Cells of War: A Serious Game for Familiarizing Players With the Immune System

Abstract

Background. Health constitutes a major field in serious games because of the wide range of applications and the significant contribution to humans and society. The spectrum of games for health meets the needs for education, training, treatment, rehabilitation, research, well-being, prevention, motivation and others. Aim. Cells of War is a serious card game, aiming to familiarize the players with the complex functionalities of the immune system, inform on diseases coming from viruses, bacteria, parasites or fungi and explain how some daily habits may affect health. Method. This article analyzes all the design steps followed in order to integrate the learning content into the game mechanics and game-play. The offline card game was developed in the game engine Unity, making it possible to build executables for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X and distribute them to the users for the first pilot evaluation. The results of the pilot evaluation are presented along with useful feedback for the game. Results. Cells of War was evaluated by a wide range of people on different age groups, interests, gaming background, knowledge background and among them a few health specialists and educators. Overall the game achieved to transfer some knowledge, while the feedback will contribute to the improvement of the game. Conclusions. The pilot evaluation of Cells of War showed that the game is fun, well-designed and achieves to educate the players, although the participants suggested a few issues for improvement. Cells of War has to be used and evaluated by students and teachers in order to assess the game as an instructional tool in schools and evaluate its impact on learning the functionalities of the immune system.