. We conducted a study with 45 participants to compare player experience and game usability issues of participants who had previously played similar games on one of the respective gaming systems, while also exploring the effects of players being forced to switch to an unfamiliar platform. The results show that players switching to a new platform experience more usability issues and consider themselves more challenged, but report an equally positive overall experience as players on their comfort platform.

Marrying Game Development with Knowledge Management: Challenges and Potentials

The game industry has long been neglected as a market and research area for knowledge management and semantic technologies. However, as the budgets for game projects are growing and game development is subject to an increasing professionalization and specialization coupled with outsourcing and offshoring, new needs and potentials for continuous knowledge management and the use of semantic technologies emerge. This chapter starts with a description of the current situation and examines typical game development activities and involved parties that could benefit from a continuous knowledge management support. Subsequently, it provides a general framework architecture and implementation examples that show how knowledge management and semantic technologies can be employed to support game development.