Elude: a serious game for understanding depression

An atmospheric metaphor

The Gambit games laboratory, a partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Singapore government, has added a serious game to its range of games designed to help people understand depression.

Elude is designed for use in a clinical psycho-educational context, and is particularly aimed at the families and loved ones of depressed people. However, the general public who have access to the game can also benefit from this approach.

Although it's all in English, you don't need to know much about it, as there's virtually no text.

In the game, your avatar is a young man moving through a rather strange forest. Using the arrows on your keyboard, you'll have to walk around and jump from branch to branch to climb higher. Along the way, you'll come across some birds. By making them sing by resonance (a kind of echolocation activated by pressing the space bar), they'll give you more speed and height to reach the sky. At certain points, however, a black cloud will appear, scaring the birds away, and gigantic brambles will drag you into the dark underground...

It's all metaphorical, of course. The forest represents the "normal" state, the sky euphoric moods and the bowels of the earth depressive episodes. The birds also symbolize the passions. The idea is to help us understand how depressives alternate between moments of joy and long periods of despondency, which can lead to the irreparable when the patient has lost all taste for life.

It would have been interesting to include texts or additional information on depression. However, the simulation must be taken for what it is: a prototype, an awareness-raising tool that must be accompanied by advice, data and exchanges with experts.

The game's metaphor is well conceived, a little dark, and informs about a problem that affects millions of people.

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