In Series 3 Episode 3 of the Health Points podcast hosts Ben and Pete chat with Dr Amy Duncan who is a neuropsychologist, an educator, and Head of Sales at Sea Monster. This conversation goes deep into the art and science of designing games that don’t just entertain, but transform lives.
🧠 From Neuropsychology to Game Design: A Journey of Purpose
Dr. Duncan’s path from neuropsychology to serious games is a compelling story of passion meeting purpose. Her background in understanding human behavior and cognition uniquely positions her to design games that are not only engaging but also behaviorally effective. Her transition into gamified learning and social impact design offers a blueprint for professionals seeking to bridge science and storytelling.
This episode is packed with insights that can directly inform your own health gamification projects:
Human-Centered Design in Action
Amy breaks down Sea Monster’s design philosophy: always start with the user. Through interviews, focus groups, and iterative testing, their games are crafted to resonate deeply with the target audience, whether it’s young people learning about HIV prevention or first responders managing PTSD.
Case Studies That Inspire
You’ll hear about:
- Live to Love: A narrative-driven game using animated birds to teach safe practices in HIV prevention. It’s a masterclass in using metaphor and storytelling to tackle sensitive health topics.
- The Last Maestro: A VR experience that blends classical music and immersive visuals to help users—especially first responders—manage PTSD and burnout. It’s a powerful example of how games can offer therapeutic value beyond traditional interventions.
- Fish Force: A training game for fisheries officers that simulates real-world inspections, showing how gamification can enhance professional education and compliance.
Sustainability and Scalability in Health Games
One of the biggest challenges in health gamification is longevity. Amy discusses how Sea Monster is working with corporates to fund and sustain impactful games beyond the typical grant lifecycle, ensuring broader reach and lasting change.
The Power of Storytelling
With roots in animation, Sea Monster brings cinematic quality and emotional depth to their games. Amy explains how narrative structure—especially the hero’s journey—can be a powerful tool for behavior change, making players the protagonists of their own transformation.
🌍 Why This Matters for You
Whether you're designing a rehab tool, a public health campaign, or a training module, this episode offers practical frameworks and inspiring examples to help you:
- Build games that resonate emotionally and cognitively
- Translate gameplay into real-world behavior change
- Design for diverse populations with varying access to technology
- Partner with brands and institutions to scale your impact
🎧 Tune In and Level Up
This isn’t just another podcast episode—it’s a masterclass in meaningful gamification. Dr. Amy Duncan’s insights will challenge you to think bigger, design smarter, and create games that truly matter.
👉 Listen now and start reimagining what your next health game could achieve.
You can listen to this episode below:
Episode Transcript:
Ben
Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of Health Points where we talk about anything and everything, gamification and health. I'm Ben and I have with me my co-host Pete.
Pete
Hi everyone.
Ben
And today we have with us Doctor Amy Duncan. She serves as the head of sales at Sea Monster. She has a PhD in neuropsychology and is a registered neuropsychologist with a strong background in education and academia. With a diverse set of skills, including client relationship and management, project management, experience designing, curriculum development and instructional design, as well as both a general and clinical research, Amy's hugely passionate about using games to drive learning and behaviour change at scale to create a positive impact in the world. Amy, it's great to have you on. The show today.
Amy
It's lovely to be here. Thanks for having me.
Ben
Let's kick off then. It'd be great to know more about your background and how you decide to apply your knowledge to create impactful game.
Amy
Cool. It's a bit of a long story, but I will try and keep this quite short, so I've always been interested in people and what makes them tick and when you do your obligatory psychometric testing, when you're heading towards metric and you're interested in people, they always say study psychology. It's like the the go to and so that's what I did. And and then neuropsychologist just seemed like an obvious fit for me. I was very interested in not just what makes people tick, but. Why they act the way they do and what happens when things go wrong and if if you have a stroke, you know, why do you get affected? And in these sorts of ways and memory and attention and so on. So it wasn't an obvious but for me to to study that. And then in South Africa, the promulgation of neuropsychology as the category of psychology, the type of psychology in this country, it just took a little bit longer to to come through in terms of the legislation, so. A bunch of us decided we're going to have to find a job and pay the bills, you know, while we were studying this amazing subject. So then I sort. Of. Did a bit of a pivot and I wanted to stay in academia and learning and education and still apply the knowledge that I'd learned, so I moved. A little bit into e-learning and publishing. And then started sort of creating educational content at tertiary level. So for students like I had been before, then I became interested in educational games and games as a medium to to drive learning and education and something that would move beyond traditional. E-learning, which I was in at the time and I began to love games that made all sorts of differences in the world not. To do with learning but to create social impact and behaviour change and all the wonderful things that that games can do with the engagement that they drive.
Ben
Incredible. So what led you then to find sea monster?
Amy
So I guess that was also a bit of a natural fit. And so living in Cape Town in South Africa, there aren't a lot of game. Studios. So when I was at the company doing e-learning. Sea monsters name just was around everywhere in terms of educational games and games for social impact, and so I learned a lot about them, worked with them a little bit on the periphery and and and came to understand what it is that they do. And then I really obviously liked. You know everything that they stood for and wanting to make the world a better place and and what they were using games to do and not just from an entertainment perspective. And so I basically pitched up on Glenn's door CEO and said, hey, I wanna work here. Can you? Give me a job. Super, it's, it's actually crazy how many people that work at sea Monster started that way. They were like this is it. This is what I wanna do. I know I'm gonna work here. It's just a matter of time. And that is how it came to be.
Ben
I think the first person who talks about rocking up and people's doors or kicking doors down to for their weather career path is taking them in serious games or health games. It'd be great to know more about some of the impact games and the health that you have, such as live to love and others. It'd be great to understand. What was the principle behind creating them? What did they do and what are the changes you're seeing in people?
Amy
Sure. So live to love is a great example. So we got to work with the pharmaceutical brand supplier in South Africa and it was just great off the bat that they recognised the role that games have to play in the in the health industry and deepening engagement with important topics such as HIV. And that came specifically was around Prep mints. So if you have an HIV positive partner, how you can protect yourself and still have the full loving relationship with your? No. So it was a really important message and we really wanted to get behind them and sort of creating awareness around this topic. And it was also a really lovely example of sensitive storytelling and how games and animation can visualise a topic to people. In a way that live action can't, particularly when it's a sensitive topic, you're not wanting to. Label a particular person as the face of XYZ, so we were able to create 2 beautiful characters that were two little birds, blue and sunny, and they went through a journey together in this in this story led game. The game itself, I can tell you. A little bit. About that. It's sort of similar to an infinite runner, except it's got a finite. Sort of path and the the obstacles also that you encounter are finite because it's narrative lead. So when you get to the end of the story, the obstacles. As well, but it follows that sort of premise that that sort of game mechanic we at sea Monster always follow a set design process at the beginning of every game that we do, we always have a design Sprint or a design phase. And and we we're always. Human centred human centred in our approach and user centred so. We all. Yeah, we put the user at the centre of every game that we create to ensure that it's designed with them in mind so that they'll actually play it and hopefully change their behaviour or change their thinking or whatever the the game is designed to do. So in this instance, we interviewed. The number of people that supply made available to us and then, you know, got their insights early on. Does the concept land, you know, are the characters, can you engage with the characters? Can you identify with them? And so on.
Ben
And So what? What? What does that look like as a as a game play? It took us through as a as a potential player. What would we, what would it look like for us?
Amy
Sure. So. In terms of the infinite runner, instead of it being sort of. Landscape where you're running along, you know and and dodging obstacles. In that way. It's a vertical story. So you meet first, you meet blue. The little bird and then you're introduced to Sonny, their partner, and basically you, you are exposed to parts of their stories. So there are words involved as well. So you you get. Little sentence here and there as part of the story, and then you you play as one of the characters and you have to avoid certain things and catch certain things. So you have to make sure that you're taking your prep meds. You avoid unsafe behaviours and you navigate this journey together with these two little birds and. At the very end, if you've managed to dodge all the obstacles that you have to avoid and make sure that you're taking all of your prep medication and keeping yourself safe and using, you know, safe sexual behaviour, and then at the very end of the story you're rewarded with a a little baby bird that you and Sonny made together.
Ben
Where was the design principles behind that vertical game? What is the framework of the process you went through? You talk about human centred user centred, but actually that doesn't mean those users know that they want or the best option would be a vertical based running game. So what was your process to get to the final game design?
Amy
Sure. That's an interesting question. Probably not one that I can answer. I I wasn't the game developer in this instance, but we have a number of different experienced designers and game designers here at Sea Monster and they usually look at a topic and. And pair that topic with the best game mechanic. That would deliver that topic in a meaningful way. So they usually look at a whole bunch of different ways of of teaching it or sharing it, or creating awareness around a specific concept and then. And we'll have a bit of a brainstorm internally and then figure out, OK, we really like this as a as a way of teaching this particular subject for these and these reasons. And then and then we'll pitch that to the client. And then from there, we have a very collaborative Co creation process. So the clients are always very, very involved in the design of our of our games. I don't know if that really answers your question.
Pete
I think it does. So in other words, the game really is awareness. Training. Awareness raising is a learning game. What sort of impact can that that type of game have, do you think?
Amy
So unfortunately this specific game, but many, many of our games being a service LED organised. Often we are approached by a brand or a corporate or you know. Some such organisation to create an awareness game or to create an internal learning game or whatever the case may. Be. And then it is up to their agency to take it to market or their internal marketing team to take it to market. And often we don't get the the statistics shared. With us, so we are often in the very unfortunate position of not knowing the ultimate impact that our games have made, and we put so much love into them and keep the user at the centre throughout the process. And then often, you know, don't get the feedback from the user themselves. But in this instance. Sipler really did. What the client that we worked with really did view it as one of the most innovative ways to share information, particularly with a broader audience, and they've included games in their public education. Jeep over the next five years, so it's really great to see them embracing games even though we haven't specifically had, you know, results shared back with us. It is still available publicly on on their website. So you can still play it.
Ben
I guess when designing these games, I guess what's really key about gamification is often the translation of the gameplay into real world behaviours. Why is it that games you're designing you believe is having that translation? Or what is that key magic ingredients to make sure that gameplay translates into real, real behaviour change?
Amy
Gosh, you asked the greatest questions. I guess through our human centric and our user centric approach we have over the years built in into our processes a lot of. These UM. Important aspects to consider, and we've done so many focus groups and so much user testing and so many user interviews that a lot of a lot of this knowledge is just built in, into our experience designers are in and our game designers that they just know that magic recipe that is going to affect change or. This is the right way to to get someone to engage and to create, you know, awareness or that aha moment around a specific topic. We as a company came from a history of animation. So we didn't always create games. We started with character animation, actually. And so we've been storytellers for the longest time and and that is really the way in which we communicate and the way in which we. Found. The best way to to get people to. Really connect with the topic is to make them the hero of their own. Many. And we usually follow. I'm I'm sure you guys must be aware of the the heroes journey and how to write a good a really good story. And there's always there's a recipe. There's a there's a formula that you need to follow and we bring that in into our games. So we make sure that people have that aha moment that they've overcome something that they've. Triumphed and they've come out the other side with new knowledge and they've really understood. Ohh that's why it's important or that's you know this is the real meaning behind it or the real. Thing I can do with it in my in my real life.
Ben
Yeah, that may completely get it. It's often the thing that comes up a lot when we're we're interviewing things the the gamification for an instant behaviour. I don't know, such as moving your arm because you trying to strengthen rehab and creating games where you're playing the characters and it's the actual rehab movement which controls the game. Relatively simple stuff. Now what you're doing is really complex because what you're trying to do is to have a fundamental change in behaviour. It's no, it's really interesting, Amy, because it's not about just the gameplay, but what happens after they turned the game off and go back into the real world. We've also been fascinated by your proof of concept game the the last Maestro and immersive music conducting experience to help those suffering from PTSD, and it would be great to to know a bit more about it.
Amy
Sure. So this is actually one of my specific clients. So I'm it's very close to my heart and I really love this experience. So it was originally developed with PTSD in mind, but it's been found to have a massive application amongst first responders. And I think that probably largely came about. After COVID with the burnout that first responders were experiencing. Just became exponentially more and more as time went on, and we've a a recent study has been done that's actually shown a reduction in burnout, some symptoms amongst nurses on the frontline after they pay the experience. Which has been. Huge and just really validating of all the work that has. Gone into this. The experience, in short, is it basically it combines classical music and movement in an immersive, really visually beautiful environment, and the idea is. You're as a first responder or as even someone who's experiencing PTSD. Your real world environment may be really triggering maybe difficult to navigate and to deal with, so you completely remove yourself from that environment. You're in a safe space. You're in complete control throughout the experience. It's beautiful. There are beautiful things happening in the in the environment, and you're connecting with your body with your mind, with the music. And it's it's really a beautiful therapeutic experience. The idea with the classical music, obviously it has. An amazing capacity for many different things. Everybody knows about the studies about how you must listen to classical music when you're studying at school and varsity, and you know all the effects that it can have on your brain. It also has amazing healing effect, and that was the the principle behind it. So that's why classical music was used. And when you step into the experience. You become a conductor basically, so that's why it's called the last mix. Sure. And you are able to use your your hand controller as a baton and you're actually a baton sort of appears in front of you and you're able to take it. And then you're given feedback throughout the experience. So if you are just interested in the environment. Then you're able to move your baton over certain things. So for example, one of the scenes. Has sort of. Closed flowers and you're able to move the baton over the flowers and have butterflies sort of follow in a in a line and as the butterflies go over, then all the flowers start to bloom and life comes back to the environment. It's a very like. Just an amazing healing experience of rebirth and beauty and colour entering the environment. And then the other way in which you could feedback is if you are hitting the beat perfectly and you're actually sort of conducting with the baton to the time of the music, then the stream that is released out of the baton comes becomes more green. And if you're not, you know, if you're not hitting it and you're kind of going all over the place. It does become a little bit more red just to give you that visual feedback of yes, you're you're getting the notes or you're getting the beat and you don't have to get the beat. But if you are, it just means that you're connecting a little bit more with the music and you're, you know, fully immersed in that environment. In being able to unlock the full potential of it, really, but as I said, you can you can just play around too. And that's also beautiful.
Pete
That sounds amazing. So as well as the element of. Like. Benefiting from listening to classical music, is it also giving them a feeling of control over noises and triggers? Saying, is that what you've aimed for?
Amy
Yes, absolutely. So they've got full autonomy and their environment. So in a world where they often don't have full full autonomy in their real lives and a lot of stuff can happen to them and around them, they're they're absolutely given full autonomy in this environment. So they have control over. Where the the environment changes, where the flowers you know appear or bloom, they can bring colour into the world or they can keep it as is. They don't have to move the baton. Even the experience will still play. You'll still hear the music. You'll still be able to just sit and relax and and the the environment is so pretty. You just get to make it better if you do interact more with it.
Ben
So I guess with this one, what is the key thinking around PTSD? What was the design around that particular population?
Amy
I think the thinking has changed quite a lot over recent years and that was really where it started. It has had so many different applications the. The client who is developing this experience has spoken to lots and lots of different sectors and lots of different organisations and it has applications for the military, for hospitals, you know, for distraction therapy while you're having a procedure done or giving blood. You know you can escape into this amazing. Build. So they really have explored a lot of different avenues with this. But the original thinking was. As a therapy, not as a therapeutic method in itself, in and of itself, but they did want to position it as something that could be used in conjunction with other therapies, with other medication, and to really provide. An emotional and cognitive escape. So to lessen the noise of someone who is experiencing PTSD, place them in an environment you know that they can control where often. Individuals with PTSD may feel a little bit out of control, so that was really the premise on which it was built initially. But it's just had so many different applications over the years as they've come to realise, you know, how many people could actually benefit from something like this.
Pete
So you obviously choose a different type of game for different types of experience. We've got the vertical infinite game and now is this a VR game fully immersive? So what? What other types of game have you used? For what sort of health impacts?
Amy
So. So Sea Monster is a game studio. We sort of pride ourselves in being tech agnostic. We really we often have found. Not just in the health sector, but in many, many different sectors that. People are often led by the tech, so we'll often get a client to come to us and. Say I've got. X amount of budget and my boss says we need a VR experience and we'll be like, why do you, you know why VR does it have to be? Is it suitable? And we so often find that it's not and we don't like being LED, you know, by the tech we like being led by the need. And we're really problem solvers at heart. We just happened to do it through a game. So. So we we use a lot of different platforms and you know mechanisms for delivering solutions within all the industries in which we work. So we we've made web games, we've made like web-based games like a PWA that's delivered. On a website, we've made native apps, we've made VR experiences, we've made AR experiences. I'm just trying to think in terms of health. And whether we have an example of something that's not VR or web-based, we've also made Roblox games and. And yeah, we've seen a lot of really great applications. In fact, in the health space in Roblox more recently. But we have yet to make a health game in Roblox.
Ben
I think there's a really interesting statement to say, being led by the by the game or the problem, not the tech. I read a news article some only 50 million V VR headsets were sold in the last four years, and when you think of the size of the total population, that's not a huge number. VR sets out there and yet so often VR comes up as like this pioneering thing. But it's not accessible. It doesn't mean that people can access it easily, so actually looking at technology and platforms that people do have access to, I think is really important because you marginalise huge, huge communities, huge populations who who won't access those games as a result.
Amy
Yeah. And particularly in South Africa and Africa as a whole, I mean, we, we do work a lot with international clients. We work globally, we work with people all over the world, but often we'll get someone from a different country saying, hey, we've got funding and we'd really like to deploy some sort of solution. In Africa and we've got this idea you. And. We'll say it. Well, that's not really appropriate because of lack of access to technology, lack of access to data, lack of knowledge about technology, you know. Ohh actually I can give you an example of another game that we made. It was a web-based game. I'm just trying to think how based to describe this. So we created for another health client of ours, a pharmaceutical company. They wanted to create a solution. That would serve. Women who did not have access to private healthcare and were experiencing a particular symptom. And. They would have an an operation for this. Thing that developed for them and then after that operation they would they would still experience the symptom that they were having and often would think that the operation wasn't successful, but they were experiencing the symptom for a different reason post operatively than they were before. So we created a game to tell a story around why this is happening and it was. It was a pilot project and it was run in rural Kenya. And through the initial POC, it was really discovered that these women have never actually accessed a computer before and just navigating through the story with the next button or having to click on. Elements of their anatomy. It was. It was a lot and it actually required a healthcare worker to be with them. And during that process and we unfortunately weren't too heavily involved in the design phase upfront of that specific project. So we weren't able to do user testing. Beforehand. And they were adamant that, you know, it would work. And this is what we want to do. But yeah, really interesting designing for different populations within Africa and South Africa, even South Africa's got so many different, you know, urban areas, rural areas and a lot of different access to technology and knowledge. So we always need to take that into account and everything that we do.
Ben
Completely agree. Now this one isn't health related, but I'm really interested in the sustainability games such as Fish Force, Fisheries Enforcement game. This is more of a a training. Game. Can you talk? About what it looks like and. How it works?
Amy
Yes, sure. And so this one was commissioned by Nelson Mandela University, which is university here in South Africa in Port Elizabeth. And they run what's called the Fish Force Academy, which is just the best name. Ever. And and that is the Academy that trains our fisheries officers who police our oceans. It's actually it is a division of the police force and they're literally called fish force and it's amazing. And so we called the game fish force and and it's a hidden object, detective type mechanic. So they need to move around the vessel and they sort of navigate with little hotspots as they move there. Through through the vessel and they have to look for certain things that are out of place and. And basically it simulates what they would need to look for on a vessel coming in into the harbour, you know, having been on our oceans, did they overfish are the fish the right size? You know, all all of the things that they would need. To. Look for. They would look in this game and identify. What is out of place? And then that's then they obviously get a school and they get a result from that which is shared back to the university and to the the lecturers who are training these. Fishery offices. And so it was, it was deployed. More as an assessment tool or practical application of the theory that they had learned, but they did still have a theory, a theoretical component to the training, and this was also a result of COVID, where that part of the training had been handled face to face in person. But then they needed to have a way of, you know, having these practical applications without actually going to the vessel, showing them how to apply the knowledge that they had learned on the actual ship. They had to do move completely remote. So we, yeah, yeah, we had to create a digital solution for that.
Pete
That's really interesting. Quick question. Then. Now that COVID is finished, are they still using the game or have they gone back to doing things in person? I'm always fascinated. By.
Amy
So they actually they are and they are plans in the works for fish folks too. So yeah, so it it has been taken up by the local government in the area who obviously manages the the police force in that region and they're responsible for the train. The the university just sort of supplies the trading material for that division and but yes, they are interested in in expanding it and creating sort of the next level for the next module.
Pete
That's cool. This makes me think because what a wide range of games and impacts. What are you working on at the moment?
Amy
Oh. Quite a lot. Let me think what I can share with you so. We are currently we have just deployed a a new entrepreneurial sort of competition. It's a it is a game. But it's we we built a whole platform to house the game and it's information there and quite a lot of other things going on on this platform. And but it's for a local sort of financial services client in South Africa and they are running an entrepreneurial skills training programme, sort of housed in this competition. Amongst a number of schools in South Africa, so we. Supported that with with the platform and the game. And and the competition competition sort of metric and mechanic, you know on the platform. Another game that we're busy developing at the moment, which is also. Really close to my heart is I don't know if I'm allowed to mention it. I will mention it without naming the organisation, so we are working with non. Based in Europe. And they are heavily involved in stroke awareness, so they actually run a programme that educates young kids. Who are predominantly cared for by their grandparents and they their whole awareness is around what do I do if my grannies starts? You know, falling or her face starts drooping. How can I actually affect? You know an impact in that situation and they operate in a number of different countries globally and they have a paper based education sort of programme that is run within schools that is localised to different regions with the different emergency numbers and so on. Although the the base. Training stays the same of what to what? To look for, what to look out for and and they they have a a website that you can register on to access the sort of programme, but they don't have a game. So we are in the process of designing a game that's going to supplement the pro. Programme. It's going to start off with a more as a almost a brand extension, giving you more access to the characters, learning their back story, you know, understanding what's important to them. And of course you know embedding the the messaging around identifying. The the symptoms and then later there's a plan in phase two to bring in much more of an educational element to it and then it will be a stand alone experience, you know in and of itself, creating awareness and educating students without them having to also do the paper based programme.
Pete
One thing you mentioned earlier a couple of times, but the the background of the company is animation. How important is the quality of the design and the animation in telling the story, getting the narrative across as well as the gameplay, do you think?
Amy
I I would say very important to us specifically. Although most of our games that we create are narrative LED, they're narrative LED through a character, so we still employ a lot of animators and illustrators on our staff and and most of our games. We don't do a lot of text based games or, you know, delivered in different mediums. We have made text based games. We've made chat bots that are gamified, but there's usually a visual elements and and usually a character involved in our games. And. We've just main always maintained the quality that we had as an animation studio and have delivered games at that level, you know, not wanting to compromise on that part of it and have always just viewed it as as important as the story and as the user and. You know, engaging the user on multiple levels.
Pete
Yes.
Ben
I know the piece, and I've definitely had discussions about if you focus on the aesthetics, are you lowering the user in because of pretty things as opposed to really effective game mechanics? I don't think there's a right answer for it. I think it's a bit of both. If you think about a lot of the the big successful games out there, they're usually led by a key character or very, very pretty environments, so. Yeah, I think having ugly games to test game mechanics is important, but actually engaging people because something is beautiful, engaging, colourful, whatever it is, I think, yeah, it's as important. It's been really interesting having you on Amy because. Represent as an agency that develops multiple games as opposed to where we normally interview someone who is leading on one individual game. You've got a much broader outlook than a lot of our guests, so it would be great to know what you foresee is maybe both the challenges and opportunities for gamification and help.
Amy
I think that there's a lot of innovation in the health sector, specifically using games. So in the area of health interventions and training making. Better practitioners delivering healthcare to patients. And we must always push the boundaries. We must continue to do that. But where? Where there is. Perhaps a bit of a gap in in that world, and where we tend to play in our space and with our history of storytelling and narrative lead and and all of that and. Yeah, we basically where we see an opportunity is for making health education and making healthy habits more relevant for larger groups of people and more available, more accessible. Particularly coming from our Environment, South Africa and Africa, you know it's.
Pete
It's like.
Amy
There's just not a lot of accessibility to information. So that's something that's really important to us. Usually we find that there's a lack of funding in in this area. We want to sustain and scale games rather than being in the positioned way. If it's, you know, government funded or it's funded through a university. Often we find that the funding runs out and then the. Name is sort of seen as disposable. And we really want to see our games and games in the health industry live beyond just that funding. And so we're really trying to work with corporates to fund impact games about relevant issues and we've, we've found that there really is a symbiosis between brands. That are purpose driven. And want to put their names behind something important. Bringing education to the fore as a trusted source, you know, related to that topic, it also means that they can drive that impact a little bit more than perhaps a university or a nonprofit. Like being in the position, you know that they are and with the budgets that they have in terms of marketing that often you know. Other game, other sources of of where games came from maybe don't have and and it it positions them as a brand that cares and a brand that actually wants to do good in the world that. Can be held in good stead against their customers. So that's that's just. Yeah, that's something that's really important to us. That we're exploring more and more is how do we, how do we bring more healthcare games into the world in a sustainable way that can drive? Take can broaden reach at scale without running out of money and sort of, you know, losing steam in a year or two.
Ben
I think it seems so many times, wonderful concepts and ideas that get a great grant and then the grant funding finishes and it's the end of that concept or service. I guess within that the opportunity is health. Health games is are making impact. The challenge is is the funding for it, but the opportunity within that as you rightly put is those. Corporate organisations that are looking for purpose brand reach, but actually this is a vehicle for them to not only have that hit ESG targets but actually create change with something that's engaging too just to finish off. Amy would be great to know any examples or games or techniques that you've seen out that you're a big fan of?
Amy
I'm sure so more recently we've been exploring Roblox as a platform. So met the metaverse and you know those sorts of platforms are just are just becoming more and more. Important at the moment and relevant, and they're being used more and more and we are finding that a lot of our customers are wanting to speak to a younger audience, you know, wanting to share their brand's purpose or if if it's a non profit they're wanting to reach that audience. And. Create awareness amongst them. So we've been looking into Roblox a lot. And I just really impressed with with some of the games, not all of the games, there's definitely good games and not so good games. But yeah, if I just were to mention a few, I don't know if if you have seen the the game that Dove created, it was really around raising self esteem amongst young girls. And that other game that I really like is planet, period. That's also a Roblox Roblox experience that explores the concept of menstruation and kind of normalises it and allows both boys and girls to speak about it and understand it a little bit better. And and. Not to. You. Talk about our games all the time, but we we did a a game sort of a game campaign on Roblox recently in this space that was targeted around the effects or the negative effects of alcohol amongst young children. So what we did was. Rather than developing a game, it was a non profit in South Africa they didn't have a lot of money but they wanted to reach a broad audience. So rather than creating a game and having to market it and you know, get it, get it into the hands of people, we used an existing game, a very popular game on Roblox. Called Roville and we created a house inside of that experience where people needed to go and it was like a morning after a house party kind of thing. And and they had to engage with five different characters in that in that house and help them. Achieve something. They were sort of on a quest. Each character had a different quest and they were all all around different aspects of how alcohol can. Affect you so. It can affect your mind. It can affect your body. It can affect your social interaction and and each of these characters sort of explored a different story or. On that, but yes, Roblox, we yeah, we have been exploring Roblox and I'm very impressed by some of the the games that are coming to the fore. In the health space.
Pete
I think there's something really interesting there about not just building standalone games, but like utilising bigger platforms so that you can achieve more for your money, right? As long as your target audience is playing that game and Roblox has a lot of players. So I can see why that's going there. Is there something else games should be aiming to do more of because they are very standalone? Sometimes it's around the data privacy and stuff, but if it's just about impact and changing something, I wonder who we could get to speak to you about that.
Amy
Absolutely. Yeah. I I definitely think that there's application in that space, especially if it's if it's something that. You're wanting to get a topic across. Maybe there's an awareness day, you know and and a brand is wanting to. Get on board and. Do a short lived campaign, but really create awareness around a particular events, mental world, Mental Health Day for example. You know to to jump on the bandwagon of an existing game because you know that they've got the reach. I think it's the perfect opportunity to be able to. Embed an incredibly important health message that players may not have come across. They may not have gone and sought out a health game about, you know, anxiety or whatever. But if if it is embedded into their daily experience and they now have to do it, quest around. Anxiety. They get to learn a little bit about it, where where they wouldn't have before.
Ben
Completely agree. Completely agree, Amy, it's been fantastic having on health points today to talk about having intuition to leave you to knocking on the the game studio CEO for Sea Monster because you're so passionate about serious and impactful games. Taking on human centred and user centred approach to designing. Games where players become their hero in their own journey as a framework for translating gameplay into new knowledge and into new real-world behaviours. And the importance of the therapeutic experience of games connecting with the mind, body, environment and even music, with examples that you talk through like Glass maestro, supporting people with PTSD. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's been fantastic you having on the show.
Amy
It's been wonderful. Thank you so much for having me.
Pete
It was great, really interesting.