This PhD thesis explores the field of therapeutic games in order to propose methods and tools for the game designer of such games. The most fundamental design problem of therapeutic games is the gameplay, ie. the game objectives and the actions the player does to address the objectives. In therapeutic game, the gameplay must, at the same time, provide the therapeutic effects and motivate the patient to follow his protocol. The sub-problems of this are 1. the two-fold evaluation (medical and motivation), 2. the exchange of knowledge between game designers and health experts. We propose a therapeutic game design method which begins with the problem definition and ends with the two-fold evaluation. This method integrates the other solutions we propose, particularly the player / game / therapy model and a method to formalize the gameplay.
References (5):
Julian Alvarez & Damien Djaouti. Une taxinomie des Serious Games d´edi´es au secteur de la sant´e. Revue de l’Electricit´e et de l’Electronique, Soci´et´e de l’Electricit´e, de l’Electronique et des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (SEE), vol. 11, pages 91– 102, 2008.
Damien Djaouti, Julian Alvarez, Rashid Ghassempouri, Jean-Pierre Jessel & Gilles Methel. Towards a classification of Video Games. In Artificial and Ambient Intelligence convention (Artificial Societies for Ambient Intelligence), 2007.
Damien Djaouti, Julian Alvarez, Jean-Pierre Jessel & Gilles Methel. Play, game, world : anatomy of a videogame. International Journal of Intelligent Games & Simulation, vol. 5, no. 1, 2008.
Damien Djaouti. Serious Game Design Consid´erations th´eoriques et techniques sur la cr´eation de jeux vid´eo `a vocation utilitaire. PhD thesis, Universit´e Toulouse III Paul Sabatier (UT3 Paul Sabatier), 2011.
Damien Djaouti, Julian Alvarez, Jean-Pierre Jessel & Olivier Rampnoux. Origins of serious games. In Serious games and edutainment applications, pages 25–43. Springer, 2011.