Tag: mental health
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Motion Controls Bring Fitness Home
When Nintendo originally released the Wii in 2006, with it came Wii Fit, Zumba, Just Dance, and a host of other games that were all about getting people up and off the couch. Off the couch and using the fancy new motion controls, that is. Wii Fit Trainer made their mark, still on the Smash roster.…
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No Moss Makes Mindful Tiny games
No Moss Studios is a small Indie developer that is currently developing ‘tiny’ games. These titles really are tiny. They’re mainly doing this through Patreon, but also offer each for a single fee. Their mechanics of these games range wildly but they are all well designed. While games grow larger and more ambitious, Indie games have…
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Publishers Need to Do More to Fight Gaming Disorder
Gaming Disorder has recently been recognised as a medical condition, and in many countries can now be treated as such. The news has had varied reactions. Most outlets just used it as an excuse to film some kids who play Fortnite a lot. Recognition of digital services as exploiting human tendencies for addiction has been…
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Honest Mental Health and Night in The Woods
Video Games don’t have a fantastic record of depicting mental health. The increasing attention on plot focused games has shown the medium is pretty far behind. As well as fantastic LGBT representation, Night in The Woods depicts mental health in an honest and relatable way. It makes the characters seem real, while still not defined by…
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YouTubers & Twitchers: Awareness & Advocacy for Mental Illness
For years, there has been a stigma attached to mental illness and those who suffer from it. Recently, content creators have been using their platforms to combat this stigma. In the UK, more than two-thirds of the population have some kind of mental health condition. This can range from a persistent, lower severity anxiety, to…
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Crunch, Unpaid Overtime, Poor Health – Industry Norms That Need to Change
Making a good game is hard; this is just a fact. It is a Herculean task. One which takes an incredible amount of time and a panoply of skills across many fields to complete. Making financially successful games, especially AAA titles, isn’t just difficult though. Often it can be damaging and exploitative to the programmers,…
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Is There a Link Between Intelligence and Playing Video Games?
The stereotype that gamers are lazy slobs has been floating around ever since video games were first invented. Although I don’t see anything wrong with leading a chill life, there’s now scientific research to prove the haters wrong. A recent study was conducted by the University of York (United Kingdom), on the link between video…
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A Bestiary of Delphic Feels
If you’re yet to read Nathalie Lawhead’s blog on her experiences showcasing interactive zine Everything is Going to be Ok at Day of the Devs, do that thing now, and come back. Yeah, me too. It’s this that got jammed in my craw the hardest: “What the fuck is this, what the hell, weird ass game,…
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Horror Games That Don’t Rely On the ‘Mental Illness is Scary’ Trope
If I asked you to think about the average horror game setting, then chances are that your mind probably wandered to an abandoned mental hospital, or a spooky forest inhabited by “crazy people.” I know mine does. The horror game market is so overly saturated in games about mentally ill villains, that it’s clear many…
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Town of Light Dev’s $10k Take This Donation is Another Win for Mental Health in Gaming
‘Although we’re ok, telling each other about our gaming experiences, we’re not really comfortable talking about ourselves, things we think will make us seem different’ That’s how journalist Susan Ardent introduces the idea behind Take This, a non profit started by herself and fellow writer Russ Pitts. Founded in 2013, the charity seeks to inform…
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Are Horror Games Becoming Gradually Less Ableist?
It’s dark, you’re alone, and you find yourself walking down a long, dank and dirty hallway. Something is groaning and screaming in another room, so you look for a weapon. In a set of drawers filled with unwashed medical equipment you find a meat cleaver. The wailing is getting louder now, and you hear desperate…
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Checkpoint Harnesses Power of Video Games to Tackle Mental Health Issues
Founded by Dr. Jennifer Hazel, Checkpoint is webseries with the goal is to “raise awareness about mental health issues and those affected, using the power of video games.” The series is in its last week on kickstarter, and has earned enough pledges to be fully funded. In the funding video, Dr. Hazel discusses the severity of mental…
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Fighting The Stigma of Depression and Anxiety With Games
Though approximately one in four people will experience a mental health issue in their lifetime, there is still far too much stigma and misunderstanding surrounding them. By creating games about depression and anxiety, two of the most common mental illnesses, developers have been demonstrating openly their own experiences in a way that helps both sufferers…
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How About a Poem?
They say that crying is worthless. But those are simply lies. It’s when your throat burns with salty tears, that the pain truly subsides. The hurt will never go away, the pain will never stop, but there must be a way to let it out or the aching will turn to rot. . We lock our doors…
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Confessions of a Gaming Addict
Hi. My name is Subject 16, and I’m a gaming addict. It’s been… about six hours since I last touched my PS4 controller, and I can already feel the urge to get back to the game. There are still trophies to get and… God I’m desperate! I need to get out of here… I need to…
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Mental Health & MOBAs
I used to be completely addicted to MOBAs. Every day I would come home from work, stick some mac’n’cheese in the microwave and settle in for a solid 6 hours of ganks, pushes, and base racing. Before I realized it, my evening was over. At the time, I might have thought that I was just…