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Developing Video Games about Mental Health
- 1. Developing Video Games about Mental Health Hsiao Wei (Michelle) Chen s3754808
- 2. Educational Background BS Computer Science, Major in Software Technology De La Salle University - Manila, Philippines Master of Science, Video Game Enterprises and Production Birmingham City University, UK University Certificate, Psychology University of Derby, UK
- 3. Creative Practice History • Game Developer • Programmer, Game Designer, Producer, Artist, Technical Reviewer • More than 10 years experience in companies, such as Mattel, in the Philippines and Taiwan • GameIndustry.biz 100 • Women in Games and STEM Ambassador • Teach kids how to code video games Le Petit Prince x Mixed Reality Maker’s Faire and Finalist of Digital Taipei Competition Nabi Compete
- 4. Depression Simulator • point-and-click puzzle game that simulates the everyday life of someone living with depression • inspired by more than 100 stories, music and art submissions from HitRecord Masters by Practice Semi-finalist Stylist Creator’s Collective
- 6. Research Question: How to develop Video Games about Mental Health?
- 7. • The research project aims to develop video games about mental health. • It will use the Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology, working with people with lived experience of mental illness, such as depression and anxiety. • Research will also include mental health professionals, such as clinicians, researchers and mental health campaigners, and video game developers. • The project will result in video games with the theme of mental health to promote mental health awareness and reduce stigma. • The research will not be developing video games for therapeutic purposes. • The research would be focused on the design process of the games, and how lived experience stories are translated in the games.
- 8. Why Video Games? • Video games as a medium is multidisciplinary, covering design, art, storytelling, music, programming, which provide multiple platforms for people with lived experience to tell their stories as a form of self-expression. • For example, they can tell their stories through the narrative, or portray them through art and music or translate them to game mechanics.
- 9. Contextual Review: Video Games about Mental Health Actual Sunlight (WZO Games, 2013) Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall, 2017) Depression Quest (The Quinnspiracy, 2013)
- 10. Game Jam • is “an accelerated opportunistic game creation event where a game is created in a relatively short timeframe exploring given design constraint(s) and end results are shared publicly” (Kultima, 2015) • participants work in teams with a balance of skills in each team (Goddard et. al., 2014), with members who are interested in programming, art, design, sound and music, and narrative (Reng et. al., 2013)
- 11. Participatory Action Research • is a collaborative process where the different stakeholders work together through an iterative process of reflection and action to solve a problem, and the process itself is as important as the outcome (Bergold & Thomas, 2012; Manzo & Brightbill, 2008) • is a user-centred approach, where users are the "real experts of their experience" (Sleeswijk Visser, 2005), which can give them a sense of empowerment (Boote et. al., 2002) • is a "powerful strategy [that ...] involves practitioners in [a] research process from the initial design of the project through data gathering and analysis, to the final conclusions and actions arising out of the research" (Whyte, 1991)
- 12. Reflection on Project Work
- 13. Global Game Jam 2020 Theme: “Repair” Kintsugi Featured on Life Matters ABC Radio National and New Game Plus TV on C31
- 14. GamesAid Mental Health Jam Sink / Swim
- 15. Shadow’s Edge Healing Hearts Jam Healing Hearts
- 16. Forthe project, the game jams will be conducted online, it will be staged in phases: 1. lived experience storytelling 2. ideation process guided by design thinking 3. game development 4. game release
- 17. 5 ’20 6 ‘20 7 ’20 8 ’20 9 ‘20 10 ’20 11 ’20 12 ’20 1 ‘21 2 ’21 3 ’21 4 ‘21 5 ‘21 6 ‘21 7 ‘21 8 ‘21 9 ‘21 10 ‘21 11 ‘21 12 ‘21 1 ‘22 2 ‘22 3 ‘22 4 ‘22 5 ‘22 6 ‘22 7 ‘22 8 ‘22 Game Jam 3Game Jam 2Game Jam 1 Timeline * Agile Methodology Contextual Review Ethics Application Revision Revision Writing Conclusion Milestone 1 Milestone 2 Milestone 3 Research Proposal
- 18. Situate Research Big Anxiety Festival (Bennet, 2017) Dance-Based Knowledge Translation (Boydell, 2011)
- 19. Bibliography • Bennet, J. (2017b), ‘The Big Anxiety’. https://www.thebiganxiety.org/. • Bergold, J., and Thomas, S. (2012). Participatory Research Methods: A Methodological Approach in Motion. Forum for Qualitative Social Research. http://www.qualitativeresearch.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1801/3334 • Boote J., Telford R., Cooper C. (2002). Consumer involvement in health research: a review and research agenda. Health Policy. 61(2):213-236. • Boydell, K.M. (2011). Making sense of collective events: The co-creation of a research-based dance. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung (Forum Qualitative Social Research), 12(1). Art. No. 5. Available at: http:// nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs110155. • Goddard, W., Byrne, R., Mueller, F. (2014). Playful Game Jams: Guidelines for Designed Outcomes. IE2014. Newcastle, NSW, Australia. • Kultima, A. (2015). Defining Game Jam. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2015), June 22-25. • Manzo, L. C. & Brightbill, N. (2008). Toward a participatory ethics. In Sara Kindon, Rachel Pain & Mike Kesby (Eds.), Participatory action research approaches and methods: Connecting people, participation and place (pp.33-40). London: Routledge. • Reng, L., Schoenau-Fog, H., Kofoed, L.B. (2013). The motivational power of game communities-engaged through game jamming. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. • Sleeswijk Visser, F., Stappers P.J., Van der Lugt R., Sanders E.B.N. (2005). Contextmapping: experiences from practice. CoDesign. 1:119–49. • Whyte, W. (1991). Introduction. In William Foote Whyte (Ed.), Participatory action research (pp.7-18). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Editor's Notes
- A brief summary of your creative practice history/background and its relationship to your research. Your proposed approach to the PhD/Masters (what do you plan to do and how do you plan to do it?) Where possible, and as relevant to your research project/approach, offer some reflection on project work (produced prior to the degree commencing and/or since enrolment). Begin to situate your research within a broader framework/community of practice. (To what field of practice are you most likely to make a contribution? *)
- Le Petit Prince x Mixed Reality, an escape the room game that combines AR, VR with handcrafted environment made from cardboard.
- For the author’s Masters by Practice, she developed a point-and-click puzzle empathy game called Depression Simulator. She wanted to create a game that is autobiographical but at the same time also represents more point of views about depression, so she solicited contributions in the form of stories, images and even music from the collaboration website HitRecord. The proposed research would take a similar approach, and look into the values provided by lived experiences.
- Will O’Neill, the developer of Actual Sunlight, the game is “almost 100 percent autobiographical (O’Neill, cited in Smith 2015)”. However, it would be difficult for the proposed research to design a game based solely on personal experience. The game's creators have spoken candidly in the past about their own mental health struggles. Scott Benson, who animated and illustrated the game, has type two bipolar disorder. Early in development, they knew they wanted to talk about depression, since everyone on the team had experienced it in some way. Ultimately the team wanted to make a game about people who experience mental health issues, not the issues themselves. For Zoe Quinn, developing Depression Quest helped her deal with her lived experience. In an interview with the New Yorker, she said, “Externalizing that into a game and asking people to take some time out to see what ‘rules’ other people have to live with, I think, is a powerful use of the medium (Zoe Quinn as cited in Parkin, 2014; Lewis, 2014).”
- kintsugi (def.) the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold it’s like embracing your flaws (the cracks in the ceramics) and making it beautiful
- In the last couple of years, awareness of mental health has increased. However, there’s still lots of work to do. In the workplace, mental health illnesses are still not recognized in the same way as physical illnesses and talking about it is still difficult for many people. With this game jam, we want to open up the conversation by building some creative games around this important topic. Because that is what depression feels like to me, like sinking, like swimming. There is a sense of helplessness that you can't control, but at the same time, you do.
- Connection, art and writing to help teens build resilience. These undeniably challenging times provide an opportunity for us to reflect upon our mental and physical well-being and explore ways in which we can support those who are more vulnerable and already enduring mental and physical health constraints. The team at the non-profit Shadow’s Edge has provided teens and young adults across the globe solace via a mobile game based on narrative therapy and positive psychology. We need your help now more than ever to brainstorm ways to continue to engage our players and reach others who have been recently affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and experiencing isolation. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned teens’ lives upside down. Many are out of school, dealing with fear and uncertainty without the usual supports. The world of Disruption in our free game Shadow’s Edge models this confusion. As players ages 13+ express themselves through journaling and graffiti – they bring life back to the city of Shadow’s Edge, while discovering their own resilience. We have therefore started this game jam to encourage participants to prototype possible extensions to the game that are aligned with our objectives at Shadow’s Edge: supporting teens in building resilience while playing a game. The extensions can be missions, mini-games, puzzles - anything you can think of to make connecting people, creating art and journaling fun. All this to help players feel better and more resilient. Since in the game Shadow’s Edge, it explores the use of journaling and art creation to improve your wellbeing. Create your own vlog with daily video prompts and keep track of your emotions, thoughts and stories. - 5 Ways of Wellbeing
- Agile is a development methodology based on iterative and incremental approach
- People with lived experience of mental illness have used different mediums as a form of artistic self-expression, such as exploring the first episode of psychosis through dance-based knowledge translation (Boydell, 2011), drawings to express experiences of illness (Guillemin, 2004 ), and the Big Anxiety Festival, which explored the use of arts and science to convey the consumer experience, as well as the public’s perception, of anxiety (Bennet, 2017a, 2017b). Video games are a medium in the same way as books or movies, it can have different genres, it can tackle a variety of subject matters, it can challenge people and be used for good (refs). Video games are interactive and immersive, and they can inspire players to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. This makes it potentially a powerful medium for telling people’s stories about mental health (Solberg, 2016).
- A brief summary of your creative practice history/background and its relationship to your research. Your proposed approach to the PhD/Masters (what do you plan to do and how do you plan to do it?) Where possible, and as relevant to your research project/approach, offer some reflection on project work (produced prior to the degree commencing and/or since enrolment). Begin to situate your research within a broader framework/community of practice. (To what field of practice are you most likely to make a contribution? *)