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Investigating narrative in mobile games for seniors

Published: 10 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Narratives are an intimate part of our lives. Based on beha-vioral research suggesting that older adults tend to process text better at discourse level, this study investigates the im-pact of narrative structure on the enjoyment level of older game players. Two variations of a casual memory mobile game were built, one with a narrative and the other one without. Nineteen senior citizens, differentiated according to their play orientation, play-tested the games. Results show that embedding narratives in mobile games enhances the play experience of older adults, irrespective of their play style. This may have implications both for game developers and for seniors' acceptance of casual games.

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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 2010
2690 pages
ISBN:9781605589299
DOI:10.1145/1753326
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 10 April 2010

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Author Tags

  1. elderly
  2. enjoyment
  3. mobile games
  4. narrative structure

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  • (2024)Longitudinal Evaluation of Casual Puzzle Tablet Games by Older AdultsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661528(2073-2087)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2024)Game-Based Solutions for Impacting Digital Competences in Aged Populations: Insights from an Empathetic WorkshopHuman Aspects of IT for the Aged Population10.1007/978-3-031-61543-6_19(261-274)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2024
  • (2020)Customer-Specific Robotic Attendant for VR SimulatorsIEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering10.1109/TASE.2020.298030517:4(1901-1910)Online publication date: Oct-2020
  • (2020)Seniors and mobiles: A qualitative inquiry of mHealth adoption among Singapore seniorsInformatics for Health and Social Care10.1080/17538157.2020.1755974(1-14)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2020
  • (2020)Doing good while playingComputers in Human Behavior10.1016/j.chb.2020.106244106:COnline publication date: 1-May-2020
  • (2018)Heuristics and Recommendations for the Design of Mobile Serious Games for Older AdultsInternational Journal of Computer Games Technology10.1155/2018/67571512018Online publication date: 2-Jul-2018
  • (2018)Conceptual framework for the usability evaluation of gamified virtual reality environment for non-gamersProceedings of the 16th ACM SIGGRAPH International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and its Applications in Industry10.1145/3284398.3284431(1-4)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2018
  • (2017)GameFlow in Different Game Genres and PlatformsComputers in Entertainment 10.1145/303478015:3(1-24)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2017
  • (2017)Educational games and students’ game engagement in elementary school classroomsJournal of Computers in Education10.1007/s40692-017-0095-44:4(395-418)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2017
  • (2016)Understanding Storytelling as a Design Framework for Cognitive Support Technologies for Older AdultsProceedings of the International Symposium on Interactive Technology and Ageing Populations10.1145/2996267.2996270(24-33)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2016
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