Alexander Ilderton | Original Concept
Osteoarthritis was chosen as the basis for the design of this serious game as it is one of the most prevalent chronic diseases in older adults globally. Living with chronic physical ailments can often be described as living with a 'beast', or at least a 'beast of a burden'. This game aims to tame that beast and release the burden through play that is guided by physiotherapeutic movements and exercises.
The player must tame and get to know their dragon, using hand and wrist movements that mimic physiotherapeutic exercises within a Virtual Reality (VR) game, utilising a purpose-designed controller that seeks to aid those suffering from osteoarthritis.
Osteoarthritis and Preliminary Research
Initially, Taming the Dragon opens up in a small hub world that resembles a horse pen for dragons and begins absent of any life. The player must venture outside of their hub into the open gameworld to explore and find dragons (this gameplay can be likened to that of a walking simulator). The world contains different climates and regions which represent home to different breeds of dragon, as the player will discover on their journey. Dragons can be found in the wild, and when approached, will initiate the Taming gameplay. This uses the core mechanics of the game, where the player must mimic on-screen hand gestures, exercises and physiotherapeutic movements in order to calm and befriend the dragon. This section of gameplay uses movement such as 4 and 5 from **Figure One. From here, the player must engage in the Flight mechanic to take the dragon back to their pen, using wrist flicks and exercises as well as hand movement to use in-game reigns that are on the dragons back and guide them to their pen. The wind and ropes can be mimicked in the controller using vibrations and haptic feedback, providing both immersion and pain relief.
The sky, however, is populated by other dragons that may not exhibit such a friendly nature, and may engage in Fight gameplay. Similarly to the previous sections of play, the player must use a variant of the core mechanics to engage in this fight, mimicking hand and wrist exercises that tell the dragon which kind of ability or attack to use in a fight in the skies. Back in the pen, once the dragon is successfully home, the player can engage in the Play gameplay loops. This is separate from the core mechanics, and lets the player stroke the dragons and play small minigames with their creature (such as a variation of fetch). The player is able to feel different types of skin (such as scales, or thicker skin) through haptic feedback ripples and vibrations that occur as the player runs their hand over the dragons skin.
The main loops and mechanics of gameplay all stem for pre-existing physiotherapeutic hand and wrist motions and exercises, as the main intention of this serious game is to provide a gamified approach to physiotherapy for hand osteoarthritis.
Alike other VR games, this game can be played within an enclosed physical space, making it more accessible to older adults as it allows them to play it within the home. This also avoids the stigmatisation of disabilities, as playing the game within the confines of a home aims to provide much less embarrassment than engaging in physiotherapy in public and clinical environments.
Using this game as a medium for intervention could potentially see real benefit, for not just improvement in motion but also in pain reduction, from a mix of the outlined physiotherapeutic hand exercises and the gloves' similarity to compression and vibration gloves that are already in use by health professionals. It can also allow patients suffering from the debilitating disability to engage in physiotherapeutic exercises they may otherwise not participate in, both due to the personal nature of playing the game within their own home, and providing an easy-to-understand and gamified approach to the self-help techniques.