Rapid development of first person serious games using the APEX platform: the asthma game

Abstract

Serious games combine a ludic component with instructive and formative goals. They aim to educate and train through play. This paper explores the use of a development framework for dynamic virtual environments to develop serious games. The framework (APEX) was originally developed to prototype ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) environments. Here it is used to develop a first person serious game: the Asthma Game. This game aims to teach children with asthma how to act to prevent attacks by drawing attention to asthma triggers in the home, and by providing information about how to avoid them. Besides the description of the game, results about the viability and utility of the approach are also discussed.