Why games are the future of self-improvement

Jun 20th 2008 at 16:36 by Marie Marquis, Ph.D

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Ubisoft got to know me based on my research on dietary behaviour – not necessarily just teaching of losing weight, but changing behaviour and living a healthy lifestyle.

We’ve seen many failures with the traditional approach of self-improvement –educating people about how to look after themselves.

You only need to look at the obesity problem to know the approach of professional prescribing behaviour doesn’t always work – nor the influx or books, DVDs etc. on the subject.

With these methods, it’s a prescriptive approach and we need to change that to see real results.

Using tools such as technology allows us to interact with people on a one-to-one basis. We can use technology to give challenges to the players to change their behaviour – without them feeling that a figure of authority is prescribing anything.

The challenges in My Health Coach show what people can handle in daily life and are clearly accessible to them. If the challenge is ‘tomorrow, I will eat vegetables at dinner’, that becomes part of their life – in a way, their life in an extension of the game.

Also, the DS here explains things in a very simple way, and professionals take ages to explain very simple concepts – creating more confusion than anything else. We can’t do that with these casual games.

A professional can go much further than these tools, and combined together they could be a wonderful thing. I think these applications will eventually be seen as great partners for health professionals.

The nice thing about the final results of games is that it’s very private. If a player isn’t ready to follow a prescription from a game, he or she won’t feel as resentful – like they’ve ‘given up’. It’s a very personal challenge that they can take one step at a time.

All of the self-improvement games we’re seeing come out contribute to the same objective: a better wellbeing for the public, that when compared with regular TV, videos and books give the player much more control. They're more effective than these methods because people don’t feel as bullied this way.

It’s still a game because there’s no blaming, no prescription – and, above all, because it’s fun. No-one else needs to know what your objectives are, which actually discourages people from cheating.

When it comes to health practitioners, we know that people cheat in one-to-one prescriptions. They say what they think they should be doing – responsibility bias, we call it.

These games allow people a clear exchange with no expectations but their own – and this interactivity allows them to be truer about their aims.