Serious Games and Behavioural Psychology

PlayGen creates serious games in which simulated characters and scenarios act as powerful tools for helping users understand and reflect on their own behaviour and have been proven to contribute to behavioural change.

A wide range of influences drive our behaviour, from physical environment to societal norms to the judgements of family and friends. Theories of behaviour change across a range of disciplines have shown that any change takes several stages:

• Acknowledging there is a problem
• Exploring options for addressing it
• Deciding to make the change and planning for it
• Starting to behave differently
• Maintaining the behaviour

Changing behaviour through games

As well as helping clients to understand users’ behaviour, games are a powerful tool for helping users’ to understand and reflect on their own behaviour. Games have been proven to contribute to behavioural change, for example in the fields of physical and emotional health.

Games support self-reflection and decision making through:

• Providing detailed and objective feedback
• Graphically illustrating the implications of choices – scenarios can be fully played out with consequences emphasised and brought to the player’s attention through in-game facilitation and after game review
• Provoking emotional reactions – whilst the world itself is virtual, the emotions the learner experiences can be all too real
• Leading the user step-by-step through the decision making process

It is important to recognise that computer games can be part of the solution but they are not a panacea. Many embarking on the journey of changing their behaviours will lapse and relapse over time. Appropriate support to plan and sustain change will often be needed. But games can help to shape attitudes so that users are more receptive to change and support is targeted more effectively.