Online Video Games in Brazilian Public Health Communication

This paper, drawn from an ongoing doctoral dissertation, examines the potential of online video games, particularly massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), as a channel for public health communication in Brazil. The authors argue that Brazil's Unified Health System (SUS) relies heavily on centralized, prescriptive, and unidirectional communication through traditional and digital media, which tends to ignore local contexts and proves less effective with young audiences. Games are proposed as a more interactive and dialogic alternative capable of combining entertainment with health education.

The authors contend that MMORPGs offer several features well suited to health messaging. Players experience the virtual world at their own pace, which allows content to be contextualized to individual interests and limitations. Because these games emphasize personal effort and provide immediate feedback, they can make the link between everyday behavior and health outcomes visible. Their online communities also create rich communication flows in which players not only receive health content but also interpret and re-contextualize it. The authors note that such gaming spaces are expanding beyond affluent households into lower-income communities through the proliferation of Internet cafés, broadening their potential reach.

Based on this preliminary analysis, the paper proposes six production guidelines: assembling multidisciplinary teams that include academic researchers and members of the target audience; using open-source or free tools and browser-accessible distribution to control costs; prioritizing fun as the primary attraction; incorporating privacy-respecting behavioral analytics to inform developers and researchers; offering broad channels for player expression and socialization; and maintaining short development cycles with active engagement through social media. The authors also identify a structural challenge, namely that bureaucratic government funding processes may conflict with the fast pace of the games industry, widening the gap between academic research and public-facing products.