Vampire Therapist asks: can a game really teach the fundamentals of therapy?

Of all the places I expected to learn some fundamental lessons about therapy, playing a game about vampire therapists was not one of them. Yet I have, and now I wonder why I excluded such a possibility in the first place. Games do have a unique power in their interactivity that's perfect for education (though I've sat through enough awful corporate training videos attempting to do the same thing). That Vampire Therapist can teach me concepts usually associated with stuffier education shouldn't really be surprising, then. What's surprising is no one has tried this approach for this topic before.Vampire Therapist is a game about seeking and then giving therapy, specifically cognitive behavioural therapy. I've experienced a bit of this in my real life. From what I understand, it's a way of altering thought patterns to identify unhelpful ways of thinking. It also offers skills to help cope with problematic situations. It's the talking part of the therapy I've seen the game focus on, though I've only played a few hours. And it has been developed with the help of licensed therapists, so it's not all a bunch of hooey.Excuse the American slang, but I've picked it up from the character in the game you will play as: Sam Walls, a cowboy from the Wild West who left a life of bloody gunslinging behind him to sort out his head and come to terms with the bad things he'd done. It's in the name of this quest he heads to Leipzig, Germany, in the present day, to meet millennia-old vampire therapist Andromachos and learn more. Sam already has the makings of a therapist - he's come to many realisations himself - but it's Andromachos who formalises his training and helps shape him into the therapist he becomes. Read more

Vampire Therapist asks: can a game really teach the fundamentals of therapy?

Vampire Therapist asks: can a game really teach the fundamentals of therapy?

Vampire Therapist asks: can a game really teach the fundamentals of therapy?

Vampire Therapist asks: can a game really teach the fundamentals of therapy?

Vampire Therapist asks: can a game really teach the fundamentals of therapy?