Playmancer A European Serious Gaming 3D Environment

Computer games are a hit among children and youngsters but not very surprisingly the same enthusiasm can be gained when it comes to teaching or training for instance of impaired people. In rehabilitation practice, games have the potential to be a stimulating and attractive treatment modality in which patients can learn and train the desired behavior or skills in a safe environment before they need to be applied in the real world. In addition, the use of motion tracking and biosognal devices enables patients and their therapists to get detailed objective insights about the performance and pain-related behavior of patients during training. Within the Playmancer project, a serious game is developed for patients with musculoskeletal pain (both cervical and lumbar pain). The game incorporates the use of motion tracking and biosignals such as EMG enabling new interaction experiences between the game and the patient. RRD is involved in this project to define the user requirements from a clinical perspective and the design and conduct the evaluation of the games to be developed on effectiveness with patients.

PlayMancer (A European Serious Gaming 3D Environment) is a Collaborative Project in the EU's Seventh Framework Programme: ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) Thematic Priority Objective 1.5 Networked Media.

This European project runs from 2007-2010. Partners involved are:

Systema Technologies (Athens – Greece), Netunion (Lausanne – Switzerland), University of Patras (Patras – Greece), Technische Universitaet Wien (Vienna – Austria), Fundacio privada insitut d' investigacio biomedical de bellvitge (Barcelona – Spain), Universite de Geneve (Geneve – Switserland), Serious Games Interactive (SGI) (Copenhagen – Denmark) and RRD.

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