Ponsonby local Maru Nihoniho-Ozyurteri, who has lived in the Ponsonby and Freemans Bay areas for more than twenty years, was awarded Member of New Zealand Order of Merit on Queen’s Birthday weekend for her services to the gaming industry and mental health.
The game is a world first and after going through successful clinical trial, making it the first game ever to be trialled, Sparx was released in 2008 on PC. Since then it has gone on to win multiple awards - the United Nations award and the UNESCO award - and was the first game to have a report published in a medical journal.
“A computerised, cognitive behavioural therapy program, SPARX, was an effective resource for help-seeking adolescents with depression at primary healthcare sites,” says the report published in the British Medical Journal. “Use of the program resulted in a clinically significant reduction in depression, anxiety, hopelessness and an improvement in quality of life.”
Although the target audience of the game is teenagers aged 13 - 19, the game has shown good success in adults older than that, too, and in 2014 an online version of the game was released, making it far more accessible to everybody. It's possible the game may come to Smartphones in the future.
A similar upcoming project of Maru’s is the development of Cube 2, a game designed to test and develop cognitive awareness.
“Although trials are needed to prove this, the game is a world that flips and turns and hopefully develops spatial and cognitive awareness,” says Maru.
She says she hopes to continue to develop games that are meaningful, therapeutic or training based.
“As long as someone gets something from them, I’m happy.” (GEORGE SHIERS)
www.sparx.org.nz