Analysis and Classification of Serious Games for Elderly

Abstract

Serious games aim at providing benefits beyond pure entertainment and are a growing area of research. Furthermore, not only the number of serious games increases but also the range of application areas. Today, serious games address physical cognitive social and psychological needs for a different target audience with multiple devices. Serious games are often classified by benefits or purpose within a specific application area, but classifications focused on different user- and game-specific aspects are still rare. In this paper we provide an overview on a selection of serious games for elderly people by extracting and summarizing common categories used to classify games on a general level and especially serious games. Furthermore, a collection of serious games for elderly based on literature research as well as a classification using the summarized categories is presented. By those means, serious games for elderly shall be structured and not sufficiently covered approaches of providing benefits be identified.