Game Information
| Title | Blowing Blues (student-created game) |
| Presenter(s) | Xuan Li |
| Session | Play the Past: Where Meaningful Play and Digital Humanities Meet to Talk |
| Time | Thursday, October 18, 11:00a-12:00p |
| Location | Gold A |
| Format | Game Exhibition |
| Description | A message ring carrying colors representing various emotions encounters a "brain world." The message transfers its colors onto the brain world. The two objects merge, becoming an "emotion egg."
The egg permeates into the mind and suddenly, hundreds more emotion eggs fade into view, each one giving birth to three to five "errorbugs". These errorbugs attack the brain's green cells, causing those healthy cells to first turn blue, the color of sadness, then purple, the color of sickness, and finally, brown, the color of withering away. The player fights to save the mind by breathing in and blowing away the eggs. Through this experience, the player will internalize a positive suggestion: "Never allow bad moods to destroy your mind". Blowing Blues is an artistically crafted health game currently in development that explores improving player's resilience in the face of life's stresses and worries. It helps players get rid of stressful thoughts and recognize that chronic, lingering stress eventually destroys their minds. In the game's three-dimensional representation of the human brain, negative emotions and stress are visualized as various colors inside "error eggs" residing in the mind. These error eggs produce destructive "errorbug" objects that swim around destroying brain cells. The player's mission is to restore healthy brain cells by blowing out of the mind these error objects. To do this, players breath in and out through a computer microphone interface. The game processes the audio volume from the microphone, using that to modulate the strength of the virtual "gust of wind." By using breathing as a core mechanic, the game explores gentle embodied interaction and its inherent therapeutic potential. The game encourages the player to find her own feel for the breathing to find relief and melt away stress. Blowing Blues uses the power of suggestion for therapy. In future versions, the player can input his or her internal enemies into the game. This allows one to associate personal enemies and fears with error bug objects to be blown away. Play becomes personalized treatment. |