Food Fury: Casual Serious Games for Learning

University of TexasSchool of Public Health

Nutrition Experts School of Health Information Science

Game Design, Learning &TechnologyArchimage

PlaynormousDevelopment

Problem: Childhood Obesity

• Recent research has shown that the obesity rates among children are increasing.

• This increase is alarming, as obesity is associated with chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

• It is thought that the lack of physical activity and the consumption of high energy foods contribute significantly to the problem

Solution: A Fun Way to Learn

• Create an electronic environment as an intervention for healthy behavior change.

• Use games as a way to engage kids in learning about nutrition and physical activity.

• Food Fury is a game to be used within a suite of casual games in an electronic environment as part of an after school program that

includes exercise.

Food Classification Instructions

Food FuryGame Board

• color coded food tiles

• food descriptions

• timed gameplay

• time bonuses• tile mixup

function

Game Mechanic

Select food tiles in

like-groups of Go,

Slow, or Whoa. To

remove tiles from

the board and get

points, double click

or press the enter

button on the right

of the game board.

Pilot Testing Methods• Convenience sample of 32, 3rd to 6th

graders in an after school program, in Houston, TX and Bend, OR.

• Inclusion criteria: children must be engaged in gameplay and get to at least level 3.

• One sample, pretest-post test design

Demographics• Average Age: 10 years old• Age range 8-12 years, Grade range 3-6th• Majority of the children in 4th grade (n=14)• 16 girls and 16 boys

46% Hispanic28% Caucasian21% African American4% Asian

Computer Literacy

• How often do you use the internet? 3.6– 1 everyday - to - 5 once a month

• Rate yourself - internet, Average 3.4– 1 much worse - to - 5 much better

• Rate yourself - computer, Average 2.9– 1 much worse - to - 5 much better

• 25 of the 32 children had a computer at home

Testing Tool

• Children categorized 44 food icons as either Go, Slow, or Whoa.

• 40 of the icons where foods that were represented in the game and 6 were novel.

• Children filled out the pretest 0-3 days before their exposure to the game.

• All children played at least until they got up to level 3.

Go Slow Whoa circle one answer

Knowledge Results• Items seen in game

– 21.2 to 24.6, Delta of 3.4 items• On average, kids could recognize 3.4 more

food items correctly on the post test

• Eliminating high knowledge items– 13.7 to 19.2, Delta of 5.5 items

• If you eliminate the items that got high scores on both the pretest and the post-test the positive learning change was even greater

Change by Grade

Education Delta

• 3rd graders - 0

• 4th graders - 3.5

• 5th graders - 5

• 6th graders - 5.2

Time on Task

• Three children returned and voluntarily continued to play the game for 30-40 minutes. (50-70min)

• For these children with the additional exposure, the average pretests were 31.7 (72%) and the average second posttest scores were 40 (90.9%).

• The longer the engaged exposure to the game, the closer to 100% correct identification.

Other results

• Children where asked if they would play the game outside of school and all answered yes.

• From a set of words that ranged from fun and exciting to boring, children chose:

• Positive words: fun, cool, great, awesome,wow, nice

• Negative words: confusing• Indicates an overall very high satisfaction

UsabilityScale: 1- no, 2- kind of, 3- yes

• easy to use - 2.7

• understand levels - 2.9

• understand directions - 2.6

• understand game scoring - 2.6

Some Quotes“it was fun because you got to have fun while learning”

“The noises were kind of annoying. And the thing that made it fun was all the pressure.”

“It was annoying cause it's it's kind of hard but fun cause it was learning.”

“It was very awesome, it's awesome, the challenge.”

Conclusion

• shows preliminary learning

• overall satisfaction

• points to ways we can improve– instructions to bring the children at a lower

developmental level up to speed so they can play and learn

Yeah Right!

• How do you think this game is actually going to prevent or treat obesity??

– no, not really, its just a part of our plan to build a virtual world to support health behavior change

Monster Minis

Monster environments.

Monster environments.

Monster worlds.

Monster worlds.

Cynthia PhelpsUniversity of Texas

Health Science Center at Houston

School of Health Information Science

Cynthia.L.Phelps@uth.tmc.edu