Designing a Self-Efficacy Game for Health Literacy in Marginalized Communities

Abstract

Health inequity is a critical problem in the USA and one that primarily affects marginalized communities. One critical aspect to interventions addressing this issue is the aim to increase health literacy, so that members of these communities can make informed decisions and feel empowered to take charge of their personal health. Our team developed a transformational game that uses self-efficacy to address players' health literacy in context. Using properties from both visual novel and strategy simulation genres, we present a game in which players take on the role of a community manager who works to better their community by completing quests from non-player character (NPC) community members. The current paper contributes our research and iterative design processes, and highlights future directions utilizing focus groups and playtesting with community members, game development, and evaluation studies to assess impact.