Imagine this: You tell your doctor that you're struggling with stress, and she sends you home with instructions to play videogames every week. Even better, your health insurance is going to cover a subscription to the game service, and maybe even a VR headset to play them on. That's the vision of Seattle-based company Deepwell DTx, and it's making real progress: the company's biofeedback software development kit for games just received FDA clearance for "over-the-counter treatments for the reduction of stress and as an adjunctive treatment for high blood pressure."
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Zengence isn't exactly Call of Duty, though: Its enemies are "wraiths" and you're shooting them with wizard beams, not hot lead. It uses the Meta Quest's microphone—this is the biofeedback component—to detect when the player is humming or chanting. When it picks up those meditative tones, which indicate that the player is exhaling, it sends an orb into the environment which reveals wraiths to zap with your mental health wand.
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Deepwell's next big regulatory ambition is to be granted Medicaid and Medicare codes that "provide monetary incentives for companies to develop, doctors to recommend, and patients to use" games that feature DeepWell's tech. While I digested the somewhat startling idea that doctors may soon receive financial incentives to recommend videogames to their patients, Douglas surprised me with left-field perspective: that this isn't just about changing healthcare, but about changing the videogame industry.