Abstract

The elderly's inactivity and sedentary lifestyle are the common issues affecting the physical and mental health of the ageing population worldwide. This situation tends to be deteriorating during the quarantine caused by Covid-19 in many countries. Recreational video games, such as exergames and esports, could potentially motivate people of all age groups to stay physically and mentally active through the gamification elements; however, the discussions about the practical motive elements apply to specific elderly groups are still lacking. Meanwhile, recreational video games might require constant innovations to maintain the players' adherence and engagement; however, the existing articles rarely propose systematic approaches/models for extracting the opportunities to optimise the existing motivational mechanisms, not to mention creating new mechanisms. This paper proposes three models that help innovators select the effective motivational mechanism of recreational video games for motivating the elderly above 65 to stay active at home, extract the mechanisms' innovation opportunities, and perform the motivational mechanisms innovation. The paper starts with an extensive literature review to collect the existing motivational mechanisms. Then, the first model is developed for selecting the elderly's most effective motivational mechanisms based on several motivational conditions. The following section generates the second model for extracting the innovation opportunities based on the three characteristics of creativity: novelty, surprisingness, and usefulness. Finally, the third model for optimising and creating the new features of the selected motivational mechanisms is formulated based on the principles of combinational creativity method.

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