DeepWell Digital Therapeutics, a video game developer aiming to combine games and health treatments, was unveiled today.
Seattle, Washington-based DeepWell aims to create best-in-class gameplay that can simultaneously entertain and deliver, enhance and accelerate treatment for an array of globally pervasive health conditions, according to a news release.
Devolver Digital Co-Founder Mike Wilson and Nextern Founder and former CEO Ryan Douglas came together to create DeepWell, adding a team of game industry and medical experts to collaborate and lead the development of the company’s own games.
The aim for DeepWell is to work with independent creators worldwide to publish titles across every platform and genre and open the company’s research-driven technologies to assist developers in designing and repurposing games to bring out therapeutic value.
“Our medium is often harshly judged for its perceived negative impacts on the mind and body,” Wilson said in the release. “But, the scientists who study video games, as well as the developers that build them at the highest levels, already know that the opposite is true. DeepWell is bringing entertainment and medical science together to build upon the proven fact that video games can be good for you, and, thanks to global digital distribution, they’re an important tool to make treatment affordable and accessible.”
The company said more than 40 industry-leading creators, game designers, scientists and medical researchers have joined DeepWell in response to the need to expand the availability of digital therapeutics for psychiatric conditions.
DeepWell expects its first range of games to debut in 2023.
“In order to produce games that provide tangible results, we’ve made engaging gameplay DeepWell’s first principle, since without engagement there is no treatment potential for any therapy,” Douglas said. “With our team of world-class developers at the helm, backed up by cutting-edge science and medical professionals, we’re building and repurposing games that look like, feel like, and play like pure entertainment, but that come imbued with potent digital therapeutics that align with our hardwired, neurological reward mechanisms.
“This is a groundbreaking moment that will bring video games and medicine together in a way that neither field has ever truly contemplated before, prioritizing a level of patient engagement that has eluded most of modern medicine.”