Design and analysis of collaborative interactions in social educational videogames

Children with serious illness face enormous challenges in their daily life. These individuals must not only deal with the direct consequences of their disease, but they must often cope with being in a hospital or at home, being unable in many cases go to school. Frequently, connections with classmates, neighbours, and sometimes even some with relatives are lost. Therefore, entertainment and enjoyment should be provided in order to avoid boredom and to improve their affective state. Currently, children in the HUC (University Hospital of the Canary Islands) have a classroom with computers, books and toys supervised by a teacher. Children in their individual rooms are isolated. Social videogames can be a solution by allowing students to enhance their communication, education and entertainment possibilities. In this paper, we present the design, development and evaluation of a collaborative educational videogame prototype for hospitalised children based on a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) engine. Moreover, we present a case study of students' social and affective interactions using said videogame. This work was developed as part of the Hospital Virtual Educative Service (SAVEH) project funded by the European program MAC 2007-2013. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.