Had an interesting talk at a client meeting about how gaming has become a source for healing at scale.
Many of us have witnessed how our children remarkably coped with the lock-down and isolation during the peak of the pandemic, mainly because of their access to gaming and being connected with their friends even when fully-isolated. Amid a culture impacted by mental health, for a vast majority, gaming has clearly been a source of stress-relief.
Few remarkable initiatives:
Dr Adam Gazzaley’s Akili Interactive has introduced EndeavorRx the first-of-its-kind attention treatment for children with ADHD, delivered through an action video game experience.
MIT Media Lab has designed an innovative wellness app called Paradise Island, that inspires its users to get up and get going, and to complete activities that will make them feel good.
World Health Organization has teamed up with Stork Limited to launch a farm simulation game Goodville to help players achieve better mental and physical health.
Several #research reports have been published to demonstrate how playing games appears to improve #cognitive abilities in #children. For instance, avid players are better at noticing visual stimuli and shifting the focus of their attention, the very tasks that old brains find difficult. As Dr Adam Gazzaley puts it soon gaming might just become a cognitive Viagra prescribed by the doctor, for an ageing mind.
While we have seen several forward-thinking, marketing-oriented endemic and non-endemic brands exploring gaming, I would be keen to see action in 3 key areas:
i. Brands exploring ‘gaming for good’, not to merely drive engagement with GenZ
ii. We have several countries with an ageing population, how are brands leveraging gaming to target the Boomer generation
iii. High time for schools to include gaming in their curriculum (if collaborative learning, team-work, resilience, inclusion are the values schools want to inculcate and drive)
After all, mental health is not a destination but a process. So the question is, which brands truly have it in their DNA to go along this journey and leverage gaming to make a larger impact on society across demographics.
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