IAWP Games & Apps Project

[Luc]

We have decided to initiate a new project to design games (video, arcade) and apps to help people in w/d. We would like to make a whole range of products to help heal, educate, and entertain people in w/d. We might create different products for the different stages of w/d -- newbie, mid-term, long-timer. We definitely plan to make the games / apps available in different languages in order to fulfill our international mission.

Games and apps are huge in the zeitgeist right now. They are strongly appealing to a great number of people worldwide. We know that the antidepressant w/d pandemic is coming. This project would be a way to reach a lot of people -- more than discussion forums probably will.

Some of the games / apps might be about the hardships of w/d (with a sense of humor added). Some might be about how to identify and pursue one's passions. We could have a game educating about healthy things to do in w/d. We could even make a game about bonking Big Pharma. People in w/d need to fill a lot of time, need help with the anxiety, and need constructive ideas and support that they cannot generate on their own. We think the games could be both fun and educational.

One of the first ideas we are considering is a smartphone app to track w/d symptoms (we got this idea from Iggy) and interventions, and look for patterns. This would allow people to cross-reference whether any change in supplements, diet, exercise, treatment had any positive / adverse impact on symptoms. It would also allow people to track their overall progress with, say, monthly graphs. Such an app might lead people to discover new patterns to w/d that we haven't identified yet. Eventually, we could get people who wanted to participate to share their records and look for bigger patterns....

Another idea is to create an app to help with calculating tapering. We have other ideas in the pipeline, too.

So, we would prefer to keep this in the family and involve IAWPers and their friends / family in coming up with ideas for games, the specifics of a game, programming, marketing, etc. Please ask questions or offer suggestions here or by pm. Anybody who wants to participate will be very welcome!

"There's an app for that!" :)

[grandmaD]

Sounds like a wonderful idea. The best therapy is during w/d I have found is diversion/distraction and something that include humour would be good. I geta buzz from the little icons you guys post that make me smile and laugh.

[Sheila]

Thanks, gD! We are actively researching things. If you ever get any brainstorm about what you'd like to see in a game or app for w/d, just post it here or pm!

[amani]

I think they are all great ideas but I especially like the app that tracks W/D symptoms and shows monthly progress.. we all try to keep track of our symptoms/progress in our own way but it is hard to do when we are struggling with our symptoms and our brain can't really function... great ideas, guys :)

[Iggy131313]

lol, just saw this, I remember submitting that idea! lol

how about a monthly quiz just something fun that IAWP members can do and submit and then a winner is annonced each month?

we could take it in turns to make the quiz, just general knowledge

[Sheila]

That’s a brilliant idea, Igg. Would you be interested in getting us started? You could start a thread in “Start-ups” called “IAWP Quiz of the Month.” Then, your quiz would be “Quiz 1.”

[Iggy131313]

YOUR ON!! I will do

also I was thinking of some kind of cognative game that you play once per week month and tracks how you do, something like a memory part, like pairs where you have to remember where the other one was also perhaps a list of say 10 objects comes up and you have to read and memorise them and then write down as many as you can remember after 30 seconds or something, again we could have a progress tracker that shows your scores weekly/monthly..Im just throwing ideas out there!

[Sheila]

That has some possibilities. The thing about general memory and cognitive skill games is that this sector of the market is already highly developed. There is a ton of these games and educational software already out there. It’s very “in” right now. My thinking is that what we have to offer is our deep understanding of a unique neurological syndrome – which a bazillion people are going to be suffering from in the next twenty years. And no one else knows as much about the inside of this syndrome as we.

[Iggy131313]

too true, I was thinking about what you said about the oncoming pandemic and you are SO right, bird flu? HA! I laugh in the face of bird flu, ramp up the pandemic warnings all countries of the world, you have no idea whats coming...

but hopefully by then we will have so much more insight into the condition and be able to help those people in the future, so much more in known now even than 5 or 6 years ago, when I read the posts on PP from when this started for you sheila, very ittle was known or understood, I think we are starting to understand much more now.

xxxxxx