"Guilty of Talking Too Much": How Psychotherapists Gamify Therapy

Traditionally, game designers have driven the development process of psychotherapeutic games with psychotherapists playing a consultant role. In contrast, our study explores psychotherapists independently designing digitally gamified psychotherapy. Our workshop participants consisted of six psychotherapists who created gamified digital therapies with the design prompt of anxiety disorder. We analyze the resulting six prototypes from a game design and psychotherapy perspective. We present insights into strategies for digitally gamifying therapy and identify challenges and opportunities for the future of gamified psychotherapy, grounded in the experiences of psychotherapists designing such therapies. This study also reflects on the use of user-friendly development tools for independently curating gamified digital therapies, especially by non-technical users such as psychotherapists.