JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Smoking is the number one preventable cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Although most smokers express a desire to quit smoking, only a small percentage are successful. Serious games have become popular in health sectors as a potential avenue for delivering a scalable treatment that is both accessible and engaging for this population.

Objective:

Several smoking cessation games have already been developed 1–6, but these games feature a broad range of gameplay elements and are not necessarily driven by existing videogame preferences. The current study evaluated videogame genre preferences among treatment seeking smokers (N = 473).

Methods:

Participants responded to a screening survey distributed to enroll participants in a serious game intervention for smoking. During this survey, participants were asked to disclose their favorite videogames and reported 338 unique titles. These titles were coded for genre category based on publisher listing and game features. The genres were then analyzed for frequency of reporting overall and across age groups.

Results:

Action, Roleplaying, and Action-Adventure were the most reported genres among adults 34 and under, whereas Logic and Action were the most reported genres in adults 45 and older. Among adults aged 35 to 44 this shift is observed, with Action, Action-Adventure and Logic being most reported. These data indicate that treatment-seeking smokers have different game preferences across age groups, and provides novel information to inform the development of future serious games targeting smokers that are tailored to the preferences of their age group.