A Serious Game to Inform about HIV Prevention: HInVaders, a Case Study

The aim of this research is exploring the possibility of using Serious Games in order to educate the general public, in particular young people, about HIV prevention. We have developed a Facebook-based online game called “HInVaders” as a case study for our research. In the HInVaders game, the player is a HIV virus molecule and his aim is infecting as many people as possible. When the game starts, the molecule has already infected a person and is located inside the infected body. During the gameplay, the player encounters treatments (e.g. antiretroviral therapy) represented using the pill metaphor, and the human immune system (e.g. white blood cells). The player has to avoid the treatments and to attack the immune system in order to increase his score (called viral load). As a side effect (from the virus point of view), the viral load increase cause a decrease in the infected person's health level (as highlighted in the game interface). If the molecule/player goes through the same body too long, he will die with the infected person. Therefore, it is important for the player to explore the possibilities to escape from the infected body by infecting other persons exploiting some events, which occur during the gameplay. We have conducted some preliminary tests to assess the game didactical effectiveness on a small group of adults. The paper presents the game design and some preliminary results from experiment with real users.