Serious Games Helping Children To Cope With Stress

Via: Numedeon, Inc – Whyville Launches Innovative Avatar Based Education Program To Help Children Cope With Stress

Working in collaboration with the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, Numedeon (please find also Whyville: Serious Games Inspiring Children’s Fashion) last week launched an innovative new avatar -based effort to provide children mechanisms for coping with emotional concerns in their own lives.

Designed to introduce coping skills and techniques to children, a simulated avatar wanders into Whyville chat rooms and profess to be upset.  Whyvillians in the chat rooms select question envelopes and then work together to figure out what is wrong, subsequently picking advice envelopes to offer to the avatar in distress.  When sufficient appropriate advice has been offered, the avatar is no longer distressed and Whyvillians are rewarded with a "clam storm", in which Whyville’s virtual currency rains from the sky.  

In the few days since launch, more than 10,000 children have opened more than 100,000 question envelopes in an effort to better understand the emotional malady of the wandering avatar.  Numedeon intends to expand this project to additional forms of emotional challenges for children.