4 Jan. 2017

Can video games help youngsters gain more self control? To find out, Margot Peeters and her team developed a video game which allows young people to train their impulse control.

We want them to play the game because they like it, not because they're forced into it. [...] [Together with] Game studio Shosho [we] developed The Fling for Beat-it. It's a "boy meets girl" story with a twist, so it appeals to both sexes. In the game, for example, the boy might play the guitar for the girl, and you can see speech bubbles when they send each other messages.

The complete article can be found in the Dynamics of Youth newsletter at the Utrecht University website.

Margot Peeters works together with Remco Veltkamp, Robbert Jan Beun, Rens van de Schoot and Wouter Boendermaker.

Related Paper

Boendermaker, W.J., Veltkamp, R., Beun, R.J., Van de Schoot, R., & Peeters, M. (2016). Introducing the Fling – An Innovative Serious Game to Train Behavioral Control in Adolescents: Protocol of a Randomized Controlled Trial. In R. Bottino, J. Jeuring, & R. C. Veltkamp (Eds.), GALA 2016, Lecture Notes in Computer Science: Vol. 10056. Games and Learning Alliance (pp. 120-129).