A Player-centric Game Design Paradigm with Compassion: Game design challenges for players with Parkinson Disease

摘要

The population playing games vary from young ages to older adults, spread across people with variations of physical and cognitive abilities, and with different physical and mental health conditions. When additional sub-demographics, such as elders, people with specific disabilities or chronic diseases, etc., are taken into account, the territory for accessibility in game design and accessibility related design challenges are underexplored. Although the emphasis on usability in game development somewhat follows common usability guidelines developed for human computer interaction, usability context for games and game-like experiences includes more than the interface or the interaction modality. This body of work presents a player-centric game design paradigm to allow a closer exploration for challenges of designing games for sensitive demographics, with a focus on Parkinson Disease (PD) patients. The contribution is not a clear-cut recipe but an initial model towards designing accessible games for sensitive demographics.