SurviveCovid-19 - An Educational Game to Facilitate Habituation of Social Distancing and Other Health Measures for Covid-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

Covid-19 has been causing severe loss to the human race. Considering the mode of spread and severity, it is essential to make it a habit to follow various safety precautions such as using sanitizers and masks and maintaining social distancing to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Individuals are widely educated about the safety measures against the disease through various modes such as announcements through online or physical awareness campaigns, advertisements in the media, and so on. The younger generations today spend considerably more time on mobile phones and games. However, there are very few applications or games aimed to help in practicing safety measures against a pandemic, which is much lesser in the case of Covid-19. Hence, we propose a 2D survival-based game, SurviveCovid-19, aimed to educate people about safety precautions to be taken for Covid-19 outside their homes by incorporating social distancing and usage of masks and sanitizers in the game. SurviveCovid-19 has been designed as an Android-based mobile game, along with a desktop (browser) version and has been evaluated through a remote quantitative user survey, with 30 volunteers using the questionnaire based on the MEEGA+ model. The survey results are promising, with all the survey questions having a mean value greater than 3.5. The game’s quality factor was 69.3, indicating that the game could be classified as excellent quality, according to the MEEGA+ model.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Richard Lounsbery Foundation for their support and encouragement. They thank all the volunteers for their valuable time and honest feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/weekly-epidemiological-update-on-covid-19—31-march-2021

2. www.who.int/publications/m/item/weekly-epidemiological-update—23-february-2021

3. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports

4. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

5. The game is also available at https://survivecovid-19.itch.io/game2020

6. https://www.mygov.in/aarogya-setu-app/

7. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.gov.mc.protegosafe

8. https://www.coronawarn.app/en/

9. https://covid-19.ontario.ca/covidalert

10. https://unity.com/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Akhila Sri Manasa Venigalla

Akhila Sri Manasa Venigalla is a PhD Scholar in the Department ofComputer Science & Engineering, pursuing her thesis in the areas of Software Engineering and Software Documentation, at IIT Tirupati,India. She is interested in the areas of End User Software Engineering,software systems for society and educational technologies.

Dheeraj Vagavolu

Dheeraj Vagavolu was an undergraduate student in the Department ofComputer Science & Engineering at IIT Tirupati, India, during thedevelopment and study of the game. He is interested in the researchand development of approaches and systems in the areas of computersfor society and software engineering.

Sridhar Chimalakonda

Sridhar Chimalakonda is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at IIT Tirupati, India and leads the Research in Intelligent Software & Human Analytics (RISHA) Lab, which works on pushing the boundaries of software engineering research and leverages the potential of computing for social good.