Ruby's Mission: Towards an Applied Gaming Intervention for reducing Loneliness of Children with Chronic Illness

Dionysis Alexandridis, Sander C.J. Bakkes, Sanne L. Nijhof, Elise Van De Putte, Remco C. Veltkamp

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Children with a chronic disease, such as cystic fibrosis or juvenile arthritis, often face obstacles that can have a negative impact on children's physical, social-emotional and cognitive development, beyond the actual illness itself. Children with chronic conditions are, on average, lonelier than their peers without such conditions. Feelings of loneliness in children and adolescents have been associated with a wide range of negative outcomes, including school drop-out, depressive symptoms, social anxiety, suicide ideation, low self-esteem, eating disorders, and sleep problems. As such, the present investigation sets out to reduce these feelings of loneliness for children with chronic conditions, and aims to do so by the structured design of an applied gaming intervention. Specifically, the present paper contributes (1) a literature-based understanding on training socioemotional skills as a novel means to reduce feelings of loneliness in chronically ill children, (2) intervention objectives that are aligned to this goal, and (3) a structured proposal for design guidelines that implement the intervention objectives into gRuby's Mission'; an applied gaming intervention for reducing loneliness of children with chronic illness.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 16th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2021
EditorsAllan Fowler, Johanna Pirker, Alesandro Alessandro Canossa, Ali Ali Arya, Casper Harteveld
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Number of pages13
ISBN (Electronic)9781450384223
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 3 Aug 2021
Event16th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2021 - Virtual, Online, Canada
Duration: 2 Aug 20216 Aug 2021

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference16th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, FDG 2021
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityVirtual, Online
Period2/08/216/08/21

Keywords

  • Applied gaming intervention
  • children
  • chronic illness
  • reducing loneliness
  • social competence
  • socioemotional skills

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