JMIR Serious Games

This Research Letter presents the conceptualization, design, and technical evaluation of the RedMan-GreenMan game co-developed with carers, aimed to help children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (hereafter autism) acquire pedestrian safety skills. While the system has been implemented and is in active use, no empirical evaluation of learning outcomes or behavioural impact has been conducted to date. The focus of this work is on system development, functionality and technical evaluation.

Augmented reality (AR) head mounted displays (HMDs) could overcome the spatial dissociation between medical imaging and the surgical field, which may be particularly important in anatomically dense regions such as the head and neck. Although many HMDs offer markerless inside-out tracking at a fraction of the cost of navigation systems, their overlay accuracy with superimposition (SI) modality onto the surgical field remains limited. The virtual twin (VT), displaying holography adjacent to the surgical field, may offer a viable alternative. However, its performance is still unclear.

The digital therapy of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) based on a “self-adaptive multitasking training paradigm” has been developed to improve the cognitive functional impairments and attention deficits of children with ADHD. However, the efficacy and safety of such treatment for Chinese patients remain untested.

Memory suppression transiently disrupts hippocampal activity, leading to suppression-induced forgetting (SIF), especially for negative stimuli. However, traditional paradigms like Think/No-Think rely on explicit control and lack ecological validity. This study introduces a game-based task that implicitly elicits suppression through reversed motor mappings, providing a naturalistic approach to studying memory inhibition.

Unrelenting pressure and an “always-on” culture can leave no time for genuine rest among young adults. While playing video games has been noted to afford cognitive escapism and relaxation, critical questions remain about the influence of popular video games, such as Super Mario Bros., and their potential effects on young adults’ burnout risk.

Amblyopia, a leading cause of preventable childhood blindness, often remains inadequately addressed by traditional treatment methods such as refractive correction and occlusion therapy, which can be non-interactive and lead to poor adherence.

People with cancer often experience stress. Digital health interventions (DHIs) can help individuals increase momentary relaxation. Breeze is a gamified breathing training that can be embedded into DHIs. Its effectiveness in controlled cross-sectional studies has been demonstrated. However, adherence to Breeze and its effect on momentary relaxation in longitudinal interventional studies has yet to be investigated.

Hong Kong faces a rapidly aging population, with many older adults not meeting recommended physical-activity levels and struggling to maintain long-term exercise adherence. Exergaming offers an accessible, technology-supported way to promote health conditions while providing immediate feedback and task variability among older adults.

Physical inactivity is a major public health issue among college students, often exacerbated by academic pressures and lifestyle shifts. Traditional exercise interventions often face challenges with adherence due to low motivation and engagement. Immersive virtual reality (VR)–based exercise interventions may address these barriers by providing interactive and motivating experiences, yet empirical evidence regarding their psychological and physiological benefits remains scarce.

Exergames have emerged as effective interventions for promoting physical activity and preventing type 2 diabetes (T2D). Kinect-based exergames have demonstrated improvements in exercise adherence and health outcomes, but their high cost and reliance on specialized hardware hinder widespread home-based adoption. Recent advances in computer vision now enable monocular-camera-based systems, offering a potentially cost-effective and scalable alternative for promoting physical activity at home.

Immersive virtual reality-assisted therapy (VRT) is a relational therapy for distressing voices in psychosis. Like AVATAR therapy (AT), VRT centres on therapist-facilitated dialogues with a digital avatar representing a voice. Unlike AT, VRT employs immersive virtual reality (VR). While participant experiences of AT have been explored, therapist perspectives remain unexamined, and for VRT, neither participant nor therapist experiences have been studied. Understanding these perspectives is essential to inform optimization of therapy, future research, and implementation.

Background: Internet gaming disorder (IGD) causes neurocognitive deficits and brain dysfunction. Traditional interventions require specialists and incur high costs, while progressive aerobic training (PAT) seems more practical. But its effect on IGD and the underlying neural mechanism remains unclear.