Use of proven gaming technology to educate young people on COVID-19, promoting adherence to social distancing and providing a platform for trusted information dissemination

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Multiple waves of infection transmission are anticipated for COVID-19 before a vaccine is developed. To flatten the curve and reduce deaths, governments have released guidance for general public focused on social distancing and hygiene behaviours. However, a standardised strategy to educate young people has not been established.Our pilot research has indicated that young people feel invincible against coronavirus, with only 17% of participants believing they will catch coronavirus and 35% believing they would catch it, but it would not make them ill. However, 10% reported concerns over "when it would be over".To this end, there is an urgent need to develop accessible resources for young people to ensure that government guidance is followed, and anxiety is alleviated. To meet this need, the project team aim to develop a mobile game to educate young people on COVID-19. The video game will be developed on Unity game engine for mobile devices, allowing widespread uptake and dissemination. Backend game analytics will be used to map player knowledge gaps and attitudes towards COVID-19. These data will be used to assess effectiveness of game and in combination with government data, to better understand barriers to government guidance, and social impacts of COVID-19.In this second phase, a University publisher collaboration will be secured for the publication of COVID-19 game (for consumer dissemination) and for future applications for health education. This phase will also focus on improving game analytics database and automating the evaluation process using JSON and R. Project findings will be used for further development of business plan and documents for seed investment round in 2021.