“Open Access: The Game”: developing a newsgame for health communication

• Main Authors: Marcelo Simão de Vasconcellos, Flávia Garcia de Carvalho, Juan Puppin Monteiro
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Instituto de Comunicação e Informação Científica e Tecnológica em Saúde (Icict) da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz) 2016-03-01
• Series: RECIIS
• Subjects: Acesso aberto; Jogo digital; Newsgame; Serious game; Game design; Comunicação e saúde; Jogos de vídeo
• Online Access: https://www.reciis.icict.fiocruz.br/index.php/reciis/article/view/1073

Open access is important to scientific research, but also has an impact on health. Its adoption involves ideological aspects and it is necessary to educate both researchers and the public about its importance. But for the general public the open access may seem little tangible. So it is valid to search for new approaches to illustrate the relevance of open access and how exactly it impacts on everyone’s life. The experiment reported in this article involved the development of a digital game as a means to become the general public aware of the importance of open access. Here we present a contextualization of the game’s theme, a discussion about the use of games for information and awareness, called newsgames, and describe the different stages of the development of the game we have created. We conclude describing some elements learned from this process.