Looking at Intergenerational Game Design through Lens of Game Genres

We live in an aging society, and in the future, we will face an increase in the need for meaningful interactions between young children and seniors. Intergenerational games as a means for providing such interactions will play a major role in upcoming decades, thus having a framework for designers to make such games is crucial. This paper acknowledges that individuals’ preferences play a major role in the type of game they play, but it also discusses convergent factors that help in the creation of such a framework. Having this guide be based on a familiar classification, makes using it easier for game researchers and designers. Therefore, this paper uses genre categorization, which is commonly used by both the industry and the audience. A ranking is assigned to each genre based on how well it satisfies introduced criteria for a successful intergenerational game, in accordance with previous research in this area. Finally, this paper concludes that the best genres for this purpose are action, strategy, and puzzle; it also finds vehicle simulations to be the most inadequate. These findings suggest that using any of these genres or mixing several of them, as the foundation for building a game, results in a more appealing game for a broader range of audience.

Keywords:

Intergenerational gaming , game genres , game design guidelines