How to design and evaluate a serious game aiming at awareness of therapy skills associated with social anxiety disorder

This study's aim was to design and evaluate a serious game to raise awareness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) skills associated with social anxiety disorder. The target group was university students, as 10-25% within this group have impaired functioning due to social anxiety. The game was designed in Unity with implementation of different CBT skills within three different scenarios. The scenarios were designed based on psychophysiological pilots testing, and external psychiatrist expertise. There were two evaluation stages. Using self-reports (questionnaires and interviews), evaluation 1 identified how engaging the game was. Evaluation 2 took place one week after the first evaluation, and used an online questionnaire to identify if the intended learning of CBT skills could be recalled by the participants. The game was successful in terms of focused attention, attentional focus, aesthetic appeal, and narrative understanding. The designed elements for emotional engagement could be improved by allowing further ingame personalization. The participants were able to recall information from the game with less than 50% correct answers. This accuracy score could be improved by a better game design with focus on the specific information that should be recalled.