The Untapped Potential of the Gaming Community: Narrative Review

William Goodman · Ethna McFerran · Richard Purves · Ian Redpath · Rebecca J. Beeken

23 citations0/0 files storedJMIR Serious Games

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Educational Games and Gamification Digital Games and Media Media Influence and Health

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Video gamers are a population at heightened risk of developing obesity due to the sedentary nature of gaming, increased energy intake, and the disruption caused to their sleep. This increases their risk of developing a number of noncommunicable diseases. To date, research seeking to improve health behaviors has focused on developing novel video games to promote behavior change. Although positive results have emerged from this research, large-scale success has been limited due to the lack of transferability to mainstream games and the focus on children and adolescents. The gaming community has a number of unique aspects, which have received comparatively less attention than the development of new video games. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this paper is to highlight under-researched areas that have the potential to encourage positive health behavior among this community. METHODS: A narrative review of the lay and academic literature was conducted to provide context and support to our claims that further research could be beneficial in this area. RESULTS: Research has found that advertising can have implicit effects on an individual's memories, which could influence later decisions. However, the effect of the exponential growth of in-game advertisements and the brand sponsorship of gaming events and professional gamers have not been explored in the gaming community. The possibility of using advertising techniques to encourage positive health behaviors within games or at these events has also not been explored. Research suggests that virtual communities can be effective at disseminating health information, but the efficacy of this needs to be explored using known community influencers within the gaming community. CONCLUSIONS: This paper has highlighted a number of potential avenues for the development of interventions within the gaming community. Further research must be conducted alongside game developers to ensure that any in-game developed interventions do not deter gameplay and gamers to ensure that potential approaches are acceptable.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 23 citations exist upstream.

References

2016Social Capital, Trust, and Firm Performance: The Value of Corporate Social Responsibility during the Financial Crisis 2004Corporate social responsibility and consumers' attributions and brand evaluations in a product–harm crisis 1990An Investigation into the “Match-up” Hypothesis in Celebrity Advertising: When Beauty May Be Only Skin Deep 1991The Impact of Celebrity Spokespersons’ Perceived Image on Consumers’ Intention to Purchase 2009Priming effects of television food advertising on eating behavior.2016Gamification and Mobile Marketing Effectiveness 2003Sense of Virtual Community: A Conceptual Framework and Empirical Validation 2016The efficacy of nudge theory strategies in influencing adult dietary behaviour: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.