JMIR Serious Games

A multidisciplinary journal on gaming and gamification including simulation and immersive virtual reality for health education/promotion, teaching, medicine, rehabilitation, and social change

Editor-in-Chief:

Gunther Eysenbach, MD, MPH, FACMI, Founding Editor and Publisher; Adjunct Professor, School of Health Information Science, University of Victoria (Canada)


Impact Factor 4.0

JMIR Serious Games (JSG, ISSN 2291-9279; Impact Factor 4.0) is a multidisciplinary journal devoted to computer, web, virtual reality, mobile applications, and other emerging technologies that incorporate elements of gaming, gamification or novel hardware platforms such as virtual reality devices or wearables. The journal focuses on the use of this technology to solve serious problems such as health behavior change, physical exercise promotion (exergaming), medical rehabilitation, diagnosis and treatment of psychological/psychiatric disorders, medical education, health promotion, teaching and education (game-based learning), and social change. JSG also invites commentary and research in the fields of video game violence and video game addiction.

While JSG maintains a strong focus on health, the journal also aims to highlight research exploring serious games in health-adjacent and other interdisciplinary contexts, including but not limited to military, education, industry, and workplace applications.

In 2022, JMIR Serious Games received a Journal Impact Factor™ of 4.0 (5-Year Journal Impact Factor™: 4.2) (Source: Journal Citation Reports™ from Clarivate, 2023). The journal is indexed in PubMed, PubMed Central, DOAJ, Scopus, SCIE (Clarivate), and PsycINFO.

Recent Articles

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Serious Games for Health and Medicine

Virtual reality (VR) adventure games can offer ideal technological solutions for training social skills in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), leveraging their support for multisensory and multiplayer interactions over distance, which may lower barriers to training access and increase user motivation. However, the design of VR-based game environments for social skills training is still understudied and deserves the deployment of an inclusive design approach to ensure its acceptability by target users.

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Serious Games for Education

In the context of training specialist nurses and nursing education, a game-based mobile application is used as a simulation to teach intensive critical care specialist nurses the knowledge and skills of ECMO pipeline preflushing.

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Serious Games for Health and Medicine

Stroke management in rural areas is more variable and there is less access to reperfusion therapies, when compared with metropolitan areas. Delays in treatment contribute to worse patient outcomes. To improve stroke management in rural areas, health districts are implementing telestroke networks. The New South Wales Telestroke Service provides neurologist-led telehealth to 23 rural spoke hospitals aiming to improve treatment delivery and patient outcomes. The training of clinical staff was identified as a critical aspect for the successful implementation of this service. Virtual reality (VR) training has not previously been used in this context.

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Serious Games for Education

Positive self-esteem predicts happiness, well-being, and serves as a protective factor for favorable mental health. Scholarly gaming within the school setting may serve as a channel to deliver mental health curriculum designed to improve self-esteem.

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Formative Evaluation and Development of Games

As cancer treatment methods have diversified and the importance of self-management, which lowers the dependence rate on direct hospital visits, has increased, effective cancer care education and management for health professionals and patients have become necessary. The metaverse is in the spotlight as a means of digital health that allows users to engage in cancer care education and management beyond physical constraints. However, it is difficult to find a multipurpose medical metaverse that can not only be used in the field but also complements current cancer care.

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Serious Games for Health and Medicine

VR has shown promising levels of effectiveness in various scenarios, such as nursing education, pain management and rehabilitation. Current meta-analyses have discussed the effects of VR usage in nursing unilaterally and inconsistently, and the evidence base is diffuse and varied.

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Serious Games for Health and Medicine

The global percentage of older people has increased significantly over the last decades. Information and communication technologies have become essential to develop and motivate them to pursue healthier ways of living. This paper examines a personalized coaching health care service designed to maintain living conditions and active aging among older people. Among the technologies the service includes, we highlight the use of both gamification and cognitive assistant technologies designed to support older people and an application combining a cognitive virtual assistant to directly interact with the older person and provide feedback on their current health condition and several gamification techniques to motivate the older person to stay engaged with the application and pursuit of healthier daily habits.

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Games for Rehabilitation

Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy (from now "DMD" and "BMD" respectively) are the neuromuscular diseases with the most significant involvement in children. It affects dystrophin production, reducing the patient's mobility and quality of life. New technologies have become part of physical therapy in DMD and BMD. During the COVID-19 pandemic, telerehabilitation through virtual reality-based games could help these children to keep their abilities.

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Game Addiction and Other Unintended Consequences

The question of how video games can shape aggressive behaviors has been a focus for many researchers. Previous research has focused on how violent video game content leads to post-game aggressive behaviors. However, not only do video games convey violence or prosocial content to players, but they also require cognitive effort from individuals. Since human cognitive resources are limited, consuming more cognitive effort in a game leads to less cognitive resources to suppress aggressive impulses. Therefore, the depletion of cognitive resources from video games may also lead to changes in post-game aggressive behaviors.

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Games for Pain Management

Virtual reality (VR) is a computer simulation technique that has been increasingly applied in pain management over the past two decades.

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Formative Evaluation and Development of Games

The potential risk and subsequent impact of serious complications after pancreatic and colorectal surgery can be significantly reduced through early recognition, correct assessment, and timely initiation of appropriate therapy. Serious gaming (SG) is an innovative teaching method that combines play with knowledge acquisition, increased concentration, and quick decision-making and could therefore be used for clinically oriented education.

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Exergames, Active Games and Gamification of Physical Activity

Balance impairments are common in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), with reduced ability to maintain position and delayed responses to postural adjustments. Pilates is a popular alternative method for balance training that may reduce the rapid worsening of symptoms and the increased risk of secondary conditions (eg, depression) that are frequently associated with physical inactivity.

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