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I wrote a meditative slow game called Calmer (was iOS, sold terribly, no longer available). I was contacted by a US psychiatrist who said he prescribed it for anxiety patients.

It never occurred to me to try to raise tens of millions of dollars for medical trials and then charge a huge amount to insurers!

It does strike me as dubious that the investors are backing this game. When surely any positive result would hold for any number of similar games. A branding play, presumably 'we're the game that did the trials'. But it does seem like that relies on ignorance of what games are available. It remains to be seen if and when they actually show the gameplay!

@sago There's a fair amount of this going on rightnow, that is, using mobile games to address anxiety. Partly because your phone is always there and having treatment options outside the hospital have historically been limited. Psychiatry is very different compared to other fields of medicine in that things tend to be difficult to measure objectively.
I'll respond to your email.
That's exactly my thought after hearing this story. Other than the fact that this game has been put through some trials and is backed by drug companies, how is it any different from any other dexterity-intensive videogame out there?
What were the game mechanics? I've never heard of these slow games before.
I'm not sure if it is a genre, or just something I tried.

Each 'level' is a figure consisting of nodes and connecting arcs. You start by placing your finger at any node, and you move your finger until all arcs have been traced. Lift your finger, and you lose immediately. Touch the screen with another finger or part of your hand: you also lose immediately. Move too far from the arc and your accuracy bar depletes, move too quickly and it also depletes. If the bar is gone, you lose. Finish all arcs and you have succeeded.

The challenge is partly in working out which node to start on, and which route to take, to be able to trace all arcs only once. But that isn't a very hard challenge. The main point is to slow down and move consistently and carefully. It should be meditative if done correctly.

It's a digital form of something I've done, personally, for a long time: trace my finger in particular patterns slowly and meditatively. I have a weakness for symbolic, vaguely mystical claptrap, so for me I've given the patterns meanings. It's pointless, really, and maybe pretentious, but it is calming, and not as easy as it sounds to draw a perfect infinity (say) at a constant slow speed without jerking movement. Concentrating on the figure and the symbolism is a form of meditation, I find. So that was the idea. Besides a small number of keen players, it didn't seem to appeal to many. Perhaps it was the slightly pretentious tone: I veered a bit too mystical in the design I think.

That sounds very appealing. I'm sorry it didn't do very well; I'd buy it now if it were still available.
Why did you take it down?
My guess would be it needed changes to keep it working with one of the iOS updates and since it wasn't making money sago didn't see that it'd get a return to keep it up to date.
I had a bunch of games that I made in collaboration with a friend. When that collab finished, the itunes account expired. I just never got round to going through that again to put it back up. It never made enough money for me to really care.

Though I have thought about polishing the game and reissuing it, with ipad support and less mystical mumbo-jumbo.

When a video game is backed by clinical trials, you could charge a ton of money for it. Like $100s per month that insurance plans will negotiate down to fewer $100s, but still 100s, per month. At least for a few years.

The difference is that games, unlike drugs, are not mechanistically patentable (correct me if wrong please). Someone could create a close-enough lookalike, and sell it for $1. And if it really works, which I sort of don't believe, then it would improve access to real therapy. A lookalike would not have some of their proprietary evaluation system based on ever-questionable psychology metrics, but I bet a few hours with the game would show the gist of it: "You're paying attention! High score!" "You're old and also can't rearrange the blocks like you used to," -->poor executive function and memory, maybe dementia, etc

And yet given the ubiquity of the standard cognitive battery tests like MMSE and Minicog, I do question whether any therapist would ever recommend a substitute. The difference is these tests are often printed out on paper and royalties are not paid to the owners, whereas a tighly controlled Saas model would really cut down on illegal distribution and encourage alternatives.

Any thought on how a developer can adequately monetize a game so as to pay their own bills without charging ridiculous sums to begin with? I mean, say you know how to do something like this, you want to promote health, you loathe the way our current medical system bleeds patients for money. How do you find the sweet spot?
You could build a similar game, make no specific claims (or get a small focus-group to test it out), get a psychologist or two interested with a free trial, then transition to a respectable price later if it is adopted by the clinical community without FDA aproval. Or a modification of that ptocess, still without FDA approval. I don't think psychotherapy in general is FDA approved, as far as I can see, so I'm not even sure what the point of FDA approval is other than proving a principle of therapeutic effect to charge a high price and get access to the psychiatry market in addition to the psychology market.
Oh, I was thinking of a different condition. My question is more general than your answer seems to infer.

But thank you.

I've tried to find more information on what this game actually does, and how it treats ADHD / autism. I looked at a few articles and the Akili website, but details are pretty spare.

Does anyone have some additional information of how this video game plans to treat autism / ADHD?

If they want to fight ADHD, I have a feeling meditation would be a better treatment. (Too bad you can't make money off it.) And this is coming from a HUGE fan of games (17 days till Fallout 4, OMG).

http://www.feelguide.com/2014/11/19/harvard-unveils-mri-stud...

2010: not enough evidence, and any available evidence was low quality. http://www.cochrane.org/CD006507/BEHAV_meditation-therapies-...

It seems like it could be useful, so it's a shame either Cochrane haven't repeated their analysis or that other researchers aren't doing good quality research on meditation.

And you can make money off it. You give it a brand and sell DVDs. That brand then gets assessed, and promoted. Other people who come along and rip off the brand are not being recommended.

Current English advice for ADHD is here: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg72

I would love it if this turns out to be effective, but we've already seen something similar with Cogmed - bought by Pearson, can cost thousands of dollars, overhyped claims and highly dubious benefits

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogmed

"Cogmed working memory training is sold as a tool for improving cognitive abilities, such as attention and reasoning. At present, this program is marketed to schools as a means of improving underperforming students’ scholastic performance, and is also available at clinical practices as a treatment for ADHD. We review research conducted with Cogmed software and highlight several concerns regarding methodology and replicability of findings. We conclude that the claims made by Cogmed are largely unsubstantiated, and recommend that future research place greater emphasis on developing theoretically motivated accounts of working memory training."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211368112...

Is someone trying to market mobile gaming as a therapeutic?

It looks like it does the same thing than other click-fest-attention-grabbing games on mobile OS. The claim that as you progress you need to "multitask" more, seems familiar. They maybe adding their on twist on it. So, Minion Rush with a metric based difficulty generator?

from the sound of it it is based off this[1] research about brain multitasking (where tasks require both hand eye coordination and higher reasoning functions)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlrOSbRzakE

One of my favorite Mac (anti-)games was a zen-like, music space platformer called Tranquility[1]. The relaxing "floating" gameplay was interesting enough, but the generated ambient music was the best part. I'd leave that running on the background like some rain loops I use nowadays. It was an online game, despite being single-player, and I paid $10 out of my allowance for a lifetime membership. I was pretty sad when it abruptly shut down some years afterward.

I've always hoped someone would remake it for mobile or VR. The music/synth engine alone would make a pretty neat app.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranquility_(video_game)

Reminds me a little of some mobile games that are supposed to improve your vision by training your brain to be better at interpreting fuzzy input.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/can-an-app-help-you-ditch-your-r...

If a game is "prescribed" is it illegal to use without a perception?
You can be prescribed to take over-the-counter drugs, like "take two ibuprofen with each meal for 4 days; if symptoms persist, schedule another appointment". "Prescribed" doesn't necessarily mean "prescription-ONLY".
You can also be prescribed books.