SurviveCovid-19++ : A collaborative healthcare game towards educating people about safety measures for Covid-19

Abstract

The potential of collaborative games, especially in the healthcare domain could be leveraged in educating people about the Covid-19 pandemic that requires collaborative efforts from people with varied professional backgrounds. We present SurviveCovid-19++, a collaborative multiplayer desktop based game, to educate people about responsibilities of citizens with varied professional backgrounds, and emphasize on the need for collaboration to fight against the pandemic, by following safety measures. The game revolves around four roles delivering their duties, by following safety measures and collaboratively clearing multiple stages in the game. We evaluated the game through a qualitative and quantitative user survey, that presented encouraging results, with volunteers expressing increased empathy towards efforts of individuals with varied professional backgrounds, and better understanding of the importance of safety measures against Covid-19. We see that this work could provide insights to the CSCW audience on using collaborative games towards bringing awareness in the context of pandemics.