Game creators, both heath-related and mainstream, always hope that their game will have that gotta-play-again feeling.  What’s the point if someone plays it once and that’s it.  A game has to have good re-playability.  Great Game Tenet #4 is a no-brainer: great health games must have a hook.

Using addictive characteristics to elicit health change.

This great health game necessity brings us back to our old friend Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his Flow Theory. The player must be so involved in their activity that they lose all sense of time, i.e. “time flies when you’re having fun.”  This is the essence of a hook.  Grab the player, keep them playing and have them begging for more.  The techie term for this is “sticky” or the ability to retain participants and/or players.  The need for stickiness is one reason why games make a great modality for delivering health information.  Games in themselves are sticky.

Health games that do it well.

I think casual health games are a perfect example of health games that have a hook.  Short spurts of gameplay with addictive game mechanics give casual health games like Food Fury and Lunch Crunch a competitive advantage over epic health games.  There’s also something to be said for a lot of the pain management games out there which are designed to keep the player immersed in a world that is outside of reality.  Wild Divine is a perfect example.  I’m not sure about the stickiness of these types of games, though, since I’ve never actually played one myself.

Anyone have thoughts on pain/stress management health games?