Abstract: "In 2010, the authors (Jacobs, a game design professor, Sugarman, a pediatrician, and
Rice, a psychotherapist ) started meeting to brainstorm design and play concepts for a
therapeutic, physiologically-controlled videogame intended for use by people diagnosed with
anxiety and/or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The goal was to combine cognitive behavioral
therapy (CBT), narrative therapy (NT) and biofeedback supported psychophysiological selfregulation
(PSR) into a game that would engage adolescents and provide hard data on a player's
physical and emotional states during a therapy session. The game concept that emerged is
"MindGamersTM in School" (MG), a therapeutic game prototype being developed and tested
across two 6-month sessions by the authors and two teams of undergraduate game design and
development students at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Pursuing the design required half the team to learn principles, terms and methods of
strength-based, client-centered psychotherapy and their application to psychophysiological selfregulation
and biofeedback theory and practice. The other half of the team needed to engage in
understanding the current state of role-playing videogames, avatar creation systems and game
design/development processes.
This paper will describe the current game prototype and then focus on MG's design and
development process by looking at how the initial design period brought the game design to its
current state and how it has continued to influence the production process."
"Motion-based games help to increase
the likelihood that a patient will complete therapeutic
exercises at home by using a game context to motivate the
patients. The scope of this paper is to explore the interactive
technologies that are used to develop these games, and their
value in the context of stroke rehabilitation. The games will
be evaluated from both a result focused perspective and
patient usability perspective."