Game-based interactive media in behavioral medicine: Creating serious affective-cognitive-environmental-social integration experiences

Abstract

The need to refocus health systems more towards prevention is now widely recognized, since most of the major disease conditions in the developed world have significant behavioral determinants. However, most efforts to date have been limited in their impact as they have generally failed to take account of the complex hierarchy of interacting social and environmental influences. The reality of life in a networked society is such there is now an additional set of corresponding influences that arise in the digital world(s) that an individual inhabits. Concurrent with these developments, the rapid emergence of a wide range of digital technologies offers a whole new set of affordances and potential health applications. We therefore argue for the design of digital supportive environments that utilize mobile devices, sensors, social media, game worlds and mechanics, in order to create transformative experiences that can effect large scale positive health behavior change. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.