Learn about depression while playing
Personal project
A game to learn about negative thinking patterns and cognitive-behavioural therapy(CBT)
Educate the young generation about depressive thinking pattern and how to defect it with CBT through gaming
About
Role
BlueWar consists of an app and a set of cards. In the app, the players can go through different interactive stories to earn characters that they can use in the card game. Based on the chosen answers, the characters will develop healthy or unhealthy personalities. The power of the characters will be different accordingly. The players' personality health profiles will also be created based on their answers.
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After earning some characters, players can start a battle by inviting friends to a virtual room. They can choose a character to help them with character-specific power. All gamers will be divided into groups to attack others by spreading the "blue virus" and protect themselves or teammates by defecting the negative thoughts. The attack process resembles stages of major depression, while the defence process follows the A-B-C-D-E model of CBT to modify maladaptive thoughts. There are also some function cards to contribute to the game dynamics.
Vision statement defined
Research and interviews
Concept development
Gameplay and game mechanics
Character and background story
Prototyping and game testing
App design
Card set design and production
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Research and concept development
Patient resistance is high in most cases, people having more knowledge of the illness are more willing to seek help than those with less knowledge
Education doesn't meet the severity level of the illness
Research shows depression is getting more serious, and it is the second top killer after cancer, but the spread of knowledge is still insufficient in the community. Through interviewing a mental occupation therapist and 5 young adults who had friends or family members recovered or suffering from depression, I found that cultural labelling and misunderstanding about depression did hidden sufferers to seek help. The biggest challenge was that most sufferers didn't have an insight into what was happening and refused the offer of helping. People who have a higher education level or are more knowledgeable of mental illnesses were more willing to seek help from professionals.
Negative thinking patterns is an obvious presenting symptom and hidden the recovery a lot
I have also joined a mental health first aid course and a counselling course to learn more about the presenting symptoms, maladaptive behaviour, recovered cases, risk factors, healing methods, and different therapies. From the courses and interviews, I learned that people who try to help often aroused maladaptive behaviour and emotion. The sufferers would easily feel being misunderstood or unloved when others try to help. They're more vulnerable to emotion traps and negative thinking. This kind of resistance is a big headache for friends, family, and therapists.
Talking and CBT are something can to be done by selves and people around them to help
Although healing can be a long and challenging process, talking about own problems and being listened to is a simple but effective way for the sufferers to feel relieved. Sufferers can express themselves and be listened to without professional help. Also, CBT is an easily learned and commonly used approach for therapeutic effect. Therefore, my goal of the game is to introduce negative thinking patterns and some CBT technics to the players. Game aesthetics are defined as connection, expression, fellowship, and challenge accordingly.
If they resist, talk about the issues of others
You may need to make some treatment plans to let them get insight. If they insist that they’re fine, then you need excellent skills to guide them. You can bring a newspaper and talk about the issue of other people with them.
Process and game evaluation
The game has been adjusted to be fun and light-hearted to avoid triggering negative feelings
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4 game tests were conducted while 2 main concepts and 7 versions of the game evaluation were developed to achieve the design criteria - connection for team-building, self-discovery expression, and player-centred engagement. I intended to target mild depression sufferers and their families, but it turns out people with lived experience can be sensitive and easily take the game context to personal context. The game has changed to aim at public education. Also, talking on own problems may encourage negative feelings. Even in a role-play situation, people hide their true selves in front of friends and family. The self-understanding was modified to private gaming, the interactive stories. Many details like the wordings, presentation, and game balancing have been adjusted via testing and re-testing.
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You can click here to watch the game test documentary of youngsters with domain knowledge and their feedback. You can also watch the game concept video to have a deeper understanding of the design solution. You may also open the full report to find out more about the design process. If you're interested in publishing the game, please feel free to contact me!
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