J. Anacleto et al. (Eds.): ICEC 2011, LNCS 6972, pp. 198–209, 2011. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2011 Designing and Evaluating Casual Health Games for Children and Teenagers with Cancer Kathrin Gerling, Alberto Fuchslocher, Ralf Schmidt, Nicole Krämer, and Maic Masuch University of Duisburg-Essen, Forsthausweg 2, 47057 Duisburg, Germany {kathrin.gerling,alberto.fuchslocher,ralf.schmidt, nicole.kraemer,maic.masuch}@uni-due.de Abstract. Because they offer an easy entry into play, casual games have become an increasingly popular leisure activity among children and teenagers, engaging particularly broad target audiences. In this paper, we present a casual game that addresses childhood cancer: Besides mere entertainment, a health game that focuses on cancer may serve as a clinical tool in order to teach children about the particularities of the disease and initiate discussion among cancer patients, their parents and medical staff. In this context, the results of an empirical study revealed a generally high acceptance of the health game among young patients, while parents and medical staff highlighted the educational potential of health games addressing cancer. Additionally, we discuss the challenges of evaluating digital games in a hospital setting which were revealed during the evaluation phase. Keywords: Casual Games, Game Design, Games for Health, Serious Games, Childhood Cancer, Persuasive Games. 1 Introduction Besides the persuasive potential of serious games which may be applied to encourage healthy behavior [1, 6], their benefits can be found beyond persuasion: Serious games generally offer the opportunity of raising awareness for difficult topics, for instance environmental or social issues and health-related topics such as disease treatment or prevention [30]. In the context of designing games for health, childhood cancer can be regarded as a particularly sensitive issue as it still presents a common cause of death among children and teenagers in industrialized countries [1, 35]. While the diagnosis severely influences regular family life, treatment is often painful and requires frequent periods of hospitalization and regular doctor’s visits [10]. In addition, patients are faced with psycho-emotional problems, such as anxiety or depression [1, 23, 28]. Based on the patient’s difficult situation, a need for health games dealing with their own medical condition has already been expressed [28]. In this context, games for health offer the potential of engaging patients and healthy children in play while simultaneously conveying information about cancer, but may not be fully accessible to players without prior gaming experience and persons suffering from treatment side- effects.