Motivation to perform movement therapy and caregiver burnout are major challenges to post-stroke life. Serious games have been shown to support therapeutic tasks in people with stroke, but there are few activities that simultaneously support informal caregiver health, which is also impacted post-stroke. Here, we present a collaborative, mutually beneficial, serious game designed to support therapy for persons with stroke and also exercise for their informal caregivers. One player performs rehabilitative wrist movements - useful to people with stroke - and the other performs a seated march exercise - useful to informal caregivers - via pedals or a keyboard to control their avatar. We present a pilot study with 6 healthy dyads to evaluate how exercise-based input of one player, the Pseudo Caregiver (PCG), impacts motivation and emotional experience in both the PCG and Pseudo Person with Stroke (PPS). While not statistically significant, we find that PCGs Interest subscale scores trended higher when using a pedal (the exercised-based input) compared to a keyboard, regardless of game play mode. PPSs' positive affect scale scores and Competence subscale scores trended higher when their partner played collaboratively with a pedal compared to a keyboard. These trends encourage future work toward incorporating an exercise-based device, such as a pedal, to enhance the emotional and motivational experience of rehabilitative serious games for people with different movement ability levels.

翻译：提升运动治疗动机与缓解照护者倦怠是中风后康复面临的主要挑战。严肃游戏已被证实能辅助中风患者的治疗性任务，但能够同时支持非正式照护者健康（同样受中风影响）的活动仍较为匮乏。本文提出一种协作式、互惠互利的严肃游戏，旨在支持中风患者的治疗训练，同时为其非正式照护者提供运动锻炼。一名玩家执行有益于中风患者的康复性腕部动作，另一名玩家则通过踩踏板或操作键盘控制虚拟角色，进行适合照护者的坐姿踏步运动。我们针对6组健康被试对开展试点研究，评估伪照护者（PCG）基于运动的输入方式如何影响其自身及伪中风患者（PPS）的动机与情感体验。尽管未达到统计学显著性，我们观察到无论游戏模式如何，PCG在使用踏板（基于运动的输入）时其兴趣子量表得分均高于使用键盘时的趋势。当搭档使用踏板进行协作游戏时，PPS的积极情感量表得分与能力子量表得分也呈现高于键盘组的趋势。这些趋势为未来研究引入踏板等运动交互设备以增强不同运动能力人群在康复严肃游戏中的情感与动机体验提供了方向。