Welcome to Game World Therapy
After fifteen years in the video game industry, I knew better than most how harmful games could be. I saw firsthand how the hustle culture of development burns people out, how the long hours, unstable contracts, and constant pressure to produce more and more erode creativity and mental health. I also experienced the darker side of gaming communities: the gatekeeping, the harassment, the toxicity that can make something once joyful feel unsafe. Both sides of that world left me exhausted. They took something I loved and made it painful.
When I was laid off, I didn’t know who I was without that grind. But in the months that followed, I rediscovered games in a new way. Without deadlines or discourse, I could actually play. And I realized something I’d forgotten: games can also heal.
It was during that time that I decided to go back to school to become a counselor. The layoff forced me to pause long enough to ask what I actually wanted from my life and what I wanted to give back. I wanted to help people in the same way I was helped during the worst of my burnout. Returning to grad school felt like stepping into a new kind of game: one where the quest wasn’t to win, but to understand and grow.
As an autistic grad student in mental health counseling, I’ve learned that I don’t always absorb information the traditional way. But when I engage with concepts like grounding, distress tolerance, or values alignment through a game world – through exploration, repetition, and embodied practice – they finally stick.
That’s where Game World Therapy came in: from the intersection of those two worlds. It’s my way of turning what once hurt me into something that helps. A place where players, therapists, and anyone who’s ever found peace in a digital landscape can explore how games can support healing, reflection, and growth.
This project isn’t about gamifying therapy. It’s about recognizing that the worlds we play in can be sanctuaries — and that learning, like healing, doesn’t always have to happen in a classroom or a clinic. Sometimes it happens in the quiet between quests, watching the sun rise over a pixelated horizon, remembering how to breathe again.
