Research Project

How are we today guys and gals?

Today's topic is going to entail something quite close to me and is the focus of my research project for uni. We've been told to research pretty much anything we want, the only restriction that we have is that it MUST relate to games. Everything that goes into it is 100% ours and is to be completed over the course of the first 16 week semester. The topic that I chose to research is Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), I won't go into much detail but someone very close and dear to me went through a very rough time a few years ago because of anxiety and while they came out better on the other side and I learnt a lot about the illness, I still had a lot of questions surrounding it. When I was presented with this research project I took it as a great opportunity to answer those questions, to delve in even further and better understand the illness.

Now I had to come up with a question and somehow relate it to games. I began thinking of ways games could be used to treat the illness and after talking with my lecturers a few times, narrowed this down to not treating, but relieving the symptoms of GAD. I've become more and more passionate about this idea as the past three weeks have gone by and begun research around what GAD is, it's symptoms and how it's currently treated.

Research around GAD has evolved over the years and there is  a lot of information on the topic and I've decided to break my research down into several areas; the first will contain all of the relevant information pertaining to GAD (its symptoms, current methods of treatments, effectiveness of those methods and availability of treatments), the next will examine how symptoms of GAD can be individually relieved through using the senses, the third will discuss how games are being introduced into the treatment of a variety of anxiety disorders, how effective they are and their availability as well, and discuss the potential for further investment into treatment via games. The third will examine several, more mainstream games and whether or not they intentionally confront GAD and how this may effect those who suffer from it. Fourth I will discuss how games can indeed and should be used to assist in relieving symptoms of GAD based around earlier research, and fifth I will produce a game that attempts to relieve the symptoms of GAD based on what my research uncovers.

As you can probably tell there is going to be a lot of work going into this project over the next 12 or so weeks, but the more I research the more I refine the project and the more I refine it, the more I get excited about it.

I can't wait to see what I come up with and I hope you do too.

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