‘Gamification’: Influencing health behaviours with games

Every month at Google Campus in London, dozens of software developers, clinicians, behavioural scientists and investors get together to discuss new strategies to influence health behaviours. The collective aim of these networking events is to develop digital ‘games with purpose’ that can improve health by integrating software design and game mechanics with public health theory and behavioural insights. Gamification is a purposely-broad umbrella term used to encompass the process of using ‘gaming’ elements to motivate and engage people in non-game contexts.1 Enhanced opportunities now exist to deliver behaviour change interventions through game platforms on new smartphone devices. Defying traditional stereotypes, people across demographic boundaries now play video games on a wide range of digital devices.2 Whilst such games continue to be primarily used for entertainment purposes, there is increasing interest in their potential to influence positive changes in health behaviours.3 This has been encouraged by the finding that rather than spending hours being sedentary and chasing intangible outcomes, players of active video games (e.g. Nintendo Wii Fit) are motivated to exert themselves to achieve activity goals through game mechanics.4,5 Whilst still in its infancy, we predict that gamification will become an increasingly familiar concept in healthcare as a consequence of two trends. The first builds on the consumer's appetite for new smartphone devices that provide games designers with a wider audience to target and more attractive tools to use in designing interactive health interventions. The second factor is the enthusiasm and willingness of developers to incorporate the latest behavioural insights into electronic interventions.