Blowing Blues (2013)

Role	Designer \| Developer
Tasks	HCI & Game Design \| Software Development
Client	USC Interactive Media & Games MFA Thesis

Blowing Blues is an award-winning game for health exploring deep relaxation breathing, stress coping, and emotion management. One plays by doing relaxation breathing to exhale away both mental and physiological stress in parallel with the in-game world representations of those negative states of mind.

Blowing Blues was developed from 2012-2013 for my MFA Thesis at the USC Interactive Media & Games Division. The project was advised by the USC Creative Media & Behavioral Health Center and the USC Institute for Creative Technologies MxR Lab. Its contributes to the areas of games for health, digital therapeutics (DTx), and research on mind-body connection.

Inspired by SOCAL street art and graffiti artists and their visceral emotional expressiveness, the prototype (called MindFlux) was about exploring the emotional aspect of breathing and a novel game mechanic using the computer microphone as a breath-sensing game controller. This initial prototype also explored human-computer interaction (HCI) issues such as the latency between breathing and visual output, signal noise, user fatigue, and encoding and responding to different rates and intensities of breathing.

The player practices deep relaxation breathing for stress relief, interactively and visually reinforced by seeing exhalations eliminate in-game world representations of one's stress and negative emotions and by encountering motivational reminders and suggestions. On-screen prompts help pace the breathing and avoid player fatigue. Additionally, as the intensity of exhalation controls how quickly the stress representations get eliminated, I increased the sensitivity of the microphone controller response to allow gentle exhalations to work as well. Breathing involves both inhalation and exhalation. However, to focus on the essential experience, I implemented only non-contact exhalation detection.

Blowing Blues supports stereoscopic rendering using a VR head-mounted display developed by USC's MxR Lab and is developed in Cinder (C++, OpenGL, and GLSL). Bespoke music was composed by USC Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television Program alumni Jackson Greenberg and Max Loh.

In 2013, the project won the top software demo award at ESCoNS (Entertainment Software and Cognitive Neurotherapeutics Society). Blowing Blues has been exhibited at MeaningfulPlay 2012, Games for Health 2013, the Mobile Health in Rehabilitation conference, and more.

Links:

In-game scene where a cloud of emotionally charged words surround and then enter into the mind space (the sphere in the center) creating negative emotion objects.

A screenshot showing gently falling letters. This allows players to personalize the experience by writing their negative thoughts which will appear in the mind space as negative emotion objects to be exhaled away.

Negative emotion objects for the player to eliminate through breathing practice. The red triangles represent negative influences attacking the mind and are guided using a Boids based flocking algorithm with emergent behavior using simple simulation rules.

The player's mission is to exhale away the "anxiety" object by using the microphone as game controller. In stereoscopic mode for VR, this scene conveys a sense of depth and immersion within the mind space. For instance, the center "anxiety" object will appear to fly and fade away in depth as the player breathes out.

The audio waveform lines extending into space give a sense of immediate feedback as they react and visualize the fluctuations in the player's exhalation as are the "smoke rings" emanating from the players perspective.

In-game screenshot of the "win" state when the players has completed a relaxation breathing session.