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Though there have been significant developments in authoring tools for interactive narratives as well as a growing number of models explaining narrative meaning production, there is still a lack of understanding around what type of authoring support is required that can facilitate authors to handle the complex environment they develop by maintaining a high content and experience quality. In this paper, we present an investigation that aims to establish relations between individual information needs and navigation behaviour, which can be used as patterns to support authors in the design and development of interaction processes for Interactive Discourse Environments (IDE). A prototype of an argumentative discourse environment has been developed, in which participants can explore information resources in various media representations and complexity levels to gain better insights on climate change. The navigation behaviour has been tracked, and qualitative interviews have been performed to gain deeper insights in the relation between personal information needs, resource preferences and investigation behaviour. The findings of the analysis show that socio-cultural attributes can be identified that correlate to certain navigation patterns. We also show how those patterns can be made available as content and engine consistency checking devices in an IDE authoring environment.

State of the Art in Game Research & Design and Playful Interaction in the domain of Health and Health Care, from the gaming community as well as from the health practitioners.

The depression prevention video game SPARX was shown to be equally as effective as the classroom-based depression prevention program 'Op Volle Kracht' (OVK) in reducing depressive symptoms among adolescents girls. Because video games are known for their engaging qualities, this study examined possible motivational benefits of SPARX compared to OVK. No differences in autonomous and controlled motivation were found between conditions at any time point. However, OVK was negatively associated with autonomous motivation during the program, while SPARX and the OVK and SPARX combined were associated negatively with controlled motivation during the programs. Additionally, autonomous motivation and controlled motivation at the start of the interventions and controlled motivation half-way through the interventions was found to positively influence long-term depressive symptoms. Results indicate that depression prevention programs including video games can beneficially influence motivation. Further research is needed to delineate the effects of video game prevention programs on motivation.

20% of Dutch youth suffer from psychiatric disorders that hamper their daily functioning and their personal development. Clients tend to drop out of school and have problems in their social environment. These clients often suffer from low social competencies and low empathic behavior, resulting in low treatment compliance. The study targets treatment motivation in order to prevent therapy dropout by introducing playful interventions. Amongst others, social problem situations that arise from interactions between clients and their socio-cultural environment often lead to aggressive behavior and behavioral problems. It is not only the client, but also the reaction of the environment that plays an important part in the aggravation of clients’ problems. We focus on the group as a whole in order to gain insight these social interactions, to make them explicit and tangible, in an attempt to help clients (and their environment) to play and learn from these interactions, in order to contribute to a better social climate.

Improved antimicrobial prescribing is a key effort to reduce the impact of increasing antimicrobial resistance. Quality improvement programmes in antimicrobial prescribing have to ensure the continued engagement of prescribers with optimal prescribing behaviours. Serious games have been proposed to improve clinical practice and may serve to resolve some of the behavioural and social barriers influencing prescribing. We describe here the ongoing development and future evaluation of a mobile device-based serious antimicrobial prescribing game for hospital clinicians.