How to NOT make a therapeutic game
Well, I guess I'll just say this here. I'll try to summarize (it's still gonna be long, sorry).
The game I'm talking about was originally to be submitted to a mental health themed game jam, hosted by DeepWell DTX and Global Game Jam.
A few days ago I noticed I was feeling super burnt out on this project. In its current state, I literally did not have it in me to work another day on it. I've been reflecting on why exactly that happened here, and I think I'm aware now of what went wrong.
The thing is, personally, mental health is an incredibly important topic to me. It holds all other aspects of life within it. And prior to working in games, I studied psychology and sociology for quite a while, trying to make sense of why so much of the world is in such disorder, and if there was anything that could be done about it. Years later, after learning how important living in tune with what a person values in life is for a person's mental health, I also learned how important the aspect of "PLAY" is for people. One thing leading to another, and eventually I come up with an idea for a game that hit me with the feeling of understanding EXACTLY what I wanted to do. That was about 5 years ago.
Since then I learned just how much time and effort game development actually requires...and all of you here probably already know...it's definitely not a cake walk, especially if you're doing everything yourself. Long story short, when I saw the theme for this game jam it really made me think "maybe it's finally time to start working on that game". It seemed like the perfect opportunity to get started on it, so that's what I did. The trouble began when I started making the priority of the project about doing whatever I needed to do to make this project stand out amongst all the others (in order to hopefully get funding for it). After several weeks of working on it with this mindset...I noticed that the intention of this game only vaguely resembles that of the game I came up with 5 years ago. Even worse than that, I've been ignoring everything I've learned about "good mental health" over the years in order to try to make a game that attempts to help people have "good mental health". For me, that completely destroys the authenticity and integrity of the entire project, which in turn completely knocked the floor out of all the energy I had to work on this game as it currently is.
For that reason, 1 day away from submission, I'm stepping out of the jam, starting the game over from scratch, and keeping in mind all of the things I've learned over the years that attribute to a healthy mentality, not only for those playing the game, but for myself as well. I'll be making it playable later this year and I hope everyone will look forward to it. :)
Lastly, a bit of advice I'd give to anyone working on "therapeutic" games going forward.
The potential for games to increase the quality of people's daily lives, both psychologically and physically, is incredibly high. PLEASE keep in mind however, that the risk of commodifying these aspects of health (especially mental health) is also incredibly high. And if we don't practice self-restraint and ensure that the games we make are made with integrity (with an intention that's consistent with what we value in life), we could end up causing a lot more harm than good. The aspect of human health is far too important to be toying around with like a cheap commodity, or to be using it for a "selling point".
I really believe that if we can live in tune with the things we truly value in life, every other aspect of our lives will fall into place where it needs to be. I think keeping these things in mind going forward while we work on these games will be incredibly important, and if we can do that...we might just be able to improve the lives of millions of people, and avoid the mistakes I made during my first attempt.
Good luck, everyone! :)
Files
Hidden Village
| Status | In development |
| Author | Wishing Rock |
| Genre | Simulation |
| Tags | 2D, 3D, Life Simulation, Mental Health, Unity |
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I've always been of an opinion that games, no matter if they are made specifically to help one's mental health or such, can still affect it greatly, in a direction that can be either positive or a negative. When you feel like your life is missing something, a great game can help you gain the courage to keep looking for it, though another game can instead try and replace this emptiness. And that can be dangerous because while the former gives you the strength to keep going, perhaps a general direction as to how to find the "missing pieces", the latter might only make you feel good for the moment, like alcohol or some other drug.
While I'm not very knowledgeable in psychology, sociology and related terms, but I feel that our opinions on the subject of human health in games are at least similar. A game can drastically improve someone's health (I can only speak of mental health as it is what I had experience with), or it can slowly deteriorate it, or cause a dependency, perhaps through no fault or intention of its own. Care needs to be put to not let the game swing into the latter two. In spite of that, some games are made purely as market products, which usually means keeping the player's attention span for as long as possible, making them feel that there is value from playing, even if there was intended to be none. Thus, for some game designs the problem might not be the "being able to practice enough self-restrain", but rather refusing to practice any because it would get in the way of selling the game or its micro-transactions.
...But I didn't mean to write a text wall, I just wanted to share my opinion, which, again, I feel is similar to yours :)
and I hope it's actually comprehensible ahemI also wanted to say that your other game, Aether Fly, might just be the kind of game to give the player courage to find what's missing rather than replace it away from them. I wish you luck and courage to keep holding the vision you have for Hidden Village and build on it! And hopefully give some love to Aether Fly too when you're done! :D
I completely agree with your thoughts on games regarding mental health, and you bring up a really good point. Ensuring that a game isn't just becoming a new kind of addiction is a really important aspect of game development that I think we all should keep in mind. And keeping track of whether or not the intention of the games we are making are consistent with what we value in life (self-expression, honesty, empathy, and basically all of the things we would like to see more of in the world) is fundamental to ensuring that our games contribute to a players experience that isn't predatory and destructive.
That's honestly been one of my deepest concerns with this whole game jam...I'm a bit worried that people may try to use "mental health" as a selling point for their games and, instead of genuinely creating something that can facilitate inner growth within the player, just creates more "noise" within them that can distract the player long enough to make them think it's "helping" them, when in actuality it's just keeping them dependant on an external stimulus, which will completely deteriorate the moment the player goes back to their regular habitual mode of operation. In this way, instead of being "therapeutic" for people, it will just becomes a new platform for psychological exploitation. It would be using the same tricks that marketeers, politicians (and basically every other form of con-artist) use to make people feel more comfortable giving them money for the promise of an unachievable service. And when I see an organization come along with a lot of money and "professionals" and hear them saying a lot of vaguely "scientifically" reassuring things, but provide no actual demonstrations or examples of what they're talking about...I gotta be honest...it makes me a little nervous.
Hopefully my worries are unfounded...but I've seen a lot of organizations built around some really "nice" ideas later turn into fragmented monsters that only vaguely harbor their original intention.
Anyway, I really appreciate your thoughtful comment. And you don't need to worry about posting walls of text (you've probably noticed, that's kind of my thing, haha). And you know what, at this point, I'm kind of thinking Aether Fly may be exactly the game that would be "therapeutic" for ME to work on right now. So, I think that's the game I'm gonna finish first. Thanks for your insightful feedback, as always! Really glad we crossed paths on here, hoping in the future we can collaborate on a project. :)
Regarding the reflection of values in one's game, I agree with you completely on how important it is to stay morally consistent - in fact, I'd argue it extends way beyond game development and into other aspects of life, including relationships, daily jobs, posting on social media etc etc. Keeping morally consistent is definitely not trivial, though one thing is working a boring job because you need to pay the bills, another is working a job which may be interesting but involves exploiting people in the way you described. And sometimes it's just not clear enough what your values are, it might just be not possible to self-reflect at all...
As for your concerns on turning mental wellbeing into a selling point, I believe some non-game related analogies can be made as well. Smartphones are a very clear, though perhaps too broad an example seeing how much they changed people's lives - they were meant to make people's lives easier, just like the personal computers back in their early times, however they also now both serve as the hosts for all the media, both useful and detrimental, and the way (most) phone/computer companies handle device distribution is purely oriented on sales, which as we've already concluded involves removing all self-restraint. Thus with time the users attained less and less control over what they buy, even changing a battery has become an impossible task for a layperson, and all the preinstalled apps competing for your ever shortening attention span...
This is definitely a topic for another wall of text, haha, I guess it's just how it has to be, though for me personally it can be difficult to keep track of what I'm wallposting about since there's always so much on mind. Perhaps we could connect on discord or somesuch sometime so it's easier to talk in short bursts? Here's mine just in case: Aru#5023
In all honesty I'm really excited for Aether Fly's possible future! It was one of my favorite games in the jam and made me feel in a way no other game I played did. And yes, a future collab sounds exciting as well, I feel that our game design visions are similar yet different enough to complement each other, so when the time comes I'd definitely like to try and work on something together with you :)