Soteria

Soteria – Dreams as Currency (SDC) is a metaphorical, single-player, 3D adventure game intended to promote players’ readiness to use psycho-therapeutically proven yet counter-intuitive strategies to overcome general anxiety disorder. It is based on the research of Anxiety Treatment Center founder Prof. Reid Wilson and serves to communicate principles of anxiety treatment in a way that enables embodied learning and experiential understanding. The design leverages a “recursive learning” approach (Mitgutsch & Weise 2011) that subverts player expectations and promotes the insight that to overcome fear, one must “move towards it”. This paper is an in-depth analysis of how we harnessed rules, mechanics, narrative, metaphor and voice over to model anxiety behavior, dismantle it as unproductive and then introduce new, productive strategies to respond to fear in order to claim one’s dreams and live a full life. The game can be accessed here: http://playforchange.cdm.depaul.edu/projects/soteria/
 

Teaching Strategies to Overcome Anxiety
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/sites/default/files/articles/Proceedings%20Articles/GLS12/60.%20Soteria.pdf
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https://doi.org/10.1184/R1/6686780.v1
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