Development of a Preventive Care System Using Multi-participant E-Sports Game for the Elderly
摘要
We are developing a game-based preventive care system, which promotes physical exercise by wiping a virtual window displayed on a screen. This system has a feature that continuous participation can be expected due to the enjoyment of the e-sports game since communication with surrounding peers increases through the game play. However, considering that elderly participants may not be familiar with gaming, this e-sports game was designed as a simple repetitive task of wiping windows alone. This simple task has caused some participants to lose interest. To address this issue, we leveraged the feature of enhancing excitement through communication with peer supporters. Based on the hypothesis that introducing a competitive or cooperative mode among multiple elderly participants would increase engagement, feel a sense of achievement, and promote sustained participation, we developed an e-sports game that can be utilized by groups of elderly individuals. The developed system was provided to groups of elderly individuals aged 63 and older, and experiments were conducted with over 100 participants. As a result, it was found that the system developed in this study significantly increased the desire to repeat its use compared to previously developed single-player systems.