Game-based lifestyle interventions for adolescents: An evidence-based approach

With lifestyle-related conditions such as obesity amongst adolescents on the rise across the developed world, a pressing need exists for interventions which tackle the many factors underlying early-stage lifestyle formation. As a medium, digital games have the potential to integrate well with existing lifestyle patterns in adolescents, whilst engaging them and facilitating such lifestyle changes. Given the wide range of choices open to a game designer, including whether a game should be social, collaborative, competitive, belong to a specific genre, or be blended with other technologies such as wearable sensors, a need exists to identify success factors and translate these to underlying design principles. This paper provides a review of current literature, examining existing game-based interventions alongside the wider evidence base on interventions for lifestyle change. The important role of parent, teacher, or peer interactions, and historical avoidance of competitive elements in intervention design are described through a review of 47 studies of lifestyle interventions and background discussion of 6 existing meta-reviews. The early-stage findings presented by this paper form an evidence base when considering game design for lifestyle intervention.