Playing for a real bonus: Videogames to empower elderly people (original) (raw)

This paper offers an overview of recent game-based applications for therapy and rehabilitation of elderly people. Information and Communication Technologies represent a viable solution to meet the various physical and psychological needs of a population growing at an incredibly fast rate. In particular, videogames have proven to improve elderly people's cognitive abilities and take care of psychological problems accompanying illnesses and social isolation. We will present several examples of videogames adopted within training programs for elderly people, and tested through scientific procedures. We will include both old-fashioned games and recent ones. Characterized by a higher naturalness in the input system, the latter rely on already established usage practices with non-digital tools (a pen, a bowling ball, etc) that make the interface more accessible. Finally, we will describe a current European project that aligns with these efforts towards natural interfaces and aims at developing a mixed reality game for cognitive training and sociability of elderly users.