DeepWell exploring media as medicine
Scott C. Jones
Wednesday 6th April 2022
Mike Wilson, one of the founders of Devolver Digital, quietly stepped away from his post last year. His intent was to retire.
Then Wilson met a man named Ryan Douglas. Douglas was not a games guy. Instead, Douglas had built a career out of developing therapeutic medical devices that help people heal, stay calm, and endure.
Like Wilson, Douglas was looking to retire.
"That's how we started talking originally," Wilson recalls. "I was new to the Pacific Northwest at the time, and I was concerned about my light sensitivity."
(Side note: The PNW is known for its legendary gloom. People use sun lamps here, to compensate for the gray skies.)
Wilson and Douglas began talking about light therapies, and how they might be able to replicate those therapeutic benefits in virtual reality.
"Surely there must be something we can do in VR that has the same benefits as light panels -- you know, the happy lights," Wilson recalls.
Douglas, Wilson learned, had manufactured therapeutic sun lamps for a long time. "I had one [of his company's lamps] in my home."
Wilson and Douglas had each planned to retire
Before they knew it, instead of retiring, the pair had come up with a hybridized idea: to start a publisher/developer company that focuses on approaching games as actual therapies. That company, DeepWell Digital Therapeutics, was officially announced last month.
DeepWell's focus is to study what exactly makes games healthy. For example, why does playing Tetris soothe some PTSD sufferers? DeepWell looks to come up with answers. Then it will use this information to develop and publish its own line of games. And it will share (via consultation) said information with the rest of the medium's publishers/developers.
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