DeepWell Digital Therapeutics (DTx) just revealed its launch as a “first-of-its-kind” video game publisher and developer that wants to create best-in-class gameplay that is both entertaining and helps to enhance and accelerate treatment for globally pervasive health conditions.
DeepWell is the creation of Devolver Digital co-founders Mike Wilson and the founder and former CEO of Nextern, Ryan Douglas. Wilson and Douglas have put together a team of game industry experts and medical luminaries to collaborate and lead development of DeepWell’s own games.
They will work with independent creators around the world to publish new titles across all platforms and genres, and open the company’s research-driven technologies to assist developers in designing and repurposing games to magnify their innate therapeutic value. DeepWell has already begun developing DTx-enabled games to support the company’s proprietary technical processes and systems.
“Our medium is often harshly judged for its perceived negative impacts on the mind and body,” said DeepWell Co-Founder Mike Wilson, who has produced more than 100 games across two decades.
“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. Moreover, with games that are legitimately fun, patients and players will seek out their positive benefits again and again. Soon, some of the best video games in the world will be recognized for what they are – powerful medicine – and game designers will be shaping a new discipline with the potential to reach the biggest audience on the planet.”
DeepWell has enlisted the help of more than 40 industry-leading creators, game designers, scientists, and medical researchers in response to the urgent public health concerns surrounding psychiatric conditions – which have been exacerbated incalculably by the COVID-19 pandemic – and the need to expand the availability of digital health therapeutic devices to combat them.
“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,” said DeepWell Co- Founder Ryan Douglas, who has overseen the design and launch of more than 20 FDA-cleared medical devices.
“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.”
Expect to see the first release of games in 2023! You can check out DeepWell as well as learn how to partner with them if you’re a developer.
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