This week, Ninja Theory announced The Insight Project, an innovative R&D project that is an ambitious combination of technology, game design and clinical neuroscience brought together with the aim of generating strategies to alleviate mental distress.

Following the release of “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice” to critical acclaim in 2017, Tameem Antoniades, co-founder and Creative Director at Ninja Theory and Paul Fletcher, Psychiatrist and Professor of Health Neuroscience at University of Cambridge continued their collaborative partnership on how games can go beyond representing mental illness and distress and how they play a role in promoting mental wellbeing.

Ninja Theory is planning a program of gaming, technological and scientific development that will lead to self-contained, individualised and absorbing game experiences within which people can become an expert at recognising, responding to and, ultimately, controlling their own fear, anxiety and other negative subjective experience. The work will be underpinned by rigorous scientific principles to ensure its effectiveness and validity and it will adhere to strict standards of ethics and data management.

The Insight Project will take shape over several years but is being announced early to encourage an open and transparent approach to its development. It is an exploratory but experimentally guided project that aims to deliver a mainstream solution to help treat mental suffering and encourage mental wellbeing.

Ninja Theory’s goal is to create and inspire a movement and help mental health treatment to go mainstream, and we hope you’ll join them on this exciting journey.

For the latest on The Insight Project and Ninja Theory, stay tuned to Xbox Wire or head over to TheInsightProject.com.