Preface
The experts and players that have agreed to contribute to this project come from varying backgrounds and have different life experiences. They have offered valuable information that helped shape my practice and this project.
It’s important to note that not all the rounds of gameplay have been recorded, for the sake of privacy and to ensure that the game is enjoyed in an uncensored way. Some of those players were however kind enough to submit their experiences on the forum (see end of page).
4.b. Prototype Trialling
The prototype was first trialled in its most primitive form: a bank of questions that sat in a Microsoft Excel sheet. It was tested in a quiet and safe environment and the players were made aware of the nature of the game and its emotional implications.
Working in a clockwise motion, each of the three players chose a question from the bank and read it aloud to the next. As the round’s transcription reveals (see following), the players followed up the questions with some of their own—which made for an engaging round.
Transcriptions:
Player 1
Player 2
Player 3
- Hope: ‘Name one thing you’re looking forward to.’
Player 1: I’m looking forward to next week because it’s player 2 and I’s third year anniversary.
- Pride in achievement, self-confidence, sociability: ‘What is your most unique trait?’
Player 2: I think a unique trait if mine is that I’ve got a keen eye for detail.
Player 1: What shoes was I wearing during our first date?
Player 2: Your black Nikes
Player 1: You’re right actually.
- Gratitude, thankfulness: ‘What is your biggest source of motivation?’
Player 3: My sense of wonder and curiosity.
- Frustration, disappointment: ‘Talk about a time when your hard work did not pay off.’
Player 1: It happened when I was in my last year of school, specifically when I was studying for my A levels. I was supposed to go to KCL but I f*cked up my chemistry exam. In retrospect, I perhaps didn’t study as much as I should’ve but I still stayed up all night. I got a C. I couldn’t attend KCL. It was unexpected. I was sad for six months. I was upset when I attended the other uni, because I felt was supposed to be elsewhere.
- Alarm, Terror, Panic: ‘Talk about a time when your gut feeling was right.’
Player 2: I had a feeling that there would be police raids in my area in [redacted] about 3mos before they happened. that’s when I stopped [redacted]. I tested negative for my [redacted] test and I was safe.
- Attraction, desire, admiration: ‘What is one thing you wish people knew about you?’
Player 1: I would say, my anger issues. I wish Player 2 knew more about it. i am aware that I get too angry sometimes, but it’s something I can’t control. You’d only understand it if you went through it. I’ve been trying to control it for years.
- Sympathy: ‘Is selflessness selfish? Discuss.’
Player 2: I think its selfish because when you’re being selfless you’re mostly likely being selfless for someone which means you’re expecting a reward, and if you’re expecting a reward it means you’re being selfish.
- Cruelty: ‘Have you ever caught yourself feeling happy about someone’s misfortune?’
Player 1: Yes. it’s an emotion we have to admit sometimes.
My [redacted] kept bragging about a holiday. Her posts always revolve around money and possessions, thousands of 100 dollar bills, within [redacted] where people are living under the poverty line. She’d caption her posts with lines like “when your parents don’t work but they still get hella dollars” so for a while I kept thinking about how she didn’t deserve it. They had a family holiday booked to [redacted] and again, she kept posting and bragging about it. The day after she posted about it they all got covid and the holiday got cancelled. I felt good about it.
- Love: ‘Recall the most romantic moment of your life.’
Player 2: It’s something I won’t forget. It’s to do with the first time we met. The first time we saw each other after we started talking. We met at downtown. She was standing there waiting for me. I was walking towards her. There was a flock of pigeons that flew between us. We looked at each other for a while as the sun was setting upon us. We looked into each other’s eyes. It’s something II won’t forget.
Player 2 to Player 1: ‘What’s yours?’
It’s the day I discovered he fit in with my family. He drove all the way to [redacted] and picked me and my aunt up and then drove all the way back. Experiencing that with my family was comfortable. He fit right in. we were all engaging in conversation. That’s when I was realised I was in love with him. You’d want your partner to fit in in your life. Our worlds collided so easily.
- Gratitude, thankfulness: ‘Name one thing you get to experience in abundance.’
Player 1: Patience from Player 2. He’s the only person who’s patient and who listens. He does it in a way that I need from people around me.
Learning Outcome:
After the game, despite knowing each other for a few years already, the players disclosed that they enjoyed the gameplay and getting to know each other in a way they hadn’t gotten to explore prior. The feedback was encouraging and pushed towards further exploration of the project.
6. a. A Professional’s Opinion (D.C, children’s psychologist)
The first professional feedback was given by a licensed and practicing psychologist, D.C. Upon presenting the prototype’s premise, form, goals and framework, D.C was pleased to give feedback, which went as such:
The inner child work is truly a healing process… I think what I would add is for some people this could really help them heal collectively. For others it might trigger wounds that they are not ready to face, if for example they have PTSD it could trigger an episode and they might not know to come back to the present from their dissociative state. In order for you to protect yourself and them, I would suggest you mention that this project is not therapy and is intended to promote self healing through discovery and collective healing. Perhaps you can add that if someone would like to consult with a trained mental health professional contact the following organisations: (you can mention some helplines or therapy offices).
D.C on re.veil
6. b. Learning Outcome (D.C)
As D.C had pointed out, adding a trigger warning would be crucial to protect the players from an unwanted negative reaction to the game. Furthermore, specifying that this project is not a replacement for therapy is also important, and instead specifying that it could:
- be a complement to the therapy that one would undertake
- kick-start the process of seeking help
- be a way through which someone could help understand themselves and others
6.c A Professional’s Opinion (L.A.A, psychologist and special ed. teacher)
Specialising in trauma and currently mentoring children with learning disabilities, L.A.A was a good candidate for my project.
Can I just say that I absolutely love this concept! It’s such a creative way to get in touch with our past and further understand our emotions. Our past experiences shape us and we tend to avoid asking ourselves important questions, reflecting, finding appropriate ways to cope etc. It’s not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of effort and courage. The card game is genius!! Such a good ice breaker. A fun way to engage in self-awareness.
L.A.A on re.veil
6.d A Professional’s Opinion (B.A.A, psychologist, psychiatry student and researcher)
Psychology graduate and psychiatry post-graduate student and researcher B.A.A gave thorough, in-depth feedback about the project:
First thing I should tell you is well done it looks really good. The idea is very creative, the execution is on point and the design choices are amazing which, I guess, is no surprise considering you are an expert on that. It looks really good, it’s well put together and it’s a really nice idea, it’s really impressive and I’m proud of you and I think you should be proud of this product you’ve come up with.
Now to come back to what you specifically asked me for which is the clinical psychology angle on what you’ve made. I guess maybe a principal question to address about it is whether or not re.veil 1 or 2 [respectively, Unit 2 project and second Unit 3 project proposal] have some kind of therapeutic value or provide a mental health benefit. The short answer to that is I don’t know and nobody can know so long are there isn’t an attempt to find evidence for that through a study, such as a randomised controlled trial. Otherwise no one can really give an answer to these questions.
The long answer – if I want to look into the idea of a potential mental health benefit or therapeutic value – one of these elements that seem to be part of this idea in re.veil is the idea of catharsis. I think you mentioned catharsis in the presentation for re.veil 2 and the catharsis theory is a controversial one, this notion that by venting, people can dissipate an emotional state or cope with it better, it’s a theory that seems very prevalent in people’s intuition, in English you have a less technical word for catharsis people talk about “venting” and have the intuition that venting is a beneficial thing for our mental health. In clinical psychology, like the scientific angle on it, it’s not as popular and it doesn’t really have a presence. It does have a presence in psychoanalysis, Freud was the first psychoanalyst and there have since been Freudians, Yungians (…) and many schools of thought. What they all share in common is that they’re not like clinical or scientific psychologists which follow evidence and take a scientific approach. Interestingly that’s not to say that psychoanalysis is ineffective or useless but that’s a whole other conversation and I feel like I’ve digressed long enough.
Catharsis is, from that psychology standpoint, lacking in evidence that supports it or validates it and one example of a study I remember that tried to find evidence for the catharsis theory yielded the opposite effect. They found that people who exercised catharsis were not less angry, in fact, they were more angry and more aggressive. The reasoning as to why that might have been the case is that through catharsis, people are in some kind of way ruminating the emotional state and that doesn’t dissipate it, it continuously reproduces it in their minds which makes them continuously experience it and amplifies it rather than dissipate it or help them cope with it.
Anyway all that is to say that catharsis theory from a psychiatric and clinical psychology perspective, there isn’t evidence that it’s therapeutic and that it offers some kind of mental health benefit. But that’s not the only thing that there is in your project as it’s not after all an exercise of catharsis it’s not punching a punching bag or screaming or having a crying session, there’s a lot more to it, it’s a layered activity, this platform you’ve made and the card game. And in that there are other things which I will mention first: in re.veil 1 the website platform I see something very valuable in it which is this invitation for people to introspect and that introspection… there doesn’t have to be evidence for the benefits of introspection… it’s one of those things that you don’t need evidence for, it’s kind of like trying to show evidence for the value of reading – you don’t need to show evidence for the benefits of reading, anyone who’s read can easily speak to the vast difference between reading and not reading for example. It’s just something that goes beyond testing hypotheses. Obviously there is tremendous value in introspecting and the fact that this basically offers an opportunity to introspect is inherently valuable regardless of whether it has therapeutic benefits, it’s a valuable thing and it’s also interesting in that if the archive is available for people to visit it’s a way for people to look at what experiences they share with anonymous strangers, it’s a nice idea for people to relate to strangers in feeling like they have shared experiences or similar experiences that’s as far as re.veil 1.
For re.veil 2 there is also a lot else to it, it’s a great tool to like connect to people more deeply and I personally would find that a great idea if I were to go out with someone on a few dates for example and if there was chemistry it would be a good idea to play this card game so that you get to know them better, or if you’re hanging out with a group all the time but you’re not really having much opportunity to connect deeply with them, you’re kind of just having fun with this group… it would be good to play the card game.
It’s a very nice card game, it’s very well designed and to bring this conversation to a conclusion, it’s a great idea there’s so many cool things about it to list, overall, it’s wonderful. The only way in which I feel like it might go wrong, which I don’t see to have been the case was that if re.veil 1 or 2 were to take themselves too seriously as like therapeutic tools or some kind of like mental health intervention or something, but it doesn’t seem to be the case that it’s doing that from what you told me about it and what I’ve read about it and just from the optics of it it doesn’t seem to be taking itself too seriously in this way, which is why I think it’s just nothing but amazing and a very nicely done project and once again congrats on such a well put together project, it looks amazing.
B.A.A on re.veil
6. e. Learning Outcome (B.A.A)
B.A.A’s insight on the project and where it stands in relation to clinical psychology made sense – one cannot validate a theory without an experience. He, however, sees the value of introspection and the way that re.veil pushes towards it. Much like D.C, B.A.A pointed out that the project shouldn’t be seen as therapy or a replacement to therapy – that will be made clear.
Learning Outcomes
Interested in implementing professional advice and opinions into the design process, three field professionals were approached with a presentation that thoroughly presented de.code/re.code and its predecessor. The consensus was in favour of the game as a tool for healing and described it as an effective means to connect with oneself and other individuals. Two of the professionals stated that it would be important to disclose to the players that de.code/re.code is not a substitute for professional help and should instead be seen as a complement to therapy.
16. re.veil’s de.code/re.code forum submissions
The de.code/re.code forum is a community-driven space where players can share their answers, gameplay experiences and submit their own custom prompts.
Here are the submissions at the time of writing, shared in chronological order:
Learning Outcomes
The final prototype garnered a positive response with some players even enquiring about the decks – distributing it will definitely be considered in the near future.