Radio by: Cee Cee Huffman
Steven King is reading Hudson his mission. They’re on a journey through the sixth floor of UNC Children’s Hospital, huddled around an iPhone and looking for clues.
King is a professor of emerging technologies at the UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media, and his 9-year-old son Hudson is helping him test a beta version of Adventure Squad.
“Adventure Squad is an augmented reality storytelling experience,” King said.
The mobile game is designed to get pediatric patients out of their beds and into the halls, and it all started in a meeting of UNC-CH professors.
“I’d love to figure out a way for us to use augmented reality to get our kids up and moving,” Dr. Richard Hobbs said.
King was ready to help. They imagined the concept together: a game for patients age five and up, where a child could simply grab a phone or a tablet from the nurses’ desk and their adventure can begin.
First, the patient customizes a character, a cartoon kid hero to look just like them.
“Then, they go on a scavenger hunt to solve these problems and answer these clues,” King said. “And they collect powers like a freeze gun, or a cape, or space boots and things like that.”
The clues lead them around the floor to black cards on the walls, each with a different encouraging quote in big white text. At each card, they collect a different power. Once all the powers are collected, they have the tools to fight whatever comes against them, like lava.
“We’ve had a great reaction,” King said. “Kids getting excited about the story, getting excited about the powers, and then ultimately, they don’t realize it, but they’re getting a lot of exercise while they’re doing it.”
Dr. Hobbs said exercise is an important piece of a patient’s recovery. The more patients walk around, the less likely they are to have physical complications like blood clots.
He said they wanted something that could help them to enjoy their hospitalizations a little bit more.
“They can be in the hospital for such a long period of time,” Dr. Hobbs said. “Honestly, it could be an escape for them and at the same time accomplish something that is helpful, overall beneficial to their health.”
Although, if patients aren’t able to leave their room for one reason or another, there’s a book that can help to give them the same game experience.
“That’s part of the design, to be inclusive for kids of all abilities,” Hobbs said. “Our children oftentimes have broken bodies, so we wanted to create a story so that they have control of their own story because oftentimes they don’t have control of what happens to them on a daily basis.”
Holly Leggett Schwab’s son Zach was diagnosed with stage three neuroblastoma when he was nine months old. He’s thirteen years old and eleven years cancer free now, but his time in the hospital had a lasting impact on his family.
“When we start talking to families, it just all comes rushing back,” Schwab said.
She created Zach’s Toy Chest, a nonprofit that provides toys to several pediatric hospitals in N.C., because, like Adventure Squad, a toy gets kids moving around.
Schwab said a game like Adventure Squad is going to be crucial for the physical and mental health of patients, because staying in a hospital room all the time is tough.
“I really believe some anxiety and some depression is caused by being cooped up in your hospital room, for the kids and the parents,” Schwab said. “Even if it has to be in a wheelchair, or a wagon, or a ride on the IV pole down the hall, they can’t stay cooped up in that room.”
She said technology has come a long way from the VHS players available to her family in 2008, and that Adventure Squad has the potential to change pediatric hospital life.
Dr. Hobbs said he and King hope to have the game available for download in app stores by next spring.
He said they didn’t set out to be game designers, but they’re happy to create a game to be used for good.
