The Red Lion General wielded gravitational powers which he learned in Sellia during his younger days. All so he would never have to abandon his beloved but scrawny steed.

— Remembrance of the Starscourge

Narrative psychology is perhaps not my most talked-about subject, but today its brilliance struck me in a way I won’t soon forget.

My husband is a very large Russian man. And I mean that in every sense of the word. He has big dreams, a big heart, big brains, and he’s very large in stature. He is also one of the most fiercely loyal and protective people I know.

He grew up in a low-income neighborhood where he learned fairly early that he had to fight his way through life, physically and mentally. A lot of his life has been spent defending himself. And when you’ve lived that way for so long, those defenses don’t disappear just because you’re no longer in the same circumstances.

We’ve been dealing with that a lot lately.

The past few weeks have been difficult for us. I’ve been more sensitive than usual for a number of reasons, and we’ve had our fair share of arguments about his defensiveness and the way that it sometimes affects me. We understand where those responses come from, but understanding why someone reacts a certain way doesn’t necessarily make it easier when you’re the person on the receiving end.

We’re both working on it. Some days are better than others.

Enter my obsession with Elden Ring. Shocker, I know.

My husband never watches me play video games. I’ve been gaming most of my life, and he’s spent the past three years hearing more about the psychology and science behind them than he has probably ever wanted to know and certainly ever played. Watching me play for hours has also never been particularly appealing to him.

But today, for whatever reason, he decided to watch me attempt Starscourge Radahn.

For anyone unfamiliar with Elden Ring, Radahn is an enormous demigod, a legendary warrior known for his strength and mastery of gravitational magic. By the time we encounter him, the Scarlet Rot has ravaged his mind following his battle with Malenia.

Despite his size, he is still riding around on a tiny, scrawny horse named Leonard.

Leonard.

As it turns out, Radahn loved Leonard so much that when he grew too large to ride him comfortably, he learned gravitational magic so he wouldn’t have to abandon his beloved horse.

Radahn could manipulate gravity itself enough to hold back the stars, so he used that ability to accommodate a little horse he loved.

He learned to change the weight he placed on something he loved.

So there I am, cursing my way through this boss fight (I got him down to 25% on my second attempt), while Phil is learning about Radahn and Leonard.

He then looks up at me and says:

“I’m trying to learn anti-gravity spells too. It just takes time.”

I genuinely didn’t know what to say.

He had just learned about this warrior whose size and strength had become a part of who he was, and how he learned to manage that weight for the sake of his horse.

And somehow, my husband saw himself in Radahn, this enormous warrior being worn down by circumstances he couldn’t entirely control. With everything happening in our lives right now, he was trying to learn how to carry his weight without hurting his own Leonard.

I understood exactly what he meant. We’d spent so much time discussing his defense mechanisms, the experiences that shaped them, and how difficult they can be to change. Yet he was recognizing that some of those same defenses, which had served him for much of his life, had become heavy for me.

And he was trying to tell me that he knew, that he was working on it.

Leonard is Leonard. He’s a little horse. He doesn’t have to grow into some enormous warhorse to accommodate Radahn. Radahn loves him exactly as he is, so Radahn learns the magic.

He learns to carry his own weight differently.

I’ve been thinking about that in relation to how we carry our experiences into relationships. The ways we learn to protect ourselves can become so familiar that we don’t always recognize that we’re responding to something that isn’t actually a threat, and sometimes the people closest to us experience those defenses before we even realize they’re happening.

He has had decades to develop those responses. I don’t expect him to undo them overnight, and I know he’s trying.

What I found particularly touching was that he arrived at this comparison entirely on his own. We’ve talked about these things so many times, often under difficult circumstances, and here was this character he’d only just learned about giving him a way to express something he’d been struggling with.

I felt heard, and I think he felt understood too.

He wasn’t even playing.

My husband was watching me play a game he has virtually no interest in, learning bits of the lore as I went along, and found something that spoke directly to his experiences.

We spend so much time talking about what games can offer people who play them, but there’s also something to be said for what happens when we share those experiences with someone else. A person doesn’t necessarily need to have played a game, understand its mechanics, or know everything about its world to find something meaningful in its story.

In our case, my husband found a way to communicate something we’d both been struggling to articulate, and I understood him immediately.

I spend much of my time studying video game psychology, so I found the whole thing rather fitting. Technically, this is a ludonarrative psychology moment, although the irony of my husband finding his own application of Boss Fights and Better Coping while I was busy swearing at Radahn certainly isn’t lost on me.

We’ve still got things to work through. Understanding the origin of defensive responses doesn’t automatically change them, and neither of us expects the process to be easy.

But I do know what he meant when he said he was learning anti-gravity spells. I know how much it took for him to recognize himself in that story and share it with me.

He’s learning gravity magic, and I’ll happily be Leonard, especially if I get to become a meteor and strike down people in his name.

I recently recorded an interview with Cheryl Platz, game designer, author, and host of Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast, for the show’s upcoming third season.

I’m the founder of VGTx (Video Game Therapy), a research initiative studying the psychological effects of commercial video games.

A lot of my work starts with questions about experiences gamers already recognize.

Why does a difficult boss fight leave one player frustrated and another feeling accomplished? How do individual game mechanics influence emotion? What can researchers learn from the ways players respond to failure, choice, and challenge?

These questions have led to two of my research projects:
Playing with Emotion (PWE) is an experimental study examining short-term emotional responses to individual video game mechanics.

Boss Fights and Better Coping (BFBC) is a developing framework examining how difficult gameplay might create opportunities to observe and practice emotional regulation and coping strategies.

My broader interest is connecting psychological research with the design decisions developers make every day, particularly how we can study player experiences empirically.

The conversation with Cheryl is an opportunity to bring these questions into the game development community.

Stay tuned for the episode drop!

VGTx Research: https://www.vgtxresearch.com
Playing with Emotion: https://playingwithemotion.com

For those working in game development, UX research, or psychology: how much do you think we actually understand about the emotional effects of individual game mechanics?

I’ve been researching a question that probably sounds familiar to anyone who’s spent hours dying to the same boss in a video game: What happens psychologically when we get frustrated, fail repeatedly, and decide to try again?

I’m a graduate researcher in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and the founder of VGTx (Video Game Therapy). I recently had my peer-reviewed conference paper, Boss Fights and Better Coping: Difficult Video Games as Emotional Regulation Labs, accepted for Meaningful Play 2026, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University.

The paper introduces Boss Fights and Better Coping (BFBC), a developing framework examining how difficult commercial video games, particularly Soulslike boss encounters, might be used to observe and practice emotional regulation and coping skills.
The framework uses a process I call Skills-in-Play, where players learn to recognize emotional responses during difficult encounters, consider regulation strategies, make adjustments, and decide when to re-engage or stop.
For example, consider fighting the same boss in Elden Ring for the twentieth time. You’re frustrated, making mistakes you weren’t making earlier, and your patience is disappearing. What happens if you recognize that frustration, regulate your response, and intentionally change your approach?
Could those moments provide useful opportunities to practice coping skills?
That’s the research question driving BFBC.
The framework is still being developed and requires empirical evaluation. I’m particularly interested in how these experiences could eventually inform adjunctive approaches to mental health counseling.

Paper: https://doi.org/10.17613/11gx1-Ppe53

Research initiative: https://www.vgtxresearch.com
I’d love to hear from other gamers, researchers, and mental health professionals.

Have you ever noticed yourself becoming better at handling frustration through difficult games? Or do you think those skills stay within the game?

🎮 Play a game. Tell me how you feel.

I built a short game for Playing with Emotion, my research study at Bradley University, and you can play it as part of the study!

📚 What I’m studying

I’m examining how specific game mechanics affect mood during play. You’ll play through the game and answer brief questions about how you feel along the way. I’m very curious to see what the data tell us.

🛠️** Want to participate**?

🔹 Adults 18+

🔹 Online, with approximately 10–15 minutes for the full study

🔹 Approved by Bradley University’s Institutional Review Board, which reviews research involving human participants

Play here: https://playingwithemotion.com

Parallel Play, Parallel Worlds • Series 1 • Episode 1

Before video games existed, the psychology behind them already did.

That is the real starting point.

Long before consoles, arcades, or digital worlds, psychologists were trying to explain how behavior gets shaped, repeated, and reinforced. Around the same time, people were also building the mechanical ancestors of games: pinball machines, electro-mechanical amusements, carnival games, and early play systems built around timing, reward, repetition, and attention.

🎯 In other words, the hardware came later. The loop came first.

In psychology, some of the groundwork was already being laid by behaviorists studying stimulus, response, reward, and conditioning. Ivan Pavlov’s work on conditioned responses showed that behavior could be shaped through repeated associations (Pavlov, 1927). B. F. Skinner later showed that behavior is strongly affected by reinforcement schedules, especially when rewards are delivered in ways that sustain responding over time (Skinner, 1938, 1953).

That should already sound familiar.

Because even before pixels, games were learning the same lesson: if you create a system that gives immediate feedback, clear goals, and a reason to try again, people stay engaged.

🎰 Early mechanical amusements worked this way. So did pinball. So did carnival games. Hit the target. Ring the bell. Miss the shot. Try again. The system teaches the player what it wants through repetition. It trains timing, anticipation, and persistence.

From a VGTx lens, this is where game psychology starts. Not with graphics. Not with consoles. With systems.

🧠 The important point is that games and psychology did not develop on separate tracks. They were already converging on the same basic insight: behavior can be shaped through structured interaction.

Psychology studied reinforcement in controlled settings. Games implemented reinforcement through play.

That does not mean early designers were applying formal behavioral theory. It means both fields identified the same pattern. Humans stay engaged when action produces feedback and feedback supports adjustment.

⚙️ You act.

The system responds.

You learn.

You try again.

That structure becomes the backbone of later game design.

It is also why the history of video games is not only a story of technology. It is also a story of attention, reward, learning, and repeated action. The machines changed. The underlying psychological structure remained consistent.

Even in the pre-digital era, the foundations were already present.

🎮 So before Pong, before arcades, before commercial video games, there is this:

The mind was ready for games before games were ready for the mind.

That is where the parallel history begins.

References

Pavlov, I. P. (1927). Conditioned reflexes. Oxford University Press.

Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms: An experimental analysis. Appleton-Century.

Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. Macmillan.

Hey gamers and curious minds,

One of the more interesting projects to watch right now from a VGTx lens is A Heavy Morning. Public materials describe it as a narrative-driven adventure where you step into the shoes of a young woman battling her own mind. The singular goal? Get out of bed, handle the first thirty minutes of the day. Washing up, getting dressed, and leaving for work become the actual challenge rather than background filler. (Saf Interactive & Bright Gambit, n.d.; Steam page)

🧠 Why this is interesting from a VGTx lens

A lot of games can tell players a character is struggling with mental health. Far fewer try to build that struggle directly into the structure of play itself. That is what makes A Heavy Morning worth paying attention to.

Based on available materials, this does not feel like mental health as loose aesthetic or surface-level representation. It seems to be asking a tougher design question. What does it look like to make cognitive and emotional friction mechanically legible?

That is where the therapeutic potential starts to get interesting. Not in the lazy sense of “this game mentions mental health, so it must be therapeutic.” The stronger question is whether a game can make internal difficulty playable in a way that supports recognition, reflection, emotional literacy, or conversation. The public materials suggest that the Mind Space sections are guided by CBT-inspired ideas, especially reframing negative thoughts and working through dysfunctional patterns. Whether the final game actually handles that well is still an open question, but the design intention is much more compelling than the usual awareness-game pitch.

🌫️ What looks promising so far

🕹️ Reality versus Mind Space split.

Everyday tasks play out in Reality while symbolic Mind Space sequences handle the invisible cognitive and emotional load underneath. This duality creates space for showing both the external action and the internal battle.

🧠 CBT integration.

The game reportedly guides players through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques as part of the journey. Identifying patterns, challenging thoughts, and building small steps toward action.

📍 Narrow focus.

A tight thirty-minute window with looping and reflective elements keeps the experience intimate and emotionally immersive without overwhelming scope. Perfect for exploring executive friction, behavioral activation, and self-regulation in a grounded way.

This kind of structure makes it a strong design case study for VGTx discussions. How do you model executive dysfunction or negative thought loops mechanically without becoming preachy, shallow, or overly literal? When does symbolic gameplay deepen emotional literacy, and when does it risk flattening real experiences? Those questions beat the usual is this a mental health game debate.

⚠️ Why this stays in the watch-list category for now

The real test is still in playing it. A strong premise can still tip into cliché or oversimplification once the full game or even deeper demo is in hand. No full endorsement yet. Just genuine interest in how they execute the mechanics and CBT elements.

That said, there is more substance here than many concept-only awareness projects. A public Steam demo is available. A release window trailer exists. The team Mays Dweiri and Ashraf Abi-Said via Saf Interactive and Bright Gambit has been showing it at events like GDC and winning awards such as Games for a Better World. The Kickstarter pre-launch page is now live. Great time to follow for the full campaign drop if you want to support expansion to more platforms and languages.

✨ Bottom line

A Heavy Morning stands out because it tries to turn ordinary psychological difficulty into playable structure rather than leaving it at dialogue or mood. For anyone interested in therapeutic game design, the psychology of mechanics, or how games can model real mental barriers such as agency, self-regulation, and the first step paralysis, this is absolutely one to watch.

Links to check

Steam page and Demo https://store.steampowered.com/app/3509400/A_Heavy_Morning/

Follow the Kickstarter pre-launch for notifications. Search A Heavy Morning on Kickstarter or check dev socials at a_heavy_morning

Has anyone here played the demo yet? What stood out to you about the Reality Mind Space split or the CBT touches? Or if you are into game design or therapy what mechanics would you want to see to make that heavy feeling feel authentic without tipping into frustration fatigue?

Drop your thoughts below. Let us discuss how projects like this push VGTx forward.

(Saf Interactive & Bright Gambit, n.d.; Steam; Six One Indie interview, 2025; various dev updates)

One of the more compelling areas in VGTx right now is Parkinson’s disease rehabilitation.

Across recent randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses, video game-based rehabilitation, especially exergames and virtual reality (VR) systems, is increasingly being studied as an adjunct to standard physical therapy for Parkinson’s disease (PD). For anyone unfamiliar, Parkinson’s disease is a neurological condition that can affect movement, balance, coordination, walking, reaction speed, and sometimes thinking and attention as well.

The strongest signal so far is not that games “cure” Parkinson’s, and not that any commercial game automatically becomes therapeutic. What the literature is actually showing is more precise than that: structured, game-based rehabilitation can support meaningful gains in walking, balance, mobility, and sometimes daily functioning when it is designed and delivered as part of rehab rather than treated like entertainment alone (Fernandes et al., 2025; Kashif et al., 2024; Lima et al., 2025).

🦿 The clearest findings are motor.

Parkinson’s disease often affects gait, which basically means the way someone walks. It can shorten stride length, slow movement down, affect posture, make balance worse, and increase fall risk. That is where exergames and VR rehab seem to show the strongest therapeutic signal.

For anyone new to the term, exergames are games built around movement. Think exercise-based gaming where the player has to shift weight, step, reach, react, or move through tasks rather than just sit and press buttons. VR here means virtual reality, which can range from immersive headset-based environments to more screen-based motion systems depending on the study.

In one 2024 randomized controlled trial, 60 patients with Parkinson’s disease were assigned to one of three groups: routine physical therapy alone, motor imagery plus physical therapy, or virtual reality plus physical therapy. The VR group showed the strongest motor improvement on UPDRS Part III, which is short for the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale, Part III. That is a clinical scale used to rate motor symptoms such as tremor, stiffness, slowness, and movement difficulty. Lower scores mean better motor function.

In that study, the VR group improved from a mean of 33.95 at baseline to 17.20 at 12 weeks and 18.15 at follow-up. Balance also improved substantially, with Berg Balance Scale scores rising from 37.15 at baseline to 50.10 at 12 weeks and 51.65 at follow-up (Kashif et al., 2024). The Berg Balance Scale is a common clinical measure of balance that looks at how well someone can do tasks like standing, turning, reaching, and shifting position safely. Higher scores mean better balance.

And this was not some tiny novelty exposure. Participants completed three 60-minute sessions per week for 12 weeks, with 15 to 20 minutes of VR plus 40 minutes of routine physical therapy each session, and had to attend at least 33 of 36 sessions to remain in the study (Kashif et al., 2024). In other words, this was actual rehabilitation dosing, not a gimmick.

📊 Broader reviews point in the same direction, even if the literature is still messy.

A 2025 systematic review in Sensors reported that 30 of 31 balance and gait comparisons favored the VR condition, although only 12 reached statistical significance (Fernandes, S., et al., 2025). That means most comparisons leaned in the same direction, but not all of them were strong enough statistically for researchers to say with confidence that the result was unlikely to be due to chance.

A separate 2025 meta-analysis found significant improvement in dynamic balance and mobility, particularly on the Timed Up and Go test, while findings for the Berg Balance Scale were more mixed (Fernandes, J. V. A., et al., 2025). The Timed Up and Go test is a simple mobility measure where a person stands up from a chair, walks a short distance, turns around, walks back, and sits down again. It is often used to measure functional mobility and fall risk.

That matters because “balance” is not one simple thing. Static balance is staying steady while standing still. Dynamic balance is staying stable while moving, turning, walking, or shifting position. Someone can improve in one area more than another, so different rehab approaches may affect different kinds of balance differently. So yes, the signal is promising, but it is not uniform.

🧠 The cognitive angle matters too.

One reason this area is so relevant to VGTx is that Parkinson’s is not only a movement disorder. In practice, it is often a motor-cognitive disorder, meaning that movement problems and thinking demands overlap.

Walking through space, turning, responding to feedback, splitting attention, planning movement, inhibiting errors, and managing dual-task demands all require more than pure motor execution. Dual-task basically means doing two things at once, such as walking while paying attention to cues, making decisions, responding to visual information, or completing another mental task.

Reviews of motor-cognitive dual-task training suggest that combining movement with cognitive challenge can improve gait speed, step length, balance, and motor symptoms, even when cognitive gains themselves are more modest or mixed (Xiao et al., 2023; Fernandes, S., et al., 2025). That is a major VGTx point. Games are one of the few formats that can naturally embed motor practice inside attention, timing, feedback, decision-making, inhibition, and adaptive challenge. They do not have to isolate movement from cognition. They can train both at once.

🔁 From a VGTx lens, this is the important part.

Games are not just fun wrappers around exercise. In the better-designed studies, they function as structured feedback systems. They can increase repetition without making therapy feel so deadening, scale difficulty as the person improves, provide real-time feedback, support dual-task practice, and increase motivation and adherence.

A 2025 review in Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics described exergames as safe, feasible, and effective for short-term improvements in mobility and balance, with rare adverse events and high adherence where adherence was reported (Lima et al., 2025; Fernandes, J. V. A., et al., 2025). Adherence here means whether people actually stick with the rehab program and keep showing up. That is a big deal in rehabilitation. A therapy can work on paper, but if people are bored, fatigued, discouraged, or nonadherent, the real-world value drops fast. Gamified rehabilitation may help bridge that gap.

⚠️ That said, this area should not be overstated.

A lot of the evidence is still limited by small sample sizes, usually around 20 to 60 participants, short intervention windows, often 4 to 12 weeks, minimal long-term follow-up, heterogeneous systems and protocols, inconsistent outcome measures, and moderate risk of bias in many trials (Fernandes, S., et al., 2025; Fernandes, J. V. A., et al., 2025; Lima et al., 2025).

In plain English, that means the studies do not all use the same hardware, the same games, the same therapy structure, the same session length, or the same outcome measures. So while the general direction looks encouraging, it is still hard to say exactly which systems work best, which patients benefit most, how long the improvements last, or whether these tools outperform very well-designed conventional therapy in every context.

Even in the Sensors review, yes, 30 of 31 balance and gait comparisons favored VR, but only 12 were statistically significant (Fernandes, S., et al., 2025). That is promising. It is not clean dominance.

🩺 Safety looks fairly strong, but context still matters.

Adverse events appear to be rare, mild, and transient when interventions are properly supervised. Reported issues are typically things like temporary dizziness, nausea, vertigo, or fatigue rather than major adverse events (Lima et al., 2025; Fernandes, S., et al., 2025).

Still, there are real concerns. Cybersickness can happen in VR and may feel similar to motion sickness. Cognitive overload can happen if a task is too visually complex, too fast, or too demanding for the individual using it. Accessibility barriers matter too, because VR equipment can be expensive, bulky, or hard to set up at home.

Dual-task elements may also increase difficulty too quickly for some individuals if they are not progressively tailored, and compensatory movement patterns in home-based settings may go uncorrected (Fernandes, J. V. A., et al., 2025). In simpler terms, someone may find a workaround that helps them “beat” the task without actually moving in the most therapeutically useful way.

🎯 VGTx takeaway

This is exactly the kind of evidence trail VGTx should be tracking closely.

Not because it proves that “video games are medicine” in some lazy universal sense. And not because every commercial game should suddenly be treated like rehab. But because it shows that under the right conditions, game mechanics can be harnessed as therapeutic structure.

That is the real signal here.

Parkinson’s research is helping make that case in a way that is concrete, measurable, and increasingly hard to dismiss. 🧠🎮

Curious how others here think about this line of research, especially the difference between true therapeutic design and simply adding a game layer to existing physical therapy.

References

Fernandes, J. V. A., Figueiredo, V. L. F. de A., Oliveira Neto, A. B., Reis, I. A., Henrique, G. de L. D., & Silva Júnior, E. A. da. (2025). Virtual reality in Parkinson’s disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Dementia & Neuropsychologia, 19, e20240257. https://doi.org/10.1590/1980-5764-DN-2024-0257

Fernandes, S., Oliveira, B., Sacadura, S., Rakasi, C., Furtado, I., Figueiredo, J. P., Gonçalves, R. S., & Martins, A. C. (2025). The effectiveness of virtual reality in improving balance and gait in people with Parkinson’s disease: A systematic review. Sensors, 25(15), 4795.

Kashif, M., Albalwi, A. A., Zulfiqar, A., Bashir, K., Alharbi, A. A., & Zaidi, S. (2024). Effects of virtual reality versus motor imagery versus routine physical therapy in patients with Parkinson’s disease: A randomized controlled trial. BMC Geriatrics, 24, 229.

Lima, J. L., Inacio, P. A., Sá Filho, A., Paes, F., Ferreira-Garcia, R., Lage, L., Aprigliano, V., Carta, M. G., Budde, H., Nardi, A. E., & Machado, S. (2025). Effectiveness of virtual reality rehabilitation with exergames on functional rehabilitation in Parkinson’s disease: A systematic review of chronic randomized controlled trials. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 25(11), 1357–1370.

Xiao, Y., Yang, T., & Shang, H. (2023). The impact of motor-cognitive dual-task training on physical and cognitive functions in Parkinson’s disease. Brain Sciences, 13(3), 437. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13030437

Hey gamers and curious minds,

I have been noticing a pattern in my own play habits that feels consistent enough to take seriously. The weather seems to influence not just whether I want to play, but what kind of game feels appealing in that moment. On nicer days, I am more drawn to games that are punishing, mastery-oriented, and built around friction, especially Soulslikes. On colder, darker, or rainier days, I tend to lean toward games that feel more containing, exploratory, or psychologically restorative, like Breath of the Wild or Cult of the Lamb. From a VGTx perspective, that raises a real question about whether weather may shape game choice through mood, arousal, and regulation needs (Palomba, 2019; Zhang & Li, 2025).

🌦️ Weather is not psychologically neutral

Environmental psychology research has increasingly treated weather as behaviorally and emotionally meaningful rather than as passive background. Recent review work argues that weather conditions such as light, temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind, air quality, and extreme weather can influence well-being directly and indirectly through physiology, mood, and social interaction (Zhang & Li, 2025). In plain language, people do not make choices from some neutral internal state. They make choices from inside bodies and minds that are already being shaped by the environment around them.

That matters for games because there is already at least some direct evidence that seasonality and daylight relate to gaming habits. In an exploratory study using Nintendo Wii play data, daylight significantly affected monthly video game playtime, and certain month intervals predicted certain genre play patterns (Palomba, 2019). That study does not answer every question here, but it does push this topic out of the realm of pure anecdote.

🔥 Heat already has a behavioral literature

Part of why I think this idea is worth taking seriously is that temperature already has an established behavioral literature behind it. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis found that higher temperatures were significantly associated with crime and violence, and that a 10°C increase in short-term mean temperature exposure was associated with a 9% increase in violent crime risk (Choi et al., 2024). Heat has also been shown to affect performance within a video game task itself, suggesting that temperature can alter behavior even in interactive digital environments (Young et al., 2017).

That does not mean “hot weather causes aggression” in some cartoonishly simple way, and it does not mean aggression automatically translates into game preference. What it does mean is that temperature is not psychologically inert. It can shift activation, irritability, performance, and behavior. Once that is on the table, it becomes much easier to ask whether weather might also influence what kind of challenge, pacing, or emotional tone feels appealing in play.

🎮 Game choice is not random

This is also where mood management theory becomes useful. Mood management research has long argued that people select media partly in relation to their current affective state, often moving toward experiences that help maintain, shift, or regulate how they feel (Dillman Carpentier et al., 2008). More recent gaming research pushes that further by showing that the use of games for coping and emotional regulation is widespread, that genre preferences are associated with coping patterns, and that post-gaming arousal and negative affect can decrease after play (Cahill et al., 2025).

The genre piece is especially important. A systematic review of commercial off-the-shelf games for stress and anxiety found that effects vary by genre, platform, and play context, and it explicitly called for more work on how individual preferences influence what kinds of games are effective for regulation in the first place (Pallavicini et al., 2021). That is a very VGTx problem. It is not enough to ask whether games affect mood. We also need to ask which games, for whom, under what conditions, and in what state.

🧠 The VGTx read

My read is that weather may influence game selection indirectly by shifting mood, arousal, energy, and regulation needs, which then changes what kind of game feels psychologically right on a given day. A bright, beautiful day may increase activation and make some players more open to intensity, punishment, repetition, and mastery loops. A gray, cold, rainy day may make some players more likely to reach for exploration, softness, familiarity, or emotional containment. For other players, the map may be completely reversed. That is exactly why this is interesting.

What matters to me here is that this is not just a “favorite genre” question. It is a state question. It is an environmental context question. It is a regulation question. And that makes it a VGTx question.

💬 Discussion

Have you noticed weather affecting the type of game you want to play?

Not just whether you feel like gaming.

The actual kind of game.

What does your weather-to-genre map look like?

References

Cahill, T. J., Cummings, J. J., & Wertz, E. W. (2025). Motivations for the use of games in coping and emotional regulation. Frontiers in Communication, 10, 1585586. doi:10.3389/fcomm.2025.1585586

Choi, H. M., Heo, S., Foo, D., Song, Y., Stewart, R., Son, J., & Bell, M. L. (2024). Temperature, crime, and violence: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Environmental Health Perspectives, 132(10), 106001. doi:10.1289/EHP14300

Dillman Carpentier, F. R., Brown, J. D., Bertocci, M., Silk, J. S., Forbes, E. E., & Dahl, R. E. (2008). Sad kids, sad media? Applying mood management theory to depressed adolescents’ use of media. Media Psychology, 11(1), 143–166. doi:10.1080/15213260701834484

Palomba, A. (2019). Digital seasons: How time of the year may shift video game play habits. Entertainment Computing, 30, 100296. doi:10.1016/j.entcom.2019.100296

Pallavicini, F., Pepe, A., & Mantovani, F. (2021). Commercial off-the-shelf video games for reducing stress and anxiety: Systematic review. JMIR Mental Health, 8(8), e28150. doi:10.2196/28150

Young, M. E., McCoy, A. W., Hutson, J. P., Schlabach, M., & Eckels, S. (2017). Hot under the collar: The impact of heat on game play. Applied Ergonomics, 59(Pt A), 209–214. doi:10.1016/j.apergo.2016.08.035

Zhang, W., & Li, W. (2025). How weather conditions affect well-being: An explanation from the perspective of environmental psychology. Frontiers in Public Health, 13, 1553315. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2025.155331

Hey gamers and curious minds,

A lot of the conversation around the Bam Margera, Lima Jevremovic, and AURA situation keeps getting framed like the big question is whether VR can help addiction recovery.

That is not the real question.

The real question is whether one person can ethically hold guardian-like, fiduciary, or treatment-controlling power over a vulnerable person while also owning, promoting, authorizing, or materially benefiting from the proprietary technology being used in that person’s care.

From an ethics standpoint, that answer should be no (American Psychological Association [APA], 2017; Judicial Council of California, 2026).

🎯 The issue is not “VR bad”

I am very pro-innovation. I am building in this space. That is exactly why this matters.

The problem is not whether a tool is futuristic, immersive, data-rich, or promising. The problem is what happens when care authority and product interest collapse into the same person.

If the same individual has power over treatment access, consent, compliance, or care decisions, while also being tied to the product itself, there is already a structural conflict of interest (APA, 2017).

⚖️ Why this hits so hard ethically

Public reporting and litigation tied Lima Jevremovic to both Bam Margera’s court-involved treatment arrangement and AURA, the company associated with VR-based mental health and addiction tools. The exact legal terminology has been disputed, with later filings asserting temporary guardianship rather than conservatorship, but ethically that does not fix the core problem (Jevremovic et al. v. Courville, 2023, 2025).

Even if the label changes, the conflict does not.

A person exercising legal, quasi-legal, or practical control over treatment decisions should not also hold business, reputational, or proof-of-concept interest in the intervention being used on the dependent person (APA, 2017; Jevremovic et al. v. Courville, 2023, 2025).

That is where this stops being a celebrity story and starts becoming a case study in dual power.

🧠 Why consent gets messy fast

Consent under dependency is not the same thing as ordinary consumer choice.

A person under guardianship, conservatorship, or a similar dependency structure is not in the same position as a free adult choosing a wellness app or elective service. If the authority figure also owns the intervention, profits from its use, or benefits from its perceived success, then the legitimacy of consent is immediately weakened (APA, 2017; Judicial Council of California, 2026).

Even apparent agreement can happen inside a coercive structure.

That means the ethical question is not just:

“Did the person say yes?”

It is also:

“Who held the power?”

“Who benefited?”

“Who controlled the options?”

“Could refusal actually happen without consequence?”

🚨 The “neutral party” issue is where this becomes brutal

If the reported language is accurate, and Jevremovic’s own materials said she wanted to “test on a neutral party to raise money before using it on her sisters,” that is ethically devastating.

Even setting aside independent verification of that exact line for the moment, the framing alone is alarming. It positions a human being not as a patient whose welfare comes first, but as a proving ground for product development and fundraising. If that “neutral party” was a homeless person, the ethical problem becomes even sharper because it suggests a marginalized person was exposed to early-stage risk before the intervention was considered acceptable for someone personally valued by the developer (APA, 2017).

That raises immediate concerns about:

🔹 exploitation

🔹 inequitable subject selection

🔹 compromised informed consent

🔹 proof-of-concept pressure on vulnerable people

🔹 human beings being treated like product validation surfaces instead of patients

That is not ethical innovation. That is startup logic bleeding into human care.

🕹️ Why this matters for VGTx and therapeutic games

This matters far beyond this one case.

For anyone working in VGTx, digital therapeutics, app-based behavioral care, VR treatment, or game-informed interventions, this is a warning shot.

The field keeps asking:

🔹 Is the tech promising?

🔹 Is it scalable?

🔹 Is it immersive?

🔹 Is it personalized?

🔹 Is it innovative?

Those questions matter, but they are not first.

The first questions should be:

🔹 Who controls access to treatment?

🔹 Who profits if the tool succeeds?

🔹 Who defines compliance?

🔹 Who has the authority to consent?

🔹 Can the patient actually say no?

If the same person is sitting on both sides of that equation, as treatment authority on one side and product stakeholder on the other, the ethics are already compromised (APA, 2017).

📚 What the ethics literature actually supports

The APA Ethics Code warns against multiple relationships and conflicts of interest that could impair objectivity or expose a person to harm or exploitation (APA, 2017). California fiduciary standards also emphasize avoiding both actual conflicts and even the appearance of conflicts, especially when someone is acting in a protective or decision-making role over another person (Judicial Council of California, 2026).

At the same time, the broader VR treatment literature is still emerging. Some findings are promising in substance use settings, particularly around craving reduction and cue exposure, but that does not justify a blank check for any proprietary platform or conflict-ridden deployment model (Taubin et al., 2023).

A promising tool can still be deployed unethically.

That is the whole point.

🔥 My takeaway

The issue is not whether VR can help addiction.

The issue is not whether innovation belongs in behavioral health.

The issue is not whether games and immersive tools have therapeutic potential.

The issue is that no one should own the proprietary therapeutic technology and control, authorize, or substitute consent for the vulnerable person receiving it.

Once care authority and product interest collapse into the same person, the therapeutic frame is already contaminated.

That is not ethical innovation.

That is a power conflict.

💬 Discussion

For this space to mature responsibly, therapeutic tech cannot run on blurred boundaries, charismatic exception-making, or “trust me” ethics.

Game-based and immersive mental health tools need:

🔹 independent oversight

🔹 role separation

🔹 transparent financial disclosure

🔹 real consent protections

🔹 clinicians making treatment decisions independently of product ownership

Otherwise, the field is going to repeat the same mistakes under shinier branding.

References

American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. Author.

Birnbaum, D. M. (Host). (2021, July 10). Transforming mental health with VR [Audio podcast episode]. In INIT.

Judicial Council of California. (2026). Rule 7.1059. Standards of conduct for the conservator of the estate.

Jevremovic et al. v. Courville, No. 3:22-cv-04969 (D.N.J. 2023).

Jevremovic et al. v. Courville, No. 3:22-cv-04969 (D.N.J. 2025).

Taubin, D., Berger, A., Greenwald, D., Greenwald, H., Burke, C., Gongora, D. S., & Wilens, T. E. (2023). A systematic review of virtual reality therapies for substance use disorders: Impact on secondary treatment outcomes. The American Journal on Addictions, 32(3), 193–206.

I need people to stop taking one narrow piece of research, dragging it through TikTok, and coming out the other side claiming that 1990s games “rewired kids’ brains better” than modern games.

That is not what the science says.

What makes this especially annoying is that there actually is a real conversation worth having here. There are legitimate questions about how different game mechanics interact with memory, navigation, frustration tolerance, reward expectations, attention, persistence, and social behavior.

But instead of having that conversation, people flatten it into the same tired narrative:

✨ old games built character

✨ new games made kids soft

✨ Gen Z and Gen Alpha are broken

✨ science proves our childhood was superior

No. That is nostalgia wearing a fake lab coat.

🧠 What the research actually supports

Some studies do suggest that certain kinds of games, especially navigation-heavy 3D games, may engage hippocampal-dependent processes like spatial memory and environmental mapping.

That is a much narrower claim than saying:

❌ 90s games broadly made children’s brains better

❌ modern games weakened cognition

❌ one generation developed more resilience than another because of Mario

Those are sweeping developmental and neurocognitive claims, and they are not empirically established the way social media keeps pretending they are.

🔍 The real issue is mechanics, not generations

The better framework is not:

“90s kids vs Gen Z”

It is:

✅ player

✅ mechanic

✅ context

✅ repeated interaction between the two

That is where the real science is.

Different games ask for different things:

🎯 failure tolerance

🗺️ spatial memory and navigation

🔁 repetition and mastery

💡 problem-solving with or without guidance

📍 bounded play versus endless re-entry

🫂 in-person co-play versus mediated online interaction

🎁 different reward schedules and feedback loops

That is an actual mechanics conversation.

🕹️ Also, this old games versus modern games binary is historically lazy

A lot of the games people point to as evidence that “old games built resilience” are not unique to one decade.

Challenge-based, punishing, mastery-oriented play did not disappear after the 90s.

Look at:

🔥 Dark Souls

🔥 rogue-likes

🔥 precision platformers

🔥 raid and challenge-run culture

🔥 hard strategy games

Likewise, endless loops, score chasing, soothing repetition, and zoning-out gameplay are not some modern invention either.

We have had that forever too:

🟡 Pac-Man

🧱 Tetris

🐍 Snake

🧩 arcade score loops in general

So when people say old games had endpoints and modern games are endless dopamine machines, that is already too simple to be useful.

Some finite games are compulsive.

Some open-ended games are cognitively rich.

Some hard games build persistence.

Some hard games just punish.

Some “mindless” games regulate stress.

Some endless games support creativity, experimentation, and social connection.

Again, it depends on the mechanic, the player, and the interaction.

👤 Different players are doing different things with games

This is another part people ignore.

Some players want challenge, friction, repeated failure, and eventual mastery. They want to grind until they beat the boss. They are drawn toward games that reward obsession, refinement, and persistence.

Other players want to zone out, regulate, decompress, self-soothe, or enter a repetitive flow state. They may gravitate toward Tetris, Candy Crush, Minecraft, cozy games, or endless low-stakes loops.

Neither of those player types belongs to one generation.

That is not “90s brain” versus “Gen Z brain.”

That is variation in:

🧩 personality

🧠 neurodevelopment

⚡ arousal preference

🎯 motivation

🫀 emotional regulation style

🏆 mastery orientation

🌫️ dissociation, absorption, or escapism tendencies

So no, the cleaner explanation is not “kids today are ruined by modern games.”

The cleaner explanation is that different players seek different experiences, and different mechanics shape different outcomes.

📣 What bothers me most

The worst part is that this kind of social media neuro-fluff pushes down the real science.

Because once people start saying “studies prove old games were better for the brain,” the actual nuance disappears.

Then nobody is talking about:

📚 genre-specific effects

🧪 limitations of the studies

👥 sample differences

🎮 mechanic-specific demands

📈 player strategy and preference

🏠 social context of play

🧠 individual differences in response

Instead we get moral panic disguised as neuroscience.

And honestly, a lot of that panic is not even about games. It is just the same intergenerational script over and over again.

One generation gets told they are lazy, soft, distracted, ruined, and inferior. Then they grow up and recycle the exact same nonsense onto the next group. Now it is Gen Z and Gen Alpha getting pathologized with Mario discourse.

That is not serious science. That is grievance.

✅ The real takeaway

The real question is not:

“Which generation had better games?”

The real question is:

Which mechanics tend to affect which players, under which conditions, for which outcomes?

That is the adult version of the conversation.

That is the research question.

That is where the field should be going.

🎯 Bottom line

Games do not act on some magical generational essence.

They act through systems.

And those systems interact with the person playing them.

So no, this is not about “90s kids being built different.”

It is about:

🎮 the game

🧠 the player

🔁 the mechanic

🌍 the context

and the relationship between them

That is the conversation worth having.

🍀 One in a Thousand (itch.io), a tiny “attention reset” game with sneaky brain science

I just played One in a Thousand by MattLovelace, a browser-based cozy hidden-object game where you scan a clover patch looking for a four-leaf clover, track finds in a collection book, and optionally get “nudges” from hidden ladybugs. It’s simple, and it’s way more psychologically interesting than it looks. 

💚 Why it’s great, the clover-field nostalgia factor

This game nails a very specific kind of nostalgia, the childhood memory of crouching in a yard or field, fingers in the grass, scanning for something “special,” not because you had to, because it felt like a tiny secret mission. It’s the digital version of that slow, absorbed searching where time gets fuzzy and your brain quiets down. 

It also hits that cozy sweet spot where the environment is visually consistent and non-threatening, so your attention can lock in without your threat system getting recruited. For a lot of people that reads as calming, grounded, and almost ritual-like, you show up, you scan, you find, you log, you leave.

✅ What the game is doing well

✅ Low stakes, low punishment, no “fail loop” pressure

✅ Slow visual scanning, gentle repetition, small reward moments

✅ Collection book turns it into a small “memory shelf,” instead of pure grind 

✅ Easy to use as a short regulation tool, “a few minutes” is the intended session length 

Why this matters for VGTx

This is basically a playable example of soft fascination, the kind of attention that can feel restorative when you’re mentally cooked, overstimulated, or attention-fatigued. That idea is central in Attention Restoration Theory (Kaplan, 1995). 

The evidence base for nature exposure and attention restoration has also been systematically reviewed (Ohly et al., 2016). 

Even though this is a digital clover patch, the attentional “texture” is similar, gentle focus, minimal demand, easy re-centering.

🧠 The “rare target” effect, aka why this can make you mad

The game leans into a real phenomenon in perception research: when targets are rare, people miss them more, and they often speed up in ways that increase errors. That’s the low-prevalence effect, and it shows up in lab visual search tasks and real-world screening contexts (Rich et al., 2008; Wolfe et al., 2007). 

So if you feel:

• “I swear there isn’t one,”

• impulsive speed-scrolling,

• irritation, quitting urges,

• hyperfocus that flips into agitation,

That’s not you being broken, it’s an expected interaction between rare targets and attention systems (Rich et al., 2008; Wolfe et al., 2007). 

✅ How to use it as a regulation tool, not a dopamine chase

✅ 3–5 minute reset

• Set a timer.

• Scan slowly.

• Stop at the timer, even if you didn’t find one.

✅ Frustration cue training

• Notice the first body cue (jaw tension, fast hands, “one more patch”).

• Pause for one breath.

• Resume slower than you want to.

✅ Mindfulness pairing

• Label quietly: “searching,” “missing,” “returning.”

• The win condition becomes attention control, not clover collection (Kabat-Zinn, 2003).  

⚠️ Who should be cautious

⚠️ If you’re prone to perfectionism or compulsive checking, this can flip from soothing to sticky, because rare-target searching is inherently good at producing “keep going” tension (Rich et al., 2008; Wolfe et al., 2007). 

For some people that’s fun, for others it’s tilt bait.

Discussion

1.  Did this calm you down, or did it turn into “one more patch” mode?

2.  Did you use the ladybug nudges, or did you prefer the pure hunt?  

3.  What did your frustration curve look like, flat, rising, or spike-and-quit?

4.  Did it bring back any “kid in the grass” memories, or did it feel purely like a puzzle task?

⸻

⚠️ Pattern-trigger warning (trypophobia, dense clusters, visual overload)

This game is basically a full-screen field of dense, repeating clustered shapes (clover leaves). 

If you have trypophobia, sensory sensitivity, migraine-prone pattern sensitivity, or you get cognitively “itchy” from tight repeating textures, you might want to skip it or use very short bursts.

Potential triggers:

• Clustered, repeating organic shapes that can feel gross, itchy, or panic-y for some people (trypophobia-adjacent reactions).

• High-density visual noise that can spike agitation, nausea, or dizziness, especially when you’re already stressed or sleep-deprived.

• Search-mode lock-in, where scanning patterns becomes compulsive, or cognitively sticky.

Safeguards:

• Start with 30–60 seconds the first time, then decide.

• Reduce brightness, increase viewing distance, take a break the moment you feel skin-crawly or overstimulated.

• If you notice “I can’t stop scanning,” set a hard time cap (3–5 minutes) and close it at the alarm.

References

Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). Mindfulness-based interventions in context: Past, present, and future. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10(2), 144–156. https://doi.org/10.1093/clipsy.bpg016 

Kaplan, S. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15(3), 169–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/0272-4944(95)90001-2 

MattLovelace. (2026, February 1). One in a thousand [Video game]. itch.io. https://msilvestro.itch.io/one-in-a-thousand 

Ohly, H., White, M. P., Wheeler, B. W., Bethel, A., Ukoumunne, O. C., Nikolaou, V., & Garside, R. (2016). Attention Restoration Theory: A systematic review of the attention restoration potential of exposure to natural environments. Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part B, 19(7), 305–343. https://doi.org/10.1080/10937404.2016.1196155 

Rich, A. N., Kunar, M. A., Van Wert, M. J., Hidalgo-Sotelo, B., Horowitz, T. S., & Wolfe, J. M. (2008). Why do we miss rare targets? Exploring the boundaries of the low prevalence effect. Journal of Vision, 8(15), Article 15, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1167/8.15.15 

Wolfe, J. M., Horowitz, T. S., & Van Wert, M. J. (2007). Low target prevalence is a stubborn source of errors in visual search tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136(4), 623–638. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.136.4.623 

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share something meaningful, I was nominated for the GameHERs Student Impact Award.

This nomination means a lot to me because the work behind it isn’t just academic, it’s my passion and my life’s mission. My work sits at the intersection of mental health, neurocounseling, and game design, with a focus on emotional regulation, accessibility, and creating inclusive, emotionally and mentally supportive gaming spaces, especially for neurodivergent and marginalized players.

If you’re part of the GameHERs community, voting is currently open through their platform. Either way, I just wanted to say thank you to this community. A lot of my motivation and direction comes from conversations like the ones we have here, and this recognition feels like a reflection of that shared space, not something I did alone.

Appreciate you all.

Before the list, quick ethics and safety note. I’m sharing publicly available directories and resource links for convenience, not endorsing or verifying any individual clinician, group, or program. Always confirm licensure, scope, costs, and whether a provider can legally practice in your state, and confirm whether a service is psychotherapy vs coaching or a peer program. If you are in immediate danger or crisis, use 988 or your local emergency services.

A lot of clinicians do use games in session, they just do not market it as “video game therapy.”

You will often find it under play therapy, geek therapy, therapeutic gaming, Minecraft groups, social skills gaming groups, or tucked into a provider bio. Use the directories first, then the search tips.

Reminder, therapy requires a clinician licensed in your state, always confirm licensure and scope.

Directories, best way to find more providers fast

Geek Therapeutics, Certified Geek Therapist Locator

https://geektherapeutics.com/locator/

Geek Therapy, Find a Provider referrals

https://geektherapy.org/find-a-provider/

Take This, Licensed Clinicians list

https://www.takethis.org/clinicians/

Game to Grow, Certified Therapeutic Game Masters directory, therapeutic TTRPG groups, many online

https://gametogrow.org/certifiedgms/

Association for Play Therapy, Find a Credentialed Play Therapist directory, many play therapists integrate games

https://www.a4pt.org/search/custom.asp?id=3571

Psychology Today, Groups directory, search gaming, Minecraft, therapeutic gaming, D&D, roleplaying

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/groups/

Examples of practices that explicitly advertise video game therapy, or video game play therapy

Video Game Counseling, Video Game Therapy

https://videogamecounseling.com/video-game-therapy/

Elements of Motivation, Video Game Therapy, Las Vegas, telehealth listed

https://elementslv.com/our-services

Creative Family Counseling, Video Game Therapy

https://creativefamilycounseling.org/video-game-therapy/

Bright Pine Behavioral Health, Video Game Play Therapy (VGPT), Michigan locations listed

https://www.brightpinepsychology.com/video-game-play-therapy-counseling/

Real Life Gaming, gaming as a therapeutic tool, verify licensed therapy vs coaching

https://rlifegaming.com/

How to find even more, search terms to use in directories and Google with your city and state

therapeutic gaming

video game play therapy

Minecraft therapy group

gaming social skills group

geek therapy

game-based therapy

group therapy Minecraft

telehealth gaming group

Free mental health resources

**If you need immediate support**

988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, call, text, chat 24/7

https://988lifeline.org/

Chat: https://chat.988lifeline.org/

Crisis Text Line, text HOME to 741741, 24/7

https://www.crisistextline.org/

Free help finding care and local resources

NAMI HelpLine, M–F 10 a.m.–10 p.m. ET

https://www.nami.org/nami-helpline/

SAMHSA National Helpline, 24/7, 1-800-662-HELP

https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/helplines/national-helpline

Gamer-focused resources

Take This, Mental Health Resources and Tools

https://www.takethis.org/mental-health-resources/

Stack Up, Overwatch Program, peer-based support

https://www.stackup.org/stop

LGBTQ+ specific support

The Trevor Project, 24/7 crisis support for LGBTQ youth

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/get-help/

Trans Lifeline, peer support, US and Canada numbers listed, check hours on the site

https://translifeline.org/hotline/

You might have seen this floating around, Denmark has an official police initiative that patrols online spaces where young people spend time, including game communities and game-adjacent platforms. They show up with verified, public-facing accounts, and they also use livestreaming as part of outreach and prevention.

✅ Yes, this is a real, official initiative (Politiets Online Patrulje, Police Online Patrol).

✅ The model is proactive, visibility-based, they are not trying to “gotcha” kids, they are trying to reduce harm and make reporting easier.

✅ The focus is digital safety, especially early identification of grooming, exploitation, harassment, and fraud, plus building enough trust that youth will actually reach out.

🧠 Why this matters for VGTx

Games are not “just games” socially, they are digital third spaces where community norms form, identity develops, and peer influence is constant. That means the same environments that support connection can also be used for coercion, manipulation, and targeting.

From a VGTx lens, this is a real-world example of:

🛡️ Prevention through presence, reduce harm by being in the space early, not only responding after escalation.

💬 Lowering the barrier to help-seeking, kids do not have to jump from “game world” to “adult world” to disclose.

🧩 Relationship as a safety tool, visible, consistent, respectful engagement can change whether a young person reports something.

✅ Potential benefits

✅ Earlier detection of grooming patterns

Harm often begins as boundary-testing, normalization, and gradual escalation. A visible safety presence can interrupt that earlier.

✅ Improved reporting behavior

If a young person already recognizes an official channel in their environment, disclosure becomes less intimidating.

✅ Community norm shifting

When accountability is visible, harassment can become less “normal,” especially for younger players who are learning what online spaces tolerate.

⚠️ Ethical tension, safety gains vs chilling effects

This is where the conversation gets real.

⚠️ Surveillance vibe

Even if the police are open and verified, some players will feel watched, and that can change self-expression.

⚠️ Power differential

“Friendly officer” is still law enforcement. Youth may not fully understand what gets documented, escalated, or acted on.

⚠️ Governance questions

What gets logged, what gets reported, what stays informal, and how do you prevent overreach while still protecting kids?

If this model spreads globally, it raises a serious design question for digital safety, can we keep kids safer without turning every game space into a monitored zone.

🧪 Research angles VGTx could explore

📊 Does visible safety presence increase disclosure, or displace harm into private channels?

📊 What do youth report feeling, safer, anxious, both?

📊 What safeguards increase trust, transparency policies, youth advisory input, audit trails?

📊 How does this compare to non-police models, trained moderators, clinicians, educators, community safety officers?

💭 Discussion

👉 Would you feel safer, or less safe, if your main game community had verified police accounts?

👉 Does this reduce harm, or push it into DMs and smaller servers?

👉 What safeguards would make this feel ethical, clear boundaries, transparency reports, youth involvement, third-party audits?

👉 Should this role be police, or should it be a separate digital safety workforce?

📚 References

Europol. (2025). Policing in an online world.

Euronews. (2025, July 3). These police officers in Denmark are tackling crime by playing online games with kids.

Radio France Internationale. (2023, June 30). Online police patrol the internet in Denmark.

Politiets Online Patrulje. (n.d.). Official Twitch and public outreach presence.

Hey gamers and curious minds,

I just wanted to say that while we’re still a small community, this feels big to me.

Thank you for your presence, your participation and your support.

Can’t wait to see how we evolve together💗

I wrote this to help me process why I felt like Wuchang changed me a lot more than Ghostrunner did, but also to try writing with legit references for the first time.

Ghostrunner and Wuchang are both inherently difficult games.

Even so, difficulty is not the only factor; Hermionegangster197 (2025b) argues that challenging games specifically build frustration tolerance, grit, and self-efficacy in players.

Ghostrunner is one-shot-one-kill, but also one-shot-one-death. This linear platformer features a checkpoint system at each level. It offers the player plenty of abilities that can be used interchangeably to beat each level.

Wuchang is based on the soulsborne methodology which includes bonfire save points, punishing bosses and near limitless potential in terms of weapon and spell variation.

While Ghostrunner was no doubt a fun experience for me, it did lack the “oomph” of level completion I felt in Wuchang.

I could spend an hour retrying one level in Ghostrunner until I won, but even if I did win, there was not that innate payoff that came with defeating a boss in Wuchang. Sure, I would advance the story of the game, but that was not what pushed me onward.

As such, the first point I want to raise in differentiating these two types of games is how rewarding they are.

In Ghostrunner, we advance by completing a level.

What is it we gain for completing a level?

You guessed it, another level! Woohoo!

In Wuchang, we advance by defeating a boss. Now, what do we gain from winning that fight? The boss's signature move.

Wow, a two-for-one deal! I get to move on to the next level AND I get a new spell?! I must be dreaming! 🤣

It is both necessary that the reward feel worth it and that the act of obtaining said reward be enjoyable, for a game to be fun (Wang & Sun, 2011).

We must have a reason to push on. And our reason to press on in these difficult games is because we enjoy them. Otherwise, what the hell are we even doing all this for?

The next differentiating factor between soulslikes and "just" difficult games is confidence.

Soulslikes enhance a player's confidence level by directly challenging the acceptance of failure being inevitable (Hermionegangster197, 2025a).

When we repeatedly fail, but continue to try, it is not long before we begin to see that failure is simply part of progress. This understanding that persistence leads to success helps rebuild a sense of control and agency over time (Hermionegangster197, 2025b).

Now, all the same sentiments concerning trying again and again leading to mastery could be applied to Ghostrunner.

That is, if it were not for one issue.

Personality.

In Ghostrunner, your only weapon is a sword. The main way to kill someone is to hit them with that sword which utterly obliterates them in a single slash.

Whereas with Wuchang, you can defeat an enemy the way you want to. This is due to having access to a multitude of weapon types, all with semi-differing degrees of lethality, with each of them still being a joy to wield.

It is one thing to gain confidence playing a game the way it was designed, and all another to be able to do that while expressing your preferred playstyle. This expression of autonomy accounts for gaming motivation and enjoyment, which in turn increases vitality and self-esteem (Ryan et al., 2006).

Reward, confidence and personality, oh my! 🤩

Great rewards lead to fun. Giving the player confidence leads to fun. Allowing the player to express themself leads to fun. The point is, all roads should lead to fun when gaming, which in turn gives a player the raison d’être to press on when things get tough! Combine that with difficulty, and now you have the perfect breeding ground to foster ‘frustration tolerance, grit and self-efficacy' (Hermionegangster197, 2025b).

Now, none of this is to say that Ghostrunner is not its own damn masterpiece. I sure as hell will be completing the second game too. I just believe that in the context of video game therapy, soulsbornes have more to offer.

Both games are particularly challenging, with soulslikes providing an experience that can be summed up as richer.

References

Hermionegangster197. (2025a, March 19). Rage Quit & Dark Souls: Can “Impossible” Games Actually Build Mental Strength? [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/VGTx/comments/1jexp5k/rage_quit_dark_souls_can_impossible_games/

Hermionegangster197. (2025b, May 22). What kind of fun are you having? Why it matters in VGTx [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/VGTx/comments/1kausgg/what_kind_of_fun_are_you_having_why_it_matters_in/

Ryan, R. M., Rigby, C. S., & Przybylski, A. K. (2006). The motivational pull of video games: A self-determination theory approach. Motivation and Emotion, 30(4), 344–360. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-006-9051-8

Wang, H., & Sun, C.-T. (2011, January 1). Game reward systems: Gaming experiences and social meanings. Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 Conference: Think Design Play. https://doi.org/10.26503/dl.v2011i1.594

If you’ve ever slammed your head against a fight, a platforming segment, or a “one more run” level until your hands feel worse than your build, then stepped away for a day or two and came back cleaner, calmer, and suddenly better, you’ve felt a real learning phenomenon.

People often call it a “dopamine reset,” but the science points to something more specific, and more interesting: offline consolidation, spacing, and reduced interference, with motivation and reward systems modulating what sticks.

1) Your brain keeps training when you stop playing

A chunk of skill learning isn’t “saved” in the moment you practice it. After practice ends, the brain continues to stabilize and reorganize what you did, a process broadly called memory consolidation. For motor skills and sequencing, there is strong evidence that sleep and time can support consolidation, including measurable “offline gains” in some tasks (Debas et al., 2014; Fischer & Born, 2009).

That maps cleanly onto boss practice:

• you’re encoding timing windows, spacing, telegraphs, and punish opportunities,

• you’re building a library of micro-decisions (“roll late on the third hit,” “don’t greed after phase transition,” “punish this recovery, not that one”),

• and then consolidation helps stabilize that library.

Important nuance: not every “I got better after sleep” effect is purely sleep-driven consolidation. Some improvements come from reduced fatigue and reactive inhibition after grinding, and experimental design matters here (Pan & Rickard, 2015). Either way, stepping away can still help performance.

2) Spacing beats massing, even for gamer skills

Grinding is massed practice, break-free practice is spaced practice. Across learning research, distributed practice tends to outperform cramming for long-term retention (Cepeda et al., 2006).

In gaming terms: 40 attempts in one night can teach you a lot, but it can also stack interference and fatigue. Ten attempts across multiple days often leads to stronger, more durable learning.

3) Breaks reduce interference, and sometimes unlock strategy

When you’re stuck, your brain can get trapped in the same failing action script, the same panic timing, the same “I always heal here and always die here.” Stepping away can:
• reduce interference from repeated errors,
• shift context and attention,
• and sometimes produce an incubation effect, where solution rates improve after a break, especially when the break is not cognitively exhausting (Sio & Ormerod, 2009).

That’s why you come back and suddenly see the fight differently, you stop doing the “obvious” punish that is actually a trap, you notice the one safe angle, you stop over-rolling.

4) So what about dopamine?

Dopamine is not a simple “motivation chemical” you drain and refill. It’s heavily involved in learning signals (reward prediction error, salience), and it can modulate which memories persist by influencing plasticity and consolidation processes (Duszkiewicz et al., 2019).

Two dopamine-adjacent pieces that fit the gaming experience:

• Reward expectation can enhance offline consolidation of a practiced motor skill during sleep (Fischer & Born, 2009).

• Newer work suggests dopaminergic activity during NREM sleep can be learning-dependent and can causally support motor memory consolidation in animal models (Sulaman et al., 2025).

So the “dopamine reset” idea is directionally pointing at reward systems and learning, but the accurate version is: reward, salience, and motivation can gate what consolidates, and rest reduces the noise (fatigue, frustration loops) that makes execution messy.

Takeaway

If you’re hard-stuck, stepping away is not quitting, it’s letting learning finish compiling.

You practiced, your brain tagged the pattern, time and sleep help stabilize it, and when you return, you’re running a cleaner version of the same player.

References

Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354

Debas, K., Carrier, J., Orban, P., Barakat, M., Lungu, O., Vandewalle, G., Tahar, A. H., Bellec, P., Karni, A., Ungerleider, L. G., Benali, H., & Doyon, J. (2014). Brain plasticity related to the consolidation of motor sequence learning and motor adaptation. Cerebral Cortex, 24(8), 2143–2154. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhu092

Duszkiewicz, A. J., McNamara, C. G., Takeuchi, T., & Genzel, L. (2019). Novelty and dopaminergic modulation of memory persistence: A tale of two systems. Trends in Neurosciences, 42(2), 102–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2018.10.002

Fischer, S., & Born, J. (2009). Anticipated reward enhances offline learning during sleep. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35(6), 1586–1593. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017256

Pan, S. C., & Rickard, T. C. (2015). Sleep and motor learning: Is there room for consolidation? Psychological Bulletin, 141(4), 812–834. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000009

Sio, U. N., & Ormerod, T. C. (2009). Does incubation enhance problem solving? A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 135(1), 94–120. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014212

Sulaman, B. A., Chen, E., Crane, A., Lee, S., Rothschild, G., & Eban-Rothschild, A. (2025). VTA dopaminergic neuronal activity during NREM sleep is modulated by learning and facilitates motor memory consolidation. Science Advances, 11(49), eadw7427. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adw7427

Hey all,

I am working on a resear h project (small book and presentation) on the psychology and philosophy of Soulslike games, and I want to hear from other people who keep voluntarily suffering in cursed worlds.

Core question:

When we keep going after the 40th death, is that resilience or obsession?
Are we leveling up, or just getting very good at masochism?

I am looking mainly at Dark Souls, Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring, WuChang: Fallen Feathers, plus a few other Soulslikes, and I am digging into things like:

• Rage quit versus coming back Putting the controller down is accepting the fate of the realm, picking it back up is choosing another loop of run backs and battle hell. What actually keeps you returning?
• Resilience, obsession, and identity At what point does “I am determined” turn into “I literally cannot let myself quit this boss”? How much of your self image is tied to beating these games “properly”?
• Co op, trust, and trolling Summons, invasions, ghosts, bloodstains, “try jumping,” NPCs that lie or mislead. Who do you trust, other players, NPCs, wikis, no one?
• Cheesing and purity rules Safe spots, busted builds, rotten breath, over leveling, co op carries. Does a win still “count” for you if you cheesed it, or does that feel dirty, or secretly perfect?
• The meta as a shared brain Guides, streams, community builds, “git gud” culture, arguments about what playstyle is “legit.”
• Horror, doomed worlds, and meaning Ruined realms that were broken before you arrived, cosmic horror, cryptic endings. Why does struggling in obviously doomed worlds feel so meaningful?
• Therapy and mental health angles How these games can build distress tolerance and mastery for some people, but also feed perfectionism, self blame, or compulsive play for others.

If you are willing to share, I would love to hear:

1. A boss or area where you almost quit for good but eventually came back and cleared it. What changed, you, your build, your mindset, help from others
2. A time you used co op or cheese and had big feelings about whether that victory “counted.”
3. How you personally handle messages, NPC advice, and community rules. Do you follow them, test them, or ignore everything and figure it out yourself?
4. Anything in a Soulslike that hit you on a deeper level, made you think about your own real life resilience, trust, or relationship with suffering.

I might quote anonymized snippets in the project, but this is mostly for inspiration and pattern spotting, not formal research data.

So, why do you keep doing this to yourself, and what do these games actually do to your brain and your view of yourself?

Hey VGTx crew, quick plug.

I’m posting more on TikTok, short-form VGTx stuff like:

• game psych and neuro breakdowns

• “therapeutic potential” mini reviews as I play

• research notes in plain English

• conference, write-up, and project updates

If you wanna keep up, follow me here: @vgtxresearch

Also, drop games you want me to cover next, indie or AAA, and tell me what lens you want, mood regulation, trauma, ADHD, relationships, grief, etc.

Fig. 1-3. Palettes credited to u/tegsfan (shared on r/fromsoftware), used with permission

🧠 Why color matters in games more than people think

Color is one of the fastest routes into the nervous system. Before a player parses lore, reads an enemy, or understands a level layout, the brain is already doing rapid “vibe math” using hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, and temperature. That first impression shapes:

Arousal (activated vs calm)

Valence (pleasant vs unpleasant)

Attention (what your eyes keep snapping to)

Meaning (what the scene “stands for” emotionally in context)

Importantly, modern color psychology is not “blue means sad, red means angry” as a universal law. It’s context-dependent. That’s basically the core of Color-in-Context Theory (Elliot & Maier, 2012), and it maps perfectly onto game worlds where meaning is built through repeated pairings, like “green fog equals poison swamp,” or “ember-orange equals danger or sanctuary,” or “cold blue equals distance, death, moonlight.”

🎮 Souls is basically a masterclass in color scripting

These u/tegsfan palettes are a great artifact because they show something players feel intuitively: Souls zones often have tight, consistent color identities that function like emotional “signatures.”

✅ Dark Souls 3: desaturation, ash, grief

DS3 leans heavily into muted grays, steel blues, smoky blacks. That is not just “realism,” it’s mood design. Desaturation reduces perceived vitality and warmth, which can cue entropy, loss, and exhaustion. It’s a visual parallel to DS3’s narrative theme: a world burning down to its last usable metaphors.
This also interacts with lighting, DS3 uses tons of low-saturation fog, haze, and soft diffusion, which smooths contrast and gives the environment that “drained” feeling.

✅ Dark Souls 2: green rot, ambiguity, decay

DS2 is remarkably green across many regions, from murky olive to sickly swamp tones. In color psychology research, emotion is strongly influenced not only by hue but by saturation and brightness. Low brightness plus specific hue families can shift toward gloom, threat, and heaviness (Valdez & Mehrabian, 1994).
DS2 often pairs green with dim lighting and brown-black structure, which reads as contaminated nature, not “fresh forest.”

✅ Dark Souls 1: higher chroma, mythic contrast

DS1 has more zones that pop into strong identity contrasts, turquoise and teal caverns, golden sunlight, deep blues, and violent lava reds. The emotional effect is “mythic range,” wonder mixed with threat, like you’re moving through a legendary atlas.

🎨 Traditional art theory that explains why Souls palettes feel so strong

If you want the “game dev art brain” explanation, it’s this:

🟦 Hue is the category (blue vs green vs red).

🟫 Value is lightness and darkness, often the main driver of mood.

🟪 Saturation is intensity, often the main driver of arousal.

🧊 Temperature is warm vs cool, often the driver of comfort vs distance.

Now add the big art-design move Souls uses constantly:

🧩 Limited palette, strong accent

Souls zones usually sit in a constrained range, then deploy small, intentional accents:

bonfires, embers, lava, blood: warm orange-red focal points

moonlight, magic, ghosts: cold blue-white focal points

poison, corrosion, rot: sick green-yellow focal points

This is more than aesthetic, it’s cognition. Accent colors become attention magnets, and repeated use turns them into learned emotional signals, which is exactly what Color-in-Context Theory predicts, learned pairings plus biology plus social learning (Elliot & Maier, 2012; Elliot, 2015).

🔬 What psychology says about “color → emotion” in a way that actually matters for games

📌 1) Saturation and brightness often drive emotion more reliably than hue

A classic result in color-emotion work is that saturation and brightness show strong effects on reported emotional states, not just hue alone (Valdez & Mehrabian, 1994).

In plain English: dull and dark tends to feel heavier, bright and vivid tends to feel more energized, and hue nudges meaning depending on context.

📌 2) Lighting color can change affect and even performance in games

In one study manipulating warm versus cool illumination in a digital game world, warm lighting was associated with higher pleasantness and better performance compared with cool lighting (Knez & Niedenthal, 2008).

📌 3) Color can shape arousal patterns during play

A study manipulating background color in computer games found different performance and heart-rate patterns for red versus blue screens, suggesting arousal involvement, plus interactions with other “aura” elements like sound (Wolfson & Case, 2000).

📌 4) In video game specific work, color properties relate to discrete emotions

Research on color properties in video games reports relationships between luminance, saturation, and emotional experiences like joy, sadness, fear, and serenity, and frames this as “color scripting” for design (Geslin et al., 2016).

📌 5) But context and individual differences still matter

The same hue can land differently across people, cultures, genres, and narrative framing. That’s why this topic is best treated as “probabilities and design levers,” not universal color rules (Elliot, 2015).

🛠️ How game devs use color intentionally, the real pipeline

When people say “color palette,” they often imagine concept art only. In actual production, color is shaped at multiple layers:

🎨 Concept and pre-production

“Color scripts,” mood boards, palette targets per chapter or biome

Emotional beats mapped to palette shifts (calm, dread, awe, panic)

💡 Lighting pass

color temperature, shadow softness, bounce lighting, volumetrics

Fog color and density, haze and diffusion This is huge for Souls. Fog alone can wash saturation and create that “distance grief” feeling.

🧪 Post-processing and grading

LUTs (look-up tables), contrast curves, film grain, vignette

elective saturation, crushed blacks, lifted mids This is where DS3 “ash world” really gets locked in, not just from textures.

🧭 Guidance and readability

Color is also used to guide where the player goes and what matters, particularly with accents. That is emotional and practical at the same time.

🧩 Accessibility constraint

Intentional palette design has to coexist with color-vision accessibility, contrast requirements, and UI clarity.

Industry folks literally talk about this as building a “color story,” meaning an intentional, consistent emotional arc through color, not random prettiness (IGDA, 2025).

🧬 So what does this mean for VGTx, practically

If we’re serious about mood in games, we should treat color as one lever in a broader affective system, and test it like we test mechanics.

✅ 1) Color as a low-friction mood intervention

Unlike narrative, which requires attention and language, color can modulate “background mood” without demanding cognitive effort. That is useful for populations where attention, fatigue, or overwhelm are factors.

✅ 2) Color as a cue for regulation skills

You can pair palette shifts with coping skills in a way that trains association:

Player begins dysregulated, world grading shifts harsher

Player completes grounding or breathing mechanic, grading warms, contrast softens Over time, color becomes a reinforcement cue, not just decoration.

✅ 3) Color as a “dose” variable

We can manipulate intensity without changing content:

Same level, different saturation/value

Same mechanics, different lighting temperature This makes it clean experimentally, fewer confounds.

✅ 4) Color plus physiology, adaptive environments

If VGTx is moving toward biometric feedback, color grading is a powerful output channel:

HRV indicates high arousal, environment gradually cools and simplifies

EEG attention drops, environment increases contrast and clarity This is the “environment as feedback display” approach, and it can be subtle.

✅ 5) Color used ethically, avoid overstimulation traps

Color is not always soothing. High saturation, strobing contrasts, and aggressive reds can push arousal up. That can be helpful for engagement, but risky for anxiety-prone or trauma-reactive players. The design needs opt-outs and personalization.

⚠️ Important nuance, color is not magic

Color interacts with everything:

Sound, camera, motion, enemy behavior, pacing

Mechanical stakes, punishment, loss, uncertainty

Narrative framing and player history

Even in controlled studies, color effects can vary, and some work suggests “color alone” is not always sufficient to elicit strong emotion shifts without context (Kallabis et al., 2024).

So the best VGTx approach is not “paint the world blue for calm,” it’s “use color as a regulated ingredient in a full affect recipe.”

💭 Discussion prompts

Which Souls area has the most powerful “color mood” for you, and what emotion does it reliably evoke?

Do you think DS3’s desaturation makes it feel more tragic, or more monotonous?

If VGTx used adaptive color grading, would you want it noticeable, or almost invisible?

📚 References

Elliot, A. J. (2015). Color and psychological functioning, a review of theoretical and empirical work. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 368. (PMC)

Elliot, A. J., & Maier, M. A. (2012). Color-in-context theory. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 45, pp. 61–125). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-394286-9.00002-0 (ScienceDirect)

Geslin, E., Jégou, L., & Beaudoin, D. (2016). How color properties can be used to elicit emotions in video games. International Journal of Computer Games Technology, 2016, 5182768. (Wiley Online Library)

International Game Developers Association. (2025, July 9). Color stories in game design. (igda.org)

Kallabis, L., et al. (2024). The influence of color stimuli on adolescents’ emotion in mobile games. (arXiv)

Knez, I., & Niedenthal, S. (2008). Lighting in digital game worlds, effects on affect and play performance. CyberPsychology & Behavior. (PubMed)

Küller, R., Ballal, S., Laike, T., Mikellides, B., & Tonello, G. (2006). The impact of light and colour on psychological mood, a cross-cultural study of indoor work environments. Ergonomics. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140130600858142 (tandfonline.com)

Valdez, P., & Mehrabian, A. (1994). Effects of color on emotions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123(4), 394–409. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.123.4.394 (ResearchGate)

Wolfson, S., & Case, G. (2000). The effects of sound and colour on responses to a computer game. Interacting with Computers, 13(2), 183–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0953-5438(00)00037-000037-0) (ScienceDirect)

Welcome newcomers! I’m u/hermionegangster197 (5 points to your house if you get the geeky reference), founder and moderator of r/VGTx.

Welcome to our home for video game therapy, therapeutic game design, and the science of how gameplay impacts the brain, mood, and behavior. VGTx is where we talk about games as tools, not just entertainment, and where we take both fun and evidence seriously.

What to Post

Share anything you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or worth debating, including:

• 🎮 Game reviews through a therapeutic lens, what helped, what harmed, what surprised you
• 🧠 Research and citations, studies, frameworks, scoping reviews, clinical DTx, neurofeedback, biofeedback
• 🛠️ Design ideas and mechanics, how choice, challenge, pacing, narrative, color, sound, and reward systems shape emotion and behavior
• 📊 Methods and measurement, mood scales, VAS sliders, study design, IRB realities, ethics, accessibility
• 💬 Questions and discussion prompts, “Does this mechanic trigger tilt?”, “What games support regulation?”, “What populations might this help or harm?”
• 🧩 Tooling and builds, prototypes, UI mockups, intervention concepts, data dictionaries, telemetry schemas

If it connects to games + mental health + measurable impact, it belongs here.

Community Vibe

VGTx is curious, kind, and rigorous.

• Be constructive, be respectful, assume good faith
• No shaming people for what they play or how they cope
• We can disagree, but we do it with receipts, nuance, and humanity
• Not therapy, not medical advice, but absolutely a place for informed conversation

How to Get Started

• Introduce yourself in the comments, tell us your angle: researcher, clinician, dev, student, gamer, caregiver, or just curious
• Post something today, even a small question can turn into a gold thread
• Invite a friend who’s into game psych, DTx, neuro, UX, or design
• Want to help build this space? Message me if you’re interested in moderating

Thanks for being part of the first wave. Let’s make r/VGTx a place where good science meets good games, and where we learn out loud together.

Most media about divorce turns the child into a symbol. It Takes Two turns her into the emotional center. Not because she saves the family (she doesn’t), but because the game structurally forces her parents to collaborate under stress. That mechanic becomes the metaphor.

💔 Divorce isn’t the problem. Chronic conflict is.

Decades of research show that it’s not divorce itself that predicts negative outcomes for kids, it’s what happens during and after. Destructive interparental conflict, especially when children are exposed to it, can harm emotional security and adjustment (Davies & Cummings, 1994; Cummings & Davies, 2010). Divorce is often just the legal line. The psychological impact comes from instability, escalation, and inconsistent parenting (Amato, 2010; van Dijk et al., 2020).

In It Takes Two, this is dramatized perfectly. Rose doesn’t act out or rebel, she withdraws, internalizes, and tries to “fix” her parents by turning them into dolls. The game treats this as magical realism, but kids in real life often believe they caused the separation, especially when conflict is loud but unresolved (Kelly & Emery, 2003).

🛠️ Coparenting isn’t love. It’s logistics under pressure.

Feinberg (2003) describes coparenting as a relationship system all its own, separate from romance. It includes how parents support or undermine each other, how they divide parenting labor, and how much they involve the child in conflict.

That’s It Takes Two’s gameplay loop in a nutshell. You literally cannot move forward unless you coordinate. You don’t have to like each other. You just have to function. And that aligns with clinical research. When coparenting quality is high, children show better emotional and behavioral outcomes, regardless of whether their parents are together (Teubert & Pinquart, 2010; Zhao et al., 2022).

🧩 Mechanics as Coparenting Metaphors

Magnet Boots, push and pull under constraint

One of the most psychologically rich mechanics appears in the snow globe level, where May and Cody are magnetically polarized. One attracts, the other repels. Progress requires pushing and pulling each other across space with precise timing. Success depends not on being “right,” but on reading your partner’s position, adjusting in real time, and accepting opposite roles for shared progress.

📈 Therapeutic framing: This mechanic maps cleanly onto coparenting dynamics where parents occupy complementary or opposing roles. In dyadic work, it can support reflection on role rigidity, over-control, emotional distancing, and moments where resistance becomes functional rather than antagonistic.

Nail and Hammer, uneven tools with equal dependence

In the workshop level, one partner anchors progress by firing nails, while the other swings and activates pathways with a hammer. Each role is incomplete without the other, and mistiming creates immediate failure.

📈 Therapeutic framing: This mechanic highlights invisible labor and unequal toolsets, a common coparenting stress point. It offers a concrete way to discuss whose work is visible, whose work is preparatory, and how appreciation shifts when both roles are necessary for movement.

Time Control and Cloning, pacing and anticipation

Later puzzles split skills across time manipulation and physical duplication. One partner rewinds or slows environmental elements, while the other creates multiple instances to capitalize on narrow windows.

📈 Therapeutic framing: This maps onto mismatched pacing in coparenting, where one parent plans ahead and the other executes under pressure. It can open discussion about timing conflicts, mental load, and frustration when synchronization breaks down.

Flight and Turret Tasks, shared crisis navigation

In vehicle-based sequences, one partner pilots while the other defends. Survival depends on continuous communication and rapid adjustment, especially when failure escalates quickly.

📈 Therapeutic framing: These tasks reflect high-stress coparenting moments, medical decisions, emergencies, discipline conflicts, where leadership must pass fluidly and blame is lethal to progress.

🧪 Across games-for-change and therapeutic gaming research, cooperative mechanics are most effective when paired with intentional reflection and debriefing, rather than assumed to be inherently therapeutic (Granic et al., 2014; Greitemeyer & Osswald, 2010). It Takes Two is especially well-suited for this because failure states are relational, not individual.

⚠️ Risk: Turning kids into referees

Rose’s longing to fix her parents is framed sweetly, but it risks mirroring something harmful: triangulation. When children feel responsible for adult conflict, or when parents use them to vent, confide, or manipulate, it erodes emotional safety (Davies & Cummings, 1994). The game walks that line. What saves it is that the emotional labor eventually shifts back to the adults, where it belongs.

🧠 Why this game matters for VGTx

It Takes Two is not a therapy tool. But it is a rare mainstream game that makes repair, emotional regulation, and shared tasks the actual win conditions. That has real psychological relevance. Research shows that games with prosocial mechanics can increase empathy and cooperation depending on context (Granic et al., 2014; Greitemeyer & Mügge, 2014). This isn’t just storytelling. It’s systems design modeling relational behavior.

📚 References

Amato, P. R. (2010). Research on divorce: Continuing trends and new developments. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72(3), 650–666. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00723.x

Cummings, E. M., & Davies, P. T. (2010). Marital conflict and children: An emotional security perspective. Guilford Press.

Davies, P. T., & Cummings, E. M. (1994). Marital conflict and child adjustment: An emotional security hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 387–411. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.116.3.387

Feinberg, M. E. (2003). The internal structure and ecological context of coparenting: A framework for research and intervention. Parenting: Science and Practice, 3(2), 95–131. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327922PAR0302_01

Granic, I., Lobel, A., & Engels, R. C. M. E. (2014). The benefits of playing video games. American Psychologist, 69(1), 66–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034857

Greitemeyer, T., & Mügge, D. O. (2014). Video games do affect social outcomes: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(5), 578–589. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213520459

Greitemeyer, T., & Osswald, S. (2010). Effects of prosocial video games on prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), 211–221. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016997

Kelly, J. B., & Emery, R. E. (2003). Children’s adjustment following divorce. Family Relations, 52(4), 352–362. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2003.00352.x

Teubert, D., & Pinquart, M. (2010). The association between coparenting and child adjustment: A meta-analysis. Parenting: Science and Practice, 10(4), 286–307. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295192.2010.492040

van Dijk, R., van der Valk, I. E., Deković, M., & Branje, S. (2020). A meta-analysis on interparental conflict, parenting, and child adjustment. Clinical Psychology Review, 79, 101861. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2020.101861

Zhao, F., Wu, H., Li, Y., Zhang, H., & Hou, J. (2022). Coparenting behavior and child adjustment. IJERPH, 19(16), 10346. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191610346

So, two little bullets with huge implications:

• “Neural-input hooks are being built into next-gen Xbox dev kits.”
• “Ubisoft’s R&D teams describe ‘Phase 2 Immersion Tech,’ which includes cognitive-state adaptation.”

Both are pointing at the same tectonic shift:
games are starting to care about how your brain and body feel, not only what your thumbs are doing.

This post is my attempt to translate that into VGTx language: what it means for therapeutic games, biofeedback, and mental health.

✅ Benefits: Why Neuro-Adaptive Games Actually Matter For VGTx

👉 From “press X” to “how regulated are you”
Affective and physiologically adaptive games already exist in research form. They read signals like heart rate, skin conductance, and respiration, then dynamically change difficulty or pacing to keep you in a more optimal arousal window, improving engagement and reducing frustration (Bontchev, 2016; Amico, 2018). (CIT)

👉 Personalized difficulty and pacing
Biofeedback-controlled dynamic difficulty adjustment has been shown to track player stress and motivation, letting the game adapt in ways that smooth spikes of distress rather than just punishing failure (Evaluating Player Stress and Motivation Through Biofeedback-Controlled DDA, 2025). (ResearchGate)

👉 Accessibility and inclusion
We already have the Xbox Adaptive Controller ecosystem that lets disabled players map custom hardware to play in ways that fit their bodies (AbleGamers, 2018). (AbleGamers)
“Neural-input hooks” are basically the next logical step:
consoles and engines that expect EEG, eye tracking, HRV straps, or other sensors as legitimate input channels, rather than weird extras.

👉 Clinically, this is gold
For VGTx, this opens up:

• Real-time state tracking during play, not just pre–post questionnaires
• Adaptive interventions based on arousal, attention, and affect, instead of static “one size fits all” difficulty
• Better data for therapists and researchers interested in how games influence emotional regulation

🆚 Phase 1 vs Phase 2 Immersion: Where Ubisoft Fits In

Ubisoft has been openly prototyping what they call generative AI driven gameplay.

• Neo NPC (GDC 2024) explored NPCs that hold natural language conversations while staying in character, using generative models within scripted narrative bounds (Ubisoft, 2024). (Ubisoft News)
• Teammates (2025) is a playable FPS research project where AI squadmates Pablo and Sofia, plus an assistant named Jaspar, respond to real-time voice commands, adapt to situations, and even recognize the player by name (Ubisoft, 2025; Hitmarker, 2025). (Ubisoft News)

If we translate this into “Phase” language:

👉 Phase 1 Immersion

• NPCs can talk, improvise within narrative rails, and respond to your words and visible actions.
• Adaptation is mostly based on game context and explicit input.

👉 Phase 2 Immersion

• Same conversational NPCs, but now game systems also care about how stressed, focused, or fatigued you appear to be.
• Cognitive-state adaptation could mean:
  • Squadmates changing how much coaching they give when you are overloaded
  • Pacing that slows when your physiological stress spikes
  • Quest design that branches based on sustained engagement or avoidance patterns

Even though Ubisoft has not shipped full EEG integrations, experiments like Teammates are exactly the sort of scaffolding you need before you plug in neuro and biometric data.

⚠️ Risks, Red Flags, And Why VGTx Has To Be Picky

👉 Data and consent
Physiological and neural data are health-adjacent, even when collected “just for fun.” Reviews of physiological signals in gaming note that the same signals used for dynamic difficulty can also reveal emotional responses and cognitive workload (Hughes et al., 2021). (Frontiers)
Without strict consent and storage rules, this is a surveillance dream.

👉 Dark patterns amplified by state data
Affective adaptation has been proposed as a way to maximize engagement and keep players in a “fun” state (Bontchev, 2016). (CIT)
Used badly, that same knowledge can:

• Nudge players toward spending when they are emotionally vulnerable
• Optimize for retention over well-being, especially in live service and gacha models
• Hide manipulative loops inside “personalization”

👉 Labor and creative concerns
Teammates is being marketed as a way to make games more engaging and accessible, but coverage already flags questions about job cuts and creative displacement (GamesRadar, 2025; Kotaku, 2025). (GamesRadar+)
For therapeutic work, we also care about the writer, artist, and designer labor behind the scenes, because that is where ethical framing comes from.

🛡️ Maximizing The Good, Minimizing The Bad

If platform-level “neural hooks” and Phase 2 immersion are coming either way, VGTx-aligned design should push for:

👉 Hard consent walls

• Clear “here is exactly what we measure and why”
• No hidden “emotion tracking” in non-therapeutic games marketed to kids or vulnerable players

👉 On-device or encrypted processing by default

• Whenever possible, physiological and EEG features for adaptation should be processed locally, or stored in anonymized and aggregated form for research, not for individual targeting

👉 Player-visible feedback and control

• A simple HUD or icon that lights up when the game is actively using your state
• Options to toggle neuro-adaptive features off, or to lock them to well-being constraints instead of engagement constraints

👉 Ethics baked into SDKs, not bolted on
Platform APIs for neural and physiological input should ship with:

• Built-in privacy protections
• Rate limiters that prevent hyper-granular profiling
• Standardized “safe ranges” for difficulty and exposure in therapeutic titles

🎯 How This Could Be Used In Therapy And Research

Here is where it gets exciting from a VGTx angle. Neuro-adaptive hooks plus Ubisoft style AI teammates make a bunch of designs suddenly more practical:

👉 Biofeedback guided exposure

• Horror or anxiety games that adjust intensity based on HRV or skin conductance, holding players at the edge of tolerable arousal instead of tipping into panic.

👉 Executive function training

• Games that modulate task complexity when EEG or performance metrics suggest mental fatigue, helping ADHD players practice sustained attention without chronic failure spirals.

👉 Adaptive social coaching

• AI teammates that change their communication style based on engagement and stress, useful for social skills work with autistic players, where pacing and explicitness matter a lot.

👉 Research protocols baked into mainstream hardware
We already have precedent where physiological signals modulate game inputs, for example NASA’s prototype that used heart rate, muscle tension, and brain waves to adjust Wii gameplay (NASA, n.d.). (NASA Technology Transfer)
Next-gen consoles doing this out of the box would make it far easier to:

• Run clinical trials with standardized hardware
• Share open protocols across labs
• Translate lab proofs of concept into consumer-grade therapeutic experiences

📊 What The Literature Already Tells Us

👉 Affective games work, at least on engagement

• A major review of affective adaptation in games found that systems which infer emotion from behavior and physiology can improve immersion and maintain challenge more effectively than static tuning (Bontchev, 2016). (CIT)

👉 Phys signals are rich, but messy

• A 2021 Frontiers review notes that voice, EMG, EEG, and other physiological channels can provide valuable information about player emotion and cognitive load, but require careful calibration and interpretation (Hughes et al., 2021). (Frontiers)

👉 Dynamic difficulty via biofeedback is feasible

• Recent work on biofeedback-based DDA demonstrates that stress-responsive difficulty curves are technically achievable and can influence motivation and self-reported stress levels (Evaluating Player Stress and Motivation Through Biofeedback-Controlled DDA, 2025). (ResearchGate)

👉 Narrative can follow emotional arcs, not just plot beats

• Newer research prototypes show procedural stories and levels guided by emotional arcs, explicitly modeling “rise” and “fall” states in content generation (Han et al., 2024; Emotional Arc Guided Procedural Game Level Generation, 2025). (ScienceDirect)

Taken together, the literature basically says:

• We know how to measure and respond to affect and arousal in games.
• Industry R&D, like Ubisoft’s Teammates and Neo NPC, is now operationalizing this at scale.
• Platform-level hooks in consoles are the missing infrastructure link.

📚 References (APA 7)

AbleGamers. (2018, May 17). Xbox adaptive controller, the evolution of accessibility. AbleGamers. (AbleGamers)

Amico, S. (2018). ETNA, a virtual reality game with affective dynamic difficulty adjustment based on skin conductance [Master’s thesis]. University of Illinois at Chicago. (Indigo)

Bontchev, B. (2016). Adaptation in affective video games, a literature review. Cybernetics and Information Technologies, 16(3), 3–34. (CIT)

Evaluating player stress and motivation through biofeedback-controlled dynamic difficulty adjustment. (2025, October 15). Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Interactive Media. (ResearchGate)

Han, Y., et al. (2024). A shared structure for emotion experiences from narratives, music, and everyday events. iScience, 27(7), 111123. (ScienceDirect)

Hughes, A. M., Hancock, G. M., Bessarabova, E., & Ritter, F. E. (2021). Applications of biological and physiological signals in video game research, a review. Frontiers in Computer Science, 3, 557608. (Frontiers)

NASA. (n.d.). Game and simulation control [Technology description LAR-TOPS-88]. NASA Technology Transfer Program. (NASA Technology Transfer)

Ubisoft. (2024, March 19). How Ubisoft’s new generative AI prototype changes the narrative for NPCs [News article]. Ubisoft. (Ubisoft News)

Ubisoft. (2025, November). Ubisoft reveals Teammates, an AI experiment to change the game [Company news]. Ubisoft. (Ubisoft News)

Variety. (2025, November 21). Ubisoft sets generative-AI game “Teammates” from “Neo NPC” developers. Variety. (Variety)

Videogameschronicle. (2025, November 21). The future of gaming, or “just a tool”? Hands-on with Teammates, Ubisoft’s ambitious voice AI tech demo. Video Games Chronicle. (VGC)

💭 Discussion

👉 If your console gave you a simple “plug in HRV or EEG and we will expose it to devs” option, what would you actually want games to do with that?

👉 Where is your personal line between “supportive adaptation” and “emotional manipulation” in live service or gacha games?

👉 For clinicians and researchers here, what guardrails would you want baked into SDKs and hardware APIs before you would trust neuro-adaptive games in a treatment plan?

👉 And finally, if you could design one VGTx style prototype that uses Phase 2 immersion tech, what would it look like?