Apparently, it is all about the intention.
Re-Mission is a video game for young people battling cancer. The teen “becomes” Roxxi the nanobot, whose mission is to destroy cancer cells and prevent the spread of cancer. Developed by HopeLab, with support from a boatload of impressive organizations, Re-Mission is designed to be a fun, engaging game with a purpose — improving “treatment adherence” (that’s basically sticking with the program) for patients. It does this by increasing the patient’s knowledge of the disease and the treatment effects, and improving their feelings of self-efficacy. (Self-efficacy is the sense that you can impact your own life.)
Re-Mission is pretty slick, and, if you review a small stack of peer-reviewed lit, is somewhat effective. Patients treated with Re-Mission are somewhat more likely to complete their prescribed treatment. And along with being effective it is also well-done and loud and involves shooting things. What’s not to like?
The Federation of American Scientists developed Immune Attack, also a smart, slick game. Immune Attack was designed through a collaboration of game designers, scientists, and educators, and (reportedly) the group worked collaboratively so they wouldn’t have to compromise on the game play, science, or learning. Designed as a supplemental educational tool for high schoolers and college freshmen, players navigate through the body, collecting info and retraining the patient’s immune cells to fight off infection. Immune Attack is more in the adventure game genre of video games, but players do get to pilot an awesome little capsule.
While both games are for teenagers and have a lot of similarities, they have one big difference that makes all the difference. Since Re-Mission’s intent is treatment adherence, it is evaluated as a medical device (and, maybe, one day by the FDA). Immune Attack, being an educational tool, is evaluated by teachers and administrators.
Nothing wrong with that, of course. But it might be interesting if we could make the rigorous, peer-review of educational tools during their development a more common practice.