A mobile serious game for lifestyle change: Conveying nutritional knowledge and motivation through play

This paper describes work in progress to create a serious game integrated with an ecosystem of services towards overall project goals of ethically recording, analysing, and motivating adolescent behaviour towards healthier long-term lifestyle. The design outlines an approach that minimises textual and dialogic content in favour of experiential and abstract elements, reflecting existing evidence alongside the need to provide a motivation for users to engage with a wider suite of apps and technologies. Illustrating the use of “freemium” mechanics commonly used to incentivise in-app purchases as a motivator, this paper discusses their use as means towards instead incentivising the use of services to promote a healthier lifestyle. An additional mechanic sources and applies nutritional information from a large database to create a deck of food “cards”, with which the player is challenged to apply their understanding of nutrition to create in-game rewards. Preliminary findings from pre-pilot focus group evaluations with adolescents aged 14-16 (n~10) in Italy and Spain demonstrate enthusiasm for the approach taken to linking real-world behaviour with in-game rewards, as well as potential differences in reception to visual style options between sites and cultures.