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Title: Toward Injury-Aware Game Design
As video games and esports continue to grow in popularity, gaming injuries are also on the rise. In recent years, medical professionals have placed greater emphasis on preventing and treating gaming injuries and proposed specific gaming health guidelines. However, the game industry and game research community have not done enough to address the hazards of gaming injuries or raise awareness about such hazards to players, parents, and game designers. In this paper, we propose a framework of injury-aware game design that addresses the two main causes of gaming injuries: prolonged gaming and repetitive microtrauma. We have identified a set of injury-aware game design techniques to help raise awareness of gaming-related hazards, promote healthy gaming behavior, and optimize gameplay to prevent injuries. We believe an effective way to deliver gaming-related health information to game players is through games themselves. To demonstrate this framework, we have developed an injury-aware game and conducted a user study with players and game designers. The results from the proof-of-concept game and user study show that both players and designers have a positive reception to the idea of implementing more inclusive measures into games, with nearly all participants of the user study being interested in the idea of hand exercise recommendations.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1852516
PAR ID:
10423943
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
International Conference on ArtsIT, Interactivity and Game Creation
Volume:
422
Page Range / eLocation ID:
105-119
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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