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Typical
Self-directed, read instructions throughout
Adopted
Lost track of objectives, skipped hints, needed ongoing guidance
Thesis
Research First. Game Last. Five years to get there.
“I did not set out to build a game. The research said to go here.”
The problem
These children have lost everything. And they struggle — for life.
Many adopted children come home carrying complex trauma. Even after adoption — even when fed, housed, and loved — they still do not feel safe. Parents do everything: therapy, medication, IEPs, counseling. Most say they did everything they could, and still found themselves with nowhere to turn.
“How might we utilize play to help adopted children work through past traumas so that they can form healthy attachments with their adoptive families?”
Thesis problem statement — Miami University MFA, 2021
The approach
Research said:go into the playroom.
The research began with surveys and in-depth interviews with 46 adoptive families and three licensed therapists. Rather than designing a game and testing usability, the work went inside the clinical environment first to understand what was actually broken.
The survey initially suggested these children play normally. Interviews revealed something different: parents had been counting adult-directed activities as self-directed play. The real picture was much harder.
46
Families in ethnographic study
3
Therapist interviews
12
Steps in hero quest
0
Fail states in game
“Being in a safe environment can be scary because they don’t know it. They will attempt to create chaos — at least they know the chaos.”
— Therapist #1, thesis interview
The finding
These children cannot play.
Children with complex trauma missed Piaget’s Preoperational Stage — when self-direction, imagination, and symbolic thinking form. The developmental wiring that should have been laid simply never was.
Issues with Self-directed play
Don’t initiate. Complain of boredom. Wait to be told what to do.
Issues with Imaginative play
Took longest to develop. Sometimes never arrived at all.
Issues with Social play
Go along to avoid rejection. Never initiate. Never lead.
The game
A therapy session became a video game.
Bear in a cold, desolate world. No timers, no wrong answers, no fail states. The child directs. The therapist is present throughout.
“Being a bear is removed enough from their experience that it’s not threatening, but close enough that their brain can still make those connections.”
Five trauma‑informed mechanics
Feeling zones
Identify and name emotional states
Brain breaks
Emotional regulation tools built into gameplay
Body breaks
Physical co-regulation moments
NPC social trust
Practice social risk in a safe context
Health maintenance
Hunger · thirst · cold · tired
Four design principles
Role-play
Safe distance through the bear. Close enough to connect, far enough not to threaten.
Player-directed
Every decision belongs to the child. Agency is the therapeutic point.
Transferable skills
What the child practices in the game, they practice in real life.
Therapy relationship
The therapist is always present. The game supports the relationship — it doesn’t replace it.
The wall
Four years. Same wall.
A lot of designers in this field hit the same wall and assumed it was their fault. It wasn’t. The tools simply couldn’t produce what the research required.
The problem
Games are interactive, stateful, branching. No wireframe can instantiate that. Every prototype produced a simulation, not a game. Children could not actually play it.
The breakthrough
AI-assisted tools made the prototype possible. Full concept → playable prototype in 3 days. The tooling finally caught up to the problem.
What happened
Same game. Same test. The research walked in.
Six children. Three typically developing, three adopted. Every behavioral pattern from the research appeared in the gameplay.
Neurodiverse layer applied
Drawn from Animal Crossing research: sensory, cognitive, and executive functioning supports. These worked for that population — but what emerged here was a separate layer entirely.
Sensory
Visual
Haptic
Cognitive load
Attention
Non-linear
Meeting Freddy
Typical
Stayed, explored, engaged immediately
Adopted
Backed out repeatedly — until the game required them to go through it. They did. Every time.
therapist relationship in action
The spinner
Typical
Intrigued, explored all 4 choices
Adopted
Engaged — but chose the safer options. Avoided emotional risk.
Superpower ✓
Use item ✓
Brain break
How I feel
Parents confirmed: “This is exactly how they are at home.” Not a usability failure. The game held the boundary — and they went through it. That only works with a therapist present. More testing is needed. That work is next.
“I love that this is done with a caring adult…”
“If it could be used with even one kid and change their life…”
The work
Go deeper.
The thesis, the pitch, the game design, and the published scholarship. Five years of work — here’s how to access it.
Game walkthrough — Coming soon
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Pitch DeckPDF
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Game Design DocumentPDF
- ↗ ACM
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Serious Play 2026Accepted
06 — Contact
Let’s talk about what your program needs next.
Direct conversation, no pitch deck. Tell me what your program is wrestling with and where it’s behind. I’ll respond with how the method addresses it.
