We plan on creating a Virtual Reality experience which portrays a mental disorder (most likely Schizophrenia or Type 1 Bipolar Disorder). We plan on doing this by giving the users defined goals, but ambiguous rules, such as doing everyday tasks. Our goal is that users will empathize with those that have mental disorders and help destigmatize discussion around mental health and medication. This is meaningful, as it is incredibly important to help normalize mental health. Our goal crosses over into our name, Team Empathy. We also plan on making our project seem realistic, rather than portray it in an exaggerated light, like many horror movies do. Past works similar to our project, such as VRSanity, focus on entirely fictional and horror-based storylines. These types of games and experiences only work to stigmatize mental disorders further.
Video 1. The YouTube video shows a past work, VRSanity. Trigger warning: may be graphic and not suitable for all viewers. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AToCCTEqXcA)
Video 2. This YouTube video shows a similar environment and level of interactivity to what we want to create for our experience. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJAC_CUoL3s)
Our audience is anyone who is interested in learning more about mental illness and empathizing with it, but anyone can use it. The user would experience a “day in the life” of someone with a mental illness, so that they could empathize with obstacles that some people face. Our project falls into both assigned themes. It is live because it allows users to experience mental illness like it would be in real life. The project is also ambiguous because the users are given a goal, but are not told how to execute it, nor told of any consequences of their actions. It is very much a “choose your own path” sort of game, which allows the user to have a unique experience playing.
Image 1. Comic displays that some people have a hard time empathizing with others. The man on the left has simple obstacles, which can be compared to a mentally healthy person in our scenario. The woman on the right has incredibly difficult obstacles, which can be compared to someone with a mental illness in our scenario. The length of the race can be a metaphor for life.
Our project may be challenging for many reasons. One reason is the amount of realism we plan on putting into the project. This will be challenging because most of the people in our group don’t have a similar mental disorder to what we are trying to portray. Even with one of our members personally being bipolar, their experience is only one experience. People can have different symptoms than what they have had. We also plan on using the DISIS lab for a 3D audio experience, and this would make it difficult to present our final project with other groups. We would also have to find a way to connect our project to a script in Purr Data or Max in order to use the DISIS lab. Another reason our project may be challenging is that most of our group has little to no experience using VR.