Metaverse Health

Posts Tagged ‘machinima’

(This story originally appeared over at The Metaverse Journal)

The Virtual World’s Story Project (TVWSP) is a partnership between Jena Ball (SL: Jenaia Morane) and Marty Keltz (SL: Marty Snowpaw). We’ve previously covered one of their other story quests and they’ve certainly been prolific in the health and education field.

Their latest project is focused on HIV/AIDS and is titled The Life and Times of Uncle D, which you can get a taste of in this four-minute summation:

This week sees the in-world launch of The Life and Times of Uncle D. It’s occurring on the 1st October at Noon SL time, which is 5am on Friday the 2nd October AEST – you can find out more info here on the TVSWP site.

It’s another example of the power of machinima, and the virtual environments they’re created in, to assist in providing meaning to real world issues.

(For those interested in the use of virtual worlds in sexual health education or in health more broadly, don’t forget to keep an eye on sister-site Metaverse Health.)

As mentioned last month, I had the pleasure of attending a conference on e-health as well as an evening discussion on the formation of a Games for Health special interest group as part of HISA.

Aside from the very exciting outcomes from both those events, which I’ll discuss further in the future, it forced me to try my somewhat amateur hand at creating a machinima showcasing some of the many impressive health presences in Second Life. It’s now available online for viewing:

Being so short it doesn’t do any of the presences featured the justice they deserve, let alone all the ones missed. I’m hoping to make a more substantive piece in the future, so if you have suggestions of other areas to feature, please don’t hesitate to put them in the comments.

Although not directly health-related, I was struck by the power of the machinima below ( thanks to Mal Burns for the heads-up). It’s produced by Lainy Voom and you can read more about it here.

Have a look for yourself then read on below for some further thoughts:

Fall (Mini Project 3) from Lainy Voom on Vimeo.

There’s no doubting to power of music in therapy and imagery certainly plays its role as well. It’s not hard to foresee a growing interest in the creation of machinima as a therapeutic device. The ability to create content relatively cheaply opens up a range of new possibilities. Imagine family therapists, gestalt counsellors and those with a cognitive behavioural approach (to name three I’m very familiar with professionally) utilising virtual worlds as platforms for intervention and exploration with clients. Here’s one very basic example: systematic desensitisation.

Let’s say I’m terrified of spiders. I contact a psychologist who utilises a virtual world like Second Life. She does an initial session with me viewing virtual spiders from a distance. Then my avatar interacts with the spiders directly. The next step may be something like viewing real-life spiders on a virtual screen and so the process continues. It’s then filmed for playback by the as therapeutically indicated.

The applications for broader mental health, relationships counselling, addictions counselling, domestic violence and sexuality issues are a long way from being fully explored. What’s apparent however, is that there’s a significant opportunity that needs to be empirically investigated.

As always, I’d be interested in hearing from anyone doing research or currently working in the area – do you think this is likely to be a viable approach in the near-future?