Prescription Games
By Ezeck Warren
(Each year RockScissorsPaper publishes the winners of the James Strickland Award for Writing. Named after an honored colleague and SRU Professor Emeritus, these award-winning essays have been submitted by SRU English faculty and winners have been determined by SRU English Department Faculty, the College of Liberal Arts, and Professor Strickland himself. The following essay deserves an Honorable Mention for the 2020-2021 academic year. Professor Strickland noted the following in selecting this essay: “Another honorable mention should go to Ezeck Warren’s “Prescription Games,” an engaging essay that asks readers to reconceive of videogames as therapeutic, offering video game playing as a way to relieve stress and certain illnesses such as PTSD and ADHD.”
Introduction
Most everyone around the world has heard of videogames or played them. It is no surprise then that videogames have become a hobby for many people. But what if I told you that videogames can be more than just games. What if they can be cures to illnesses that can’t be seen? What if they have the potential to help people recover from mental conditions without chemicals and drugs? I have brought all of you here today to discuss the idea of a videogame with medical practicality. I am not just talking about Doctor Mario. There have been numerous studies that show the positive and negative mental effects of videogames, but what if we found a way to focus on the positives. In fact, many scientific organizations have already begun testing such products with positive results. They have had their success, but we need to improve upon it. So, let us learn from other studies and see what we can do to change the meaning and purpose of videogames.
Discovering the Current Conversation
During the age of Covid-19, people all over the world are finding themselves in situations they have never experienced before. One of the major factors, isolation, has created a significant rise in mental illness. Even before the age of Covid-19 “The American Psychological Association has found that 51 percent of women and 43 percent of men experience negative side effects associated with stress, with symptoms as frightening as chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes” says Frankie Wallace of Headstuff.org in his article “Mind, Body, Mass Effect? Gaming And Stress.” The idea of making videogames something that can be prescribed to a number of mental conditions is not new, but now has become even more relevant due to Covid-19. Janel Miller wrote an article with the help of three different medical personnel on the uses of videogames to help teens cope during Covid-19. In the article, she cites a study about a videogame called Shadow’s Edge, a game designed to help those with stress or other mental illnesses. She cites “after 5 weeks, more than 75% of the 55 participants — all patients with emotional and/or physical challenges — reported increases in traits such as optimism, mindfulness, awareness and positive self-identity” showing how effective the proper game design can be.
The idea of videogames used as a treatment goes above and beyond Shadow’s Edge and so does its benefits. According to Rebecca Robbins of Stat News “The idea is that playing a well-designed video game can help patients get better at multitasking, staying focused, processing information, or relaxing — and that these cognitive gains can be transferred beyond Warren 3 the game to relieve symptoms of medical conditions.” Rebecca also mentioned in her article that “funding its [therapeutic videogames] research [is]: pharma industry titan Pfizer. And the patient advocacy group Autism Speaks pledged $500,000 to help bankroll an upcoming clinical trial” so there is certainly a push to try and make this idea happen.
Modern Conceptions of Videogames
At this point in my research I decided I would question the largest demographic I had access to that I believed would be the most interested in the idea of a medical videogame, college students. I sent out a survey to a large number of them and got some rather interesting feedback. To begin, I asked the college students about their current levels of stress from 1 being little to none and 10 being deep stress every hour and found that over eighty percent rated themselves a six or above. There were also a number of different responses to what people do to destress, a few answered videogames, but a number answered music or walks as well. A recurring reason I found is that people often did not have the time to play videogames and thus could not play them in their new busy college lives. Perhaps the most interesting piece of information was that many people when asked if a videogame had positive or negative effects, they leaned toward the negative mental effects of videogames. This is only made more stunning by the 59.5% of people who answered that they had used videogames at one point or another to cope with stressful events. The icing on the cake is that 70.3% of the 37 students who took the survey said they would be interested in playing a videogame specifically made to relieve stress. The final question I asked was what they thought a video game specifically designed for stress relief would look like and I got some ideas that are certainly worth noting. Some examples from the survey included Minecraft, The Sims, and even Animal Crossing. I believe my data lays out information necessary to make recommendations and implementations for medical videogames.
Analysis of Data
There was plenty of information to take away from my data. One of the main data points was that we need to change the way people look at videogames. Changing this will help give your product a positive ethical point that can be developed alongside the product, and perhaps will inspire people who need the treatment to try it. There are so many video games that depict violence, which creates an unhealthy view of video games as a whole. If more video games could focus on things that make people happy then this would help with mental illness. Another piece of information is that there is a need/want for this game, at least within the college community. From this, we can start to formulate a game to fit what a college student might enjoy. A few of the answers I received were that some enjoyed playing games such as Animal Crossing, Minecraft, and The Sims. These are building and exploratory games, which seemed to be a popular choice for the survey and studies alike. We can also take information from the people who did not answer the survey. This means that we have to find a way to draw more attention to the cause, and that same attention will help us educate people about videogames as more than Commented [WEC1]: I could not find a good way to break it up, hopefully the graphs make it easier on the eyes! Commented [WEC2R1]: Warren 5 just games. From my own data, it would appear that most people consider the building/exploratory aspects of games to be the most relaxing. The most important piece of information gathered from my data is that we need more of it. Further studies are needed to help make sure the game will function to its best ability.
Recommendations
To address the way people look at videogames, I would start with a specialized ad campaign. As we saw from my data, the idea of videogames needs to be changed to make the product successful. I imagine it would depict struggling or unhappy individuals after a long day of work, picking up the controller and smiling, something I am certain many people would find relatable. The world transforms around them as an escape and the ad ends with some message about “finding your happy place”. Al Husni Al Keilani, Mouna, and Veronique Delvenne’s article “Use of Video Games in a Child And Adolescent Psychiatric Unit” describes how important it is to overcome this stigma about videogames so that people understand “the setting of video game psychotherapy in the same level as the well-known play therapy.” For the creation of the game, it should certainly have the previously mentioned aspects of building and exploring. I would also suggest, because time is such an important factor in so many people’s lives, that it is a relatively easy game to pick up, play for a minute or two, and set back down. This design will prevent the game from appearing time consuming and prevent people from trying it in the first place. Another suggestion I would specifically emphasize on the ability to integrate your own playlist into the game, since so very many people rely on music to relax. We also need to try and find some experts to help reinforce not only the credibility of the project, but also reinforce the product itself. My final recommendation is to conduct more surveys on a diverse variety of people. I was only able to successfully reach out to a small number of college students; however, I believe that there will still be that want for a videogame that can help people, all we have to do is show them that it is a possibility.
Method of implementation
Recommendations are crucial but planning things out, even a little, is even more important. To begin I would use the power of social media, showcase a product, and get what feedback you can about it. Next, I would organize a diverse team and a financial budget. The game should have a creative and exploratory aspect. You should probably make the game a bit challenging too, but allow the player to have an “easy mode” so they can choose what experience they prefer. Adding the music feature is a must. Allowing as much of a personalized experience for each player will help them feel as though each world is their own, and this helps them to forget about their stresses outside of their world. I would also begin by targeting stress, and then start playing around with more advanced game design to target illnesses like ADHD or even PTSD. For games with a therapeutic environment, I would also suggest a sort of cooperationbased game, to help rebuild trust for those that might have lost it. Elizabeth Scott wrote in her article “The Link Between Videogames and Stress Relief” that cooperative games “create a network of friends through the game, which can be comforting and may also be empowering.” She also suggests that games should have an explicit stress-management component. She mentions a game called “Champions of the Shengha” in which you wear a sensor, this sensor measures your level of calm, the more calm you are the more powerful your character becomes. Overall, the method of implementation matters on the mental illness you are targeting, each of which will require further study.
Conclusion
Videogames are part of people’s lives and there is plenty of promise they can be an important part of someone’s future. We have seen it work on individuals with illnesses from ADHD to PTSD, but there are still hundreds of ways videogames can be adapted to help those that need it. I believe that this is the best time to expand upon this section of the market. Not only do we have a rise in these mental illnesses, but we have a number of people who are isolated and are unable to attend the usual means of treatment. We have seen where we have been with videogames and how they have evolved with time to have a potential in a world with rising rates of mental illness. People are more in need of it now in the age of Covid-19 than ever before. We have an idea and that is a good place to start. Making videogames has always been about making something that will make others happier after a long day, so let us make it so we are making them healthy at the end of the day as well.
Works Cited
Al Husni Al Keilani, Mouna, and Veronique Delvenne. “Use of Video Games in a Child And Adolescent Psychiatric Unit.” Psychiatria Danubina, vol. 32, no. Suppl 1, Sept. 2020, pp. 167–171. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mdc&AN=32890384&site=ehost-live.
Hagan, Christopher, et al. “Video Game Helps Teens Cope with COVID-19.” Healio, 10 June 2020, www.healio.com/news/primary-care/20200610/vide o-game-helps-teens-copewith-covid19
Robbins, Rebecca. “Inside the Push to Get Doctors to Prescribe Video Games.” STAT, 5 Nov. 2015, www.statnews.com/2015/11/05/video-game-developers-covet-new-marketpatients/.
Scott, Elizabeth. How Video Games Can Be Used for Stress Relief. Medically reviewed by Steven Gans, 5 Apr. 2020, www.verywellmind.com/how-video-gam es-relieve-stress4110349.
Wallace, Frankie. “Mind, Body, Mass Effect? Gaming and Stress.” HeadStuff, 26 Mar. 2019, www.headstuff.org/entertainment/gaming/mind-body-mass-effect-gaming-and-stress/.
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