“Playing with health” game design methodology for public health education

This article describes the collective experience of a game construction by students and teachers at the Polytechnic School of Health Professional Education Joaquim Venâncio (EPSJV/FIOCRUZ), in the context of a subject of the Health Professional Education curriculum. From the discussion proposed by teachers about the relationship between health and social economic development within the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), some principles of Game Design were presented and incorporated in the educational activity. Such principles were applied to enhance practices that comply with the terms of a procedural rhetoric as outlined by Bogost, and most especially, with the terms of tipical games’s procedurality. Thus, this article serves as an account of a wider movement of integration between students and teachers in the practice of creating and developing ludificated systems aiming at promoting knowledge in the context of the aforementioned subject and, more generally, the Health Professional Education. Considering the game as an educational technology that enhances the knowledge construction process, this article presents an engagement situation and the possibility of developing critical subjectivities with and for the agents involved.