Videogame Preferences among Adults Interested in Quitting Smoking Cigarettes (Preprint)

Abstract

Smoking is the number one preventable cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Although most individuals who smoke express a desire to quit smoking, only a small percentage are successful. Serious games have become popular in health sectors as a potential avenue for delivering a scalable treatment that is both accessible and engaging for the smoking population.

Several smoking cessation games have already been developed1–6, but these games feature a broad range of gameplay elements and are not necessarily based on existing videogame preferences in the general or smoking population. To better inform treatment development, the current study evaluated videogame genre preferences among treatment seeking individuals who smoke (N = 473).

Participants responded to a screening survey to enroll in a larger, serious game intervention for smoking cessation. During this screening survey, participants were asked to disclose their favorite videogames and reported 338 unique titles. These titles were coded for genre category based on publisher listing and game features. The genres were then analyzed for frequency of reporting overall and across age groups.

Action, Roleplaying, and Action-Adventure were the most reported genres among adults 34 and under, Action, Action-Adventure and Logic were most reported among adults aged 35 to 44, and Logic and Action were the most reported genres among adults 45 and older.

These data indicate that treatment-seeking individuals who smoke have different game preferences across age groups, and provides novel information to inform the development of future serious games targeting the smoking population that are tailored to the preferences of their age group.