PERGAMON is a project funded by the Euro-pean Union’s Horizon 2020 research and inno-vation programme, running from January 2015 to December 2016. With five project partner organizations from Italy, the Netherlands and the UK, the aim is to support the creative in-dustries in the adoption of a technology frame-work for the creation of pervasive serious

games.

PERGAMON is developing a new pervasive serious game for young children with Type 1

diabetes.

The game will provide:

Feedback from a network of sensor de-vices that remotely collect information on user activities e.g. blood glucose moni-

toring and physical activity.

A personal coach that guides and sup-ports players in daily activities within and

outside of the game.

The Project Objectives

Implementation and piloting of a gaming framework that aids creative SME’s to effectively and

efficiently develop serious games

Integration of a ‘virtual coach’ to personalise and motivate the gaming experience

Integration of sensor devices into the gaming platform

Connecting creative SMEs with business networks operating in serious games

Facilitating new alliances between creative SMEs and emergent technology providers

The Partners

Project Kick off Meeting in Milan, January

2015

Luxembourg, May 2015

Bari, May 2015

Rome GaLA Conference, December 2015

Game Development

January 2016, Issue 1

Inside this issue:

Annual Newsletter

Welcome to PERGAMON’s annual newsletter, which will bring you up to date with the latest news about the project’s progress.

Follow us on twitter!

@PergamonEU

The project kick off meeting was held at Grifo Multimedia’s office in Milan. All partner organisations attended, which was the first

opportunity for the team to meet in person.

Each partner made a presentation of their organisation, and the work they would be

undertaking on behalf of the project.

Roberta Memeo of Grifo Multimedia chaired the meeting and provided an overview of the project. This enabled partners to identify key periods of development and collabora-tion, including identifying the most strategic occasions for future project meetings so

that partners can meet face to face at critical

points of project development.

The consortium came away from the meeting

with a list of action points that would take

them through to the next immediate phase of

Page 2

Project Kick off

Meeting in Milan,

January 2015

PERGAMON

The Partners

Grifo Multimedia (IT) co-ordinates the PERGAMON project and are leading the design of the architec-ture for the PERGAMON framework from which a

prototype Serious Game will be developed.

Researchers from the Universite of Twente (NL) are responsible for the implementation of the Virtual Coaching aspects of the PERGAMON project. These will provide in-game spontaneous responses

to the users actions.

Ai Solve (UK) are leading on the development of tools that analyse player data within the game, and

feed information to the Virtual Coach.

Researchers from the Serious Games Institute at Coventry University (UK) are supporting the design and testing of the Serious Game, and are also lead-

ing the dissemination of the project's outputs.

Ziekenhuis Gelderse Vallei (NL) are leading the de-ployment and testing of the Serious Game built upon the Pergamon Framework, that will support

patients with diabetes in self management.

At the invitation of the EU Commission, project

coordinator Roberta Memeo presented PER-

GAMON to the project officers from the Com-

mission and to representatives from projects

also funded in this call.

The event promoted networking between the

projects, and the Commission were keen to

look for potential synergies and possible col-

laborations. The Commission also asked the

successful projects for feedback on the appli-

cation process, and how this might be im-

proved. This invited a lot of feedback from the

project representa-

tives which was

noted by the project

officers.

Luxembourg, May 2015

Page 3

development. These included scoping the

game that would be developed for diabetic

teenagers, and the technical collaborations re-

quired in order to unify the various aspects of

development.

The themes presented for the branding and

communication were approved by the consor-

tium and these will be taken forward into the

various dissemination channels that are being

created.

Second Project Team

Meeting in Bari, May

The team met for their second team meeting at the Bari offices of Grifo Multimedia. The main purpose of the meeting was to review the plans for the integrated development of the game, sensor network and virtual coaching elements. Grifo’s technical and design team presented their concept document for the game that would be developed for the manage-

ment of diabetes.

Within this they delineated the structure, ob-jectives and mechanics of the game, and ex-plained the narrative context and characters

that would be featured. The game will expand on their existing Tako Dojo IP, and will be called The Mystery of Tiki Tako. Alongside this, they also presented the gamification con-cept for the companion App, showing how real life activities can be motivated through in

game rewards and how the App and the Game can be connected, and both can feed into the social elements of the PERGAMON framework. This technical discussion was informed by dis-cussion of the user experience, led by col-leagues from Ziekenhuis Gelderse Vallei, who have a broad understanding of the challenges

Page 4

Pergamon attends the

GaLA conference in Rome,

December 2015

PERGAMON

in engaging with the target audience of teen-

age diabetic patients.

This included getting members of the team to understand the time consuming commitment of taking your own glucose level readings, and a practical session was held in which sev-eral team members went through the process of taking their own blood sample, and presenting it to the sensor equip-ment, in order to under-stand the practicalities of gathering the data that would be informing the gamification App and

game progress.

In December 2015, Jacqueline Cawston and

Oliver Wood from Coventry University and

Roberta De Asmundis from Griffo Multimedia

attended the Serious Games Society GALA

conference in Rome, Italy. The conference at-

tracted delegates from a range of countries

including the UK, Italy, Canada, South Korea,

France, Italy, Netherlands and Australia.

Amongst them were individuals from educa-

tional institutions, students working with Seri-

ous Games, and local government depart-

ments. During the conference, the Pergamon

team ran a workshop detailing the framework

Game Development

Page 5

Further developments of the PERGAMON pro-ject are planned for presentation at the Games for Behavioral Change Symposium at the Uni-versity of Amsterdam on 28 January 2016, and at the Games for Health UK conference at Cov-

entry University (date to be announced).

The development of the PERGAMON integrated system (gamification + sensor network + games + virtual coach) is well under way, with almost all of the components completed. The partners expect to have an on-time release of the system before the start of a pilot test of the serious

game in May 2016.

and the associated serious game. This provided

the opportunity to network and gain feedback on

the project thus far. The project team gathered

key points of feedback about the game design

and mechanisms. The breadth of global atten-

dance was important to the team, helping to un-

derstand the issues and limitations common to

all of those in the games arena. It was also a

good opportunity to network and make contacts

with peers.

Contact

Visit the PERGAMON website at

www.pergamonproject.eu

Follow us on twitter

@PergamonEU

Or to get in touch with the PERGAMON team please contact Project Coordinator

Roberta Memeo

r.memeo@grifomultimedia.it