Using highly interactive drama to help young people cope with traumatic situations

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of disability and has a devastating impact on all family members. The goal of our project is to design, develop, and evaluate a pedagogical interactive drama to support uninjured youths aged 12 to 19 years who have a parent or sibling with a TBI. We used IDtension, a highly interactive drama engine, to develop a text-based interactive game, in which young users play the role of Frank, who has to prepare a dinner with Paul, his father, who suffers from a TBI. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.