Revisiting the Twentieth Century Through the Lens of Generation X and Digital Games: A Scoping Review

Video games have been around since the 1960s and have impacted upon society in a myriad of different ways. The purpose of this scoping review is to identify existing literature within the domain of video games which recruited participants from the Generation X (1965–1980) cohort. Six databases were searched (ACM, CINHAL Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science) focusing on published journal papers between 1970 and 2000. Search results identified 3186 articles guided by the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR); 4 papers were irretrievable, 138 duplicated papers were removed, leaving 3048 were assessed for eligibility and 3026 were excluded. Articles (n = 22) were included into this review, with four papers primarily published in 1997 and in 1999. Thematic analysis identified five primary themes: purpose and objectives, respective authors’ reporting, technology, ethics and environment) and seven secondary themes: populations, type of participants (e.g. children, students), ethical approval, study design, reimbursement, language, type of assessments. This scoping review is distinctive because it primarily focuses on Generation X, who have experienced and grown-up with videogames, and contributes to several disciplines including: game studies, gerontology and health, and has wider implications from a societal, design and development perspective of video games

Designing a User-Friendly Educational Game for Older Adults

Given the importance of a well-constructed educational gaming interface and the costs involved in its development, it is important to identify the ergonomic requirements to be considered during the design process to ensure that the game be adapted to the characteristics of seniors. In a study of seniors aged 55 and older, we created and tested an educational game, “In Anticipation of Death”, in order to measure usability in the sense of determining the intuitive capacity of the game (user-friendliness). This paper presents the variables of the study, the way we adapted the game Solitaire for seniors and the results of an experiment done with 42 older players. The latter showed a high degree of satisfaction with game navigation, the display mode and gameplay equipment. Recommendations are presented to guide the development of online educational games for seniors

Games for health in the home: gaming and older adults in the digital age of healthcare

This chapter provides an overview of current research on digital health games and health benefits derived from game play in the home setting by an older adult population. Initially, this chapter presents the current problems of an aging population and a series of gaming trends, game genres, and technology used by older adults are described. This chapter further ascertains previous works, primarily reviews (narrative and systematic), to establish the current stance of utilizing digital games for health among older adults and assesses quality-of-life benefits. Aggregated recommendations across all the reviewed studies are listed and a comprehensive standard digital health game classification system is proposed. Games for health taxonomy and respective technologies are described, in particular the nature of engagement by users. Finally, recommendations for future research on games for health in the home are provided