TPI Seminar 2022: Intentionally Designing a Game to Help Alleviate Symptoms of Depression — Pandi Cunoti

This presentation was delivered on October 21, 2022 at the Transformative Play Initiative Seminar 2022: Role-playing, Culture, and Heritage.

Description:

Depression is a common mental health issue in today’s society, unfortunately, mental healthcare is not easily accessible to a large number of people worldwide. Therefore, a lot of researchers have attempted to study the effectiveness of commercial video games in alleviating symptoms of depression as supplementary tools to mental healthcare, not as replacements. Even though some data suggests that there might be an effect, the games used in it are not designed to achieve such a goal, therefore their positive effect is mostly accidental. This paper argues that in order for a game to help alleviate symptoms of depression, first, it must do a better representation of it. Therefore, it initially analyzes two games that arguably do a better representation of mental health: Celeste(2018) and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Then based on the results and lessons extracted from the analysis, it presents one iteration of a design process of “Break It”, a game currently in development, intended to help those who suffer from depression. It presents the first steps toward a research through design project with the main aim to create a gaming experience that helps those who suffer from depression heal. Another potential benefit of such an experience would be the reduction of social stigma towards depression among players who do not suffer it themselves.

Bio:

Pandi Çunoti is a software developer for Fimento living in Stockholm. He graduated from the Master program in game Design in June of this year. During the fall semester of his second year he worked on the game design for Break it together with three other students. That game design became the basis of his thesis on designing to help alleviate symptoms of depression. In order to refine the design he took inspiration from research currently done on LARPs, in an attempt to apply similar principles to Break it. The game itself is designed to help and inspire people suffering with mental health to practice positive behavior patterns.    

 

 Click here to read PDF of slides.  

 

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This seminar is hosted by the Transformative Play Initiative in the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University Campus Gotland. This seminar is made possible by financial support from the Sustainable Heritage Research Forum (SuHRF). The Transformative Play Initiative explores the use of analog role-playing games as vehicles for lasting personal and social change.

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Graphic Design by Liliia Chorna. Music by Elias Faltin. Video edited by Rezmo (Mohammad Mohammad Rezaie).