Hi y'all,
Is anyone here interested in mindfulness and/or meditation? I make games about those sorts of things, and I'd love to meet others who are interested in them :-)
How'd you get into mindfulness? Is it helpful for you?
Or alternatively, are you curious but haven't known where to start or think it's a little to "woo-woo"?
I personally started meditating to help with my chronic headaches, and am super pleased to have done so. What do y'all think?
hi,
I'm also interested :) (I practise meditation & taichi) Videogames and meditation may seem 2 worlds apart, but as an expression medium videogame can deal with any subject, so why not meditation? I'm curious about your games :)
I've thought a bit about how could videogames convey interest in self-cultivation. Most games rely on heavy use of external senses (sight, sound, touch,..), pattern matching, learning automatic reactions to stimuli, etc.. and it's exactly what meditation try to get rid of! Finding inner calm, be open to stimuli but not follow them, finding the deeper parts of yourself, may seem difficult to use in a videogame :) But fortunately, videogame ecosystem is so rich that many genres exists, and new genres are yet to be found!
ps: some years ago, Ubisoft released a game along these lines: http://experience-ozen.com/ (you have to genuinely be aware of your breathing, etc) Did'nt try it because it uses a special device, but looks interesting.
Thanks for the reply, @gludion :-) Those are really interesting points! I really like the idea of a game centering on the concept of being open to stimuli but not following them. It has my wheels turning with ideas.
Most of the concepts in my head right now are playful reminders of mindfulness concepts (not following thoughts, returning to your center, focusing on gratitude, etc.)
For me, it's so easy to pick up my phone and start mindlessly using it - scrolling through twitter or playing a puzzle game or whatever. I want to mobile create games that tap the player back into their intention (because it's so easy to forget when going about a busy, online day).
also some years ago the concept of "flow" was popularized in some videogames by ThatGameCompany (Flow, Flower, Journey..)
Originally based on https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/00613392... which describe a particular state that could have something in common with mindfulness..
There's a bunch of interesting mindfulness games out there, which I've found to be pretty hit-or-miss. "Pause" came out to a lot of marketing hype although it didn't do much for me. I found David O'Reilly's "Mountain" to be surprisingly great for a while, just because it gave me something to focus on, although that stopped being effective for me.
Usually if I need some mindfulness stuff I'll just do a body scan, often with the assistance of a mindfulness-specific app. The "Breathe" app built into the Apple Watch is pretty good for that, for example.
Thanks, y'all. These are super helpful, and just reminded me of this game by Deepak Chopra . Checking out Pause now :-)
I think there's space for games that are short, funny, and gentle reminders to check in with or help practice your mindfulness.
Any reasons why Pause didn't do it for you, @fluffy?
My big problem with Pause is that it requires you to be too active with very fiddly motions, and it gives you some fairly close bounds on how quickly you have to do things without doing a good job of indicating whether you need to speed up or slow down or whatever. Also, the motions themselves were really hard on my DeQuervain syndrome.
