Effectiveness of Serious Gaming During the Multidisciplinary Rehabilitation of Patients With Complex Chronic Pain or Fatigue (2018) Vrijhoef et al.

Free full text:
https://www.jmir.org/2018/8/e250/

 

It looks like one of the authors of this has previously been critical of PACE:











https://twitter.com/BertVrijhoef/status/766817683178262528

Maybe he was only concerned about the spun data though, as this seems to share many of the problems with PACE's design.

I'm mildly curious about what 'serious gaming' is, but not enough to actually open the paper.

 

Ah, I see my problem, I just didn't take gaming seriously enough.

And still don't.

 

I guess it would be the opposite of “casual” gaming. Oh guess not. It’s a game with some (purported) purpose.

Here’s the game they used, description from the paper:

Spoiler: LAKA

The serious game LAKA is an adventure game where patients take the role of an Avatar during a virtual trip around the world. The game is easy to control using a touch-screen tablet computer and takes on average 2.5 hours to complete (Multimedia Appendix 1 shows the screenshots).

In LAKA, patient players perform alternate tasks vicariously; they select optional responses in various encounters with other characters, monitor and evaluate satisfaction about selected responses (and their consequences), and meditate (3-minute exercises). First, players select between a male or female Avatar and assign a name. It was prompted that Avatar choices reflect those of the player. A cut-scene sets up the story; the Avatar, who wants change after experiencing a deterioration in physical and social functioning, meets a nonplaying character (NPC) named LAKA. LAKA challenges the Avatar to make “conscious” decisions during 16 “encounters” with other NPCs, for example, when standing in line, on getting invited to someone’s home, and at 4 destinations (ie, London, Turkey, Asia, and Africa) on a trip around the world. Each “encounter” is built as a flow of Avatar actions and NPC responses.

For each Avatar action, 1 of 5 options (eg, physically interact, verbally react, or ignore something) can be preselected and confirmed by players. These options are modeled after a set of reference values—generosity, moral discipline, forbearance, and enthusiastic perseverance. NPC responses are unpredictable, for example, a friendly act can result in a kind response or being scammed. At the end of each destination, LAKA asks the Avatar to self-rate the level of “satisfaction” regarding his or her choices. Indirect feedback, in the form of a number of puzzle pieces, is given by (1) the degree of correspondence of Avatar choices with the reference values and (2) the degree to which that correspondence agrees with satisfaction ratings. When the Avatar is depicted “mind-wandering” when traveling across destinations, instructions are received for a basic meditation exercise (focused attention and open monitoring) [50]. These model-based elements are interspersed with short action games, puzzle games, images, and information associated with the location of the Avatar to be enjoyed or skipped by preference.

 

So the game is a slightly elaborate questionnaire with weird feedback interspersed with what I condescendingly assume to be an old person's interpretation of the concept of action games then?

Yes, I am being deliberately snarky because I just assume that this will most likely be used as an excuse to not spend time on doing something effective if it ever leads to anything in clinical practice.

Any change in e.g. pain levels associated with doing an activity will likely be very fleeting if said activity does not do something about what causes the pain in the first place I'd guesstimate, so really, wtf are we looking at here?

 

Come on you guys this is obviously one of those prank papers that people sneak through every once in a while to prove a point.

 

So they spent 4 weeks playing a game that takes 2.5 hours to complete, yet not all finished it? I think @James Morris-Lent must be right.