Aslihan Tece Bayrak

A. Tece Bayrak is an aspiring games scholar, teaching game development as a senior lecturer at Media Design School. She has a Master’s in computer engineering, and currently a PhD candidate in computer science at University of Auckland. Having a background in software development for defence industry and planning several production pipelines for game development, she has experience in various scales of software projects, development and management methods. She sees gameplay programming as art, also believes in the power of games for change. Her area of interest includes game studies, pervasive games, design methodologies, game development, real time systems and HCI.

PRESENTATION

Rhetoric on games and rehabilitation: a call for collaborative movement

In response to this year’s theme on transformation, this talk brings together a discussion on games and rehabilitation as a potential solution to the well-being goal of United Nation’s sustainability goals for our aging society. For the purposes of providing efficient solutions with world’s limited resources, technology is already an important transformer; yet, limited in its reach and persuasion. Games can be a strong transformative power with correct approaches in addressing public health and well-being, yet to be found.
There has been significant research into utilising games for rehabilitation purposes over the last decade, targeting a quite large demographic from children with specific disorders to elders with neurodegenerative diseases. Such research and publications bring invaluable insights to the games for health domain showing the capability of games; however, the impacts of the insights remain somehow weak and isolated. While very interesting results are being presented, several of these lack clearly defined methods in design or the selection process of the games utilised, the methods and details regarding the user study, readable metrics that are transferable across similar studies and an evaluation that informs any further research so that a continuum in the field can be established for a stronger momentum towards the common goal. No transformation takes place in a vacuum, and a collaborative approach is needed to create the momentum for change. Collaborative so that each study, project, artefact comply with a standard that enables meaningful connections between projects with none reinventing the wheel but improving it.