Cambridge PhD student backed by Ninja Theory explores potential of VR to aid wellbeing

Lucie Daniel-Watanabe is the lucky PhD student to be the first to take on a new clinical study area focusing on computer game development.

‘Using video games to manage physiological and emotional responses’ is the title of her PhD project, which is funded by Ninja Theory.

Lucie has a masters in cognitive neuroscience from UCL and, before she started the course in 2020, she was a research assistant in Prof Paul Fletcher’s lab at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

Prof Fletcher worked with Ninja Theory – reported here – on Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which contained true-to-life representations of psychosis to raise awareness of what it’s like to be at the mercy of delusions and hallucinations.

“I was doing a large-scale behavioural study looking at eating behaviours in normal and obese people – it’s still running – when I left to start the PhD,” she says of her work with the noted psychiatrist. “After Hellblade, Tameem [Antoniades, co-founder and chief creative ninja at Ninja Theory] was interested in how to use video games to improve mental health, which is how I came into this.”

Lucie is based at Douglas House on Trumpington Street, which is co-owned by the university and the NHS. She is in the second year of the four-year course.

“Paul is my supervisor,” she says. “He’s one of the nicest people I’ve met: I feel very very lucky – lots of people come to the research group because they’ve heard how nice he is.

“The course involves a series of three different projects. The first looked at how people responded in stressful VR situations, not using Hellblade but using assets set up by Ninja Theory, who are my funders and have helped me create a lot of the experiments. They know about the results of my studies and the intention to help people with mental health issues using game-based technology. The second, which we’re setting up now, is about getting people to try and control their stress responses while stressed in VR situations.

“That’s breathing techniques mainly – you’re in a VR game, you’re in a stressful situation, and you learn to control stress responses by your breathing.

“We’re still recruiting, then it’s testing – it’ll be a few months.

“The third hasn’t been decided yet.”

And after?

“The information is not given directly to Ninja Theory as there’s no agreement with the university for that, but the aim is to create a scenario where people can use the techniques to reduce their stress.

“We’d like to make that widely available and are in preliminary talks with Addenbrooke’s for NHS environments but it’s early days. We want to find out if they’re do-able and take it from there.

“Personally I’m not keen on selling anything because I want people to be able to access mental healthcare for free.

“I want to see how this goes. It’s a unique industry/neuroscience collaboration, if it changes physiology I’d like to find out what and how it works.”

Ninja Theory was the first game developer to take mental health issues seriously, and its collaboration with Prof Fletcher has been hugely productive for both parties.

A spokesperson for the games company told the Cambridge Independent: “When we set out to make Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice it was critical that we approached the topic of psychosis with the utmost care and responsibility.

“Therefore working with mental health professionals including Professor Paul Fletcher, and those with lived experiences of psychosis, was invaluable in our development process and played a significant role in the success of the game.

“It felt natural then to continue this relationship with the University of Cambridge as we continued to explore the impact of games, and even how they can be developed to support people.

“Working with Lucie on this research project has been hugely rewarding for the team here, and this experience will help inform future projects at Ninja Theory.”