Paper short abstract:

Through interactions in a 3D virtual boarding school, audiences engage with the topic of boarding school syndrome. Themes of power, play, representation and the body will be discussed with a narrative piece in Unreal. Animation and interaction are used to guide the player to encounter transitional objects to release personal testimony from recorded group psychotherapy sessions.

Paper long abstract:

My approach to creating a walking sim is informed by Thomas Malaby’s suggestion of a, “framework for understanding games that sees games as grounded in human practice and as fundamentally processual.” (p96, 2007). My research is a contribution to this intellectual enquiry, as well as offering contributions to theory through practice. Malaby’s question, “What would a processual approach to games look like?” (p105, 2007) serves as the provocation for this paper. Malaby contends that games are, "socially created artifacts with certain common features and allow for the way they inhabit, reflect, and constitute the processes of everyday experience." I examine this in the context of psychotherapy, attachment patterns, hypervigilance and mental health.