Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a game known for its powerful exploration of mental health – and even post-release, studio Ninja Theory has continued that good work with initiatives such as a mental health tutor scholarship. Yesterday, Ninja Theory unveiled The Insight Project – a research and development project seeking to help alleviate mental suffering through combining technology, game design and clinical neuroscience.
According to a blog post on Xbox Wire, the project emerged from discussions between Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades and neuroscience professor Paul Fletcher of the University of Cambridge, who helped advise the team on representing mental health in Senua’s Sacrifice. The idea is to use game technology (such as virtual avatars, natural human interfaces and data analytic tools) to “generate strategies to alleviate mental distress”.
“All of these tools were created to engage a captive mass audience, train them in new skills and promote mastery of games, and this is a process we think can equally be applied to mental wellbeing”, Antoniades explains in the announcement video.
