Gamification: Promote healthy use of technology in the psychotherapy setting´s with Missão 2050 Game

Gamification creates engaging and appealing learning environments, appearing to promote motivation and incentive, considering elements that play a significant role in gameplay, such as the existence of reward systems, difficulty levels, score tables, time, resource limits and clear goals. So, we use gamification in psychotherapy, because it’s an effective way to keep younger patients motivate to learn for new means about themselves, with the aim of encouraging collaboration to promote the wellbeing discussion. In this sense, considering the relevance and growing worldwide regarding the dependence on technologies, internet and video games, this study aims to present the benefits of gamification resources, through a game called Missão 2050, developed and validate by the team of the Geração Cordão Project, which arises to respond to the lack of psychopedagogical materials in this area.

The participants are young people between 12-30 years old, who formalized a request for help in consulting online behaviors and addictions of the Geração Cordão Project. Through a document analysis of the type of resources used in the consultation of online behaviors and addictions of the Geração Cordão Project, one of the most used resources was: Missão 2050 game.

We present a qualitative analysis and the adequacy to the psychotherapeutic context, by using Missão 2050 in consultation with young males, aged between 12-30 years, with characteristics of gaming addiction. Comparing the child or the teenager to a hero, states that commitment and motivation are essential factors of gamification. For the psychologist, it’s necessary to move away from a content-based approach to the patient and find what motivates him/her in the search for knowledge. After all, the most effective use of gamification in psychotherapy is to create a context and an overarching narrative and selecting the elements of the most suitable games, to create an immersive experience.