Narrative and Nurturing study, Lieberman, Games for Health 5 9 08

Effects of Narrative, Nurturing, and Game-Play in an Action-Adventure Health Game Presentation to the Games for Health Conference Baltimore, MD Debra Lieberman, Ph.D. UC Santa Barbara May 9, 2008

Games are stories and games are challenges / mechanics
Some emphasize the narrative mode and some the game-play mode
E.g., Pacman or Zelda vs. Tetris, Re-Mission vs. Self-Esteem games
A spectrum – the essence of a game: Story  Game mechanics
Narratology vs. Ludology – debate

Example: PIP
Personal Input Pod – biosensor
Vyro Games
“ Teaching you to relax in a fun and engaging way”
Narrative : Will your character win the race?
Game-play : Relax more than your opponent

Two modes: narrative vs. game-play
Across players: Some players prefer one mode over the other (always or sometimes)
Within players: Each mode may be cognitively and/or emotionally processed in different ways, and contribute to different outcomes

Research finds that using narrative skillfully in game design can increase players’…
Involvement in the topic
Immersion in the game experience
Related: Presence, Flow, Absorption, Transportation
Identification with characters
Arousal : emotional and physiological
Learning : recall of message content
Persuasibility : acceptance of persuasive messages

Narrative creates emotion and context
Why you’re doing what you’re doing
Characters you care about, or characters that are you
Curiosity about what will happen next
Desire to advance the story
A framework for remembering events / info

Pure game-play
Focuses on the task, on the rules of the game
Cognitive load – none wasted
No distracting story line
In games with stories, good players often “see through” the story line to play with the “essence” of the game – its strategies and challenges

Nurturing
A new concept in new (interactive) media
Old media: Tinker Bell, Winky Dink, pause / answer
New media — new ways to take care of characters
Digital pets, Tamagotchi, WebKinz, NeoPets, Nintendogs
Adventure games often involve building a character’s health, strength, weapons, tools, etc.
Nurturing is very motivating and involving, and elicits strong emotions
It is a component of narrative
How can health game designers make use of narrative , nurturing , and game-play ?

Re-Mission – video game
Produced by HopeLab http://www.hopelab.org
For teens and young adults who have cancer
To improve cancer knowledge, adherence, self-care, quality of life

Our previous study found that Re-Mission influenced healthy players who had no cancer
It changed attitudes and beliefs that are known to increase prevention behaviors and adherence behaviors
Factors in the Extended Parallel Process Model – Perceived severity, Perceived susceptibility, Self-efficacy, and Response Efficacy
Treatment – Play Re-Mission game for one hour
Control – Play Indiana Jones game for one hour

Cancer knowledge (Study 1, posttest scores)

Predicting prevention behaviors (Study 1, posttest scores)

Predicting adherence (Study 1, posttest scores)

First study gave us outcomes of Re-Mission
New questions for second study:
How do narrative, nurturing, and game-play influence these outcomes in different ways?
In the following analysis of post-test findings from the second study, our hypotheses are supported.

Study design
Randomized experiment, 488 participants
5 groups, each played a Re-Mission version:
Group 1: High narrative, High nurturing
Group 2: Original version of Re-Mission
Group 3: High narrative, Low nurturing
Group 4: Low narrative, High nurturing
Group 5: Low narrative, Low nurturing (game-play)

Today I’ll present preliminary findings for three groups
Group 5: Low narrative, Low nurturing (game-play)
Group 2: Original version of Re-Mission
Group 1: High narrative, High nurturing
Participants were randomly assigned to play one game version in the lab; also pretest and posttest

Knowledge and perceived informativeness – lower in Low/Low (game-play) group (Study 2, posttest scores)

Attitudes about cancer learning – No differences (Study 2, posttest scores)

Caring about patients in the game (Study 2, posttest scores)

Narrative  personal risks and behaviors (Study 2, posttest scores)

Game-play  mechanics of cure (Study 2, posttest scores)

Narrative  personal risks and behaviors; and learning Game-play  mechanics of cure
Empathy, nurturing, drama, story line – our data show positive correlations with perceived personal risks, self-efficacy, and learning
Players see personal risks of health problems and personal susceptibility more strongly
Perceive more self-efficacy
Learn more about cancer than the Low/Low group
Focus on game-play with medical treatment as the game challenge – is associated with greater trust in the medical cure, and adherence self-efficacy

Participants’ quotes while playing Re-Mission
Pretty cool. You could learn from it while having fun.
Did we heal him? I’m so excited!
It makes it seem like cancer is a serious disease.
I keep killing these fools but they keep on coming.
I feel like I’m helping somebody. Not just playing a video game, I’m saving someone’s life.
I really like this game now. It sucks you in. I really don’t want this guy to have cancer.
Come on, white blood cells!

Thank you
Debra Lieberman, Ph.D.
University of California, Santa Barbara
[email_address]
National Program Director, Health Games Research
http://www.healthgamesresearch.org
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Re-Mission video game, from HopeLab
http://www.hopelab.org

Narrative and Nurturing study, Lieberman, Games for Health 5 9 08

by Debra Lieberman on May 15, 2008

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Narrative and Nurturing study, Lieberman, Games for Health 5 9 08 — Presentation Transcript