We're rolling on to episode 11!

And joining us is Cyrus Nemati!

Founder and Creative Director of Little Bat Games, Cyrus wrote, directed and programmed Vampire Therapist, a fully-voiced narrative comedy game about finding purpose when death isn’t a concern. A BAFTA-nominated game and winner of multiple other awards this year already.

In this episode, we explore:

• The journey from political policy to voice acting, games studios, and Cyrus setting up his studio, Little Bat Games
• Vampire Therapist: exploring and learning through a therapeutic process, providing the player the ability to take more of a 3rd person perspective on therapy, and the opportunities to learn about cognitive distortions (with humour and side games included), which can aid in real-life cognitive and emotional reflections and processing.
• A key learning: knowing what the final game looks like before starting the production to work within your resources and limits, because this can lead to creating a multi-award-winning game

Show notes:

https://vampiretherapist.com/

Game download: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2481020/Vampire_Therapist/

We've made it to episode 10!

We’re joined by Stephen McPeake

Stephen has been working in the technology industry for 25 years, spending the last 10 focusing on 'Smart Cities' solutions and citizen engagement technology, including the ReportAll app and in the last few years, founding Civic Dollars.

In this episode, we explore:

• Stephen's journey that started with working to solve the problems facing cities in promoting health & wellbeing, which led to the idea for Civic Dollars to incentivise activity in outdoor spaces.
• The importance of creating the right incentives for each demographic: it’s ‘local rewards for local people’ (and seasonal rewards too).
• The opportunity to lean into effective altruism, creating deeper motivations for players through donating their civic dollars to local communities.
• Civic Dollars is a great example of how digital gamification can translate into real-life social activities, creating new social connections and overcoming loneliness.

Show notes:

https://www.civicdollars.com/

Civic Dollars Christmas Tea Dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbfVRqaQc0U

Rolling on to Episode 9!

We’re joined by Cosima Prahm

Cosima is Director of Centre for Clinical Research at Unfallkrankenhaus Trauma Hospital Berlin and post-doc chariotey, the Medical University of Berlin. She is a clinical neuroscientist with a background of research in plastic and reconstructive surgery relating to extremity reconstruction, prosthetic training, peripheral nerves, phantom limb pain and human machine interfaces. She founded the PlayBionic working group in 2017, which has led to applications for myoelectric signal training, immersive environments for phantom pain relief and more. Winner of multiple awards, including from Games for Change.

In this episode we explore:

• Learning from existing games on the market, and adapting the controls to enable people living with amputations to engage in the gameplay
• Building on this through listening and co-creating games with patients living with amputations and trauma, which has led to therapeutic benefits of game play.
• For players in your games who have had traumatic hand injuries, the distraction of the gameplay, means that patients are reducing their pain experience, and importantly, pushing the boundaries of their movement and functional therapy to recover earlier.
• The importance of making games outrageous and weird to create player desire and interest.
• The challenges of taking digital games as therapeutics beyond research studies into products and services available in clinical and residential settings – and something, as game designers and implementors, we need to collectively drive forward.

Show notes:

https://playbionic.org/about-us/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30503232/

https://games.jmir.org/2017/1/e3/