Promoting healthy adolescent lifestyles through serious games: Enacting a multidisciplinary approach

Long-term health risks associated with unhealthy lifestyles present a significant current and future burden for healthcare providers. Adolescence represents a critical time for intervention, as habits formed during this period can persist throughout adult life. Given the prevalence of gaming as an entertainment medium amongst adolescents, and subsequent potential for engagement, the use of serious games to promote changes in lifestyle behaviour offers a potential solution. Creating such games requires a breadth of multidisciplinary expertise, working collaboratively to create research-informed designs which reflect both behavioural theory and entertainment game design best practices. In this chapter, challenges and benefits associated with multidisciplinary design are identified and discussed, with strategies presented to overcome and avoid potential issues. With reference to a current project, the perspectives of the theorist, iterative designer, and game developer are contrasted, providing a reference for future projects implementing multidisciplinary approaches to serious game design.