Self-transformation through game design

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a pioneering, experimental study that tracked certain psychological and behavioural changes in a group of game designers during the development of their serious games. The study was conducted with the help of the Behavioural Science Institute of Radboud University (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) and focused on implicit attitudes: psychological assessments that take place without one’s conscious awareness.

With the goal of validating the idea of game design as a self-fashioning activity, we observed the implicit attitude towards sugary and fatty foods of a group of master’s students in game design at the University of Malta. As part of their coursework, and mentored by a researcher in behavioural psychology, the students were asked to conceptualize, design, and develop small videogames that aimed at changing the implicit psychological assessment of unhealthy food of their players over a five-month period. Taking overweight European teenagers who are regularly followed by a dietician as their target audience, the principal task of the designers was that of translating behavioural psychology methods to change people’s implicit attitudes concerning sugary and fatty food into game design decisions on the basis of the existing literature in the field.

The designers’ own weight, their dietary habits, and their implicit attitude towards food were measured before being briefed about their design task and were eventually measured again, five months later, upon the delivery of their finished, serious game. Although changes in the students’ weight did not show large variations on average, their implicit attitude towards sugary and fatty foods (the psychological evaluation the games they designed aimed to correct) changed in the direction of a healthier dietary approach. These transformations are suggestive of a trend that could confirm our hypothesis: game design might indeed be a transformative experience that changes the designers through cognitive elaboration and self-persuasion in ways that are analogous to the changes that they intended to cause in the players.