Interview: 'Life Game' Mindbloom Born From Triple-A Stress

[A decade in AAA taught former Monolith EP Chris Hewitt about how challenging quality of life can be -- lessons he's applying to his new project, the "life game" and goal manager Mindbloom.] Quality of life can be challenging for career-minded adults, but it's no secret that many in the game industry have experienced a special kind of wringer. That was the case for Chris Hewitt, a former executive producer at Monolith, who after a decade in the space needed some balance -- and decided to pursue a new kind of game development in order to find it. Hewitt spent most of his career at Monolith, where he began as a level designer, became producer on No One Lives Forever and ended up executive producer on F.E.A.R. and Tron 2.0. Although he calls his time with the studio an "amazing experience," he says it also was extremely demanding. "I put everything I had into it... my life got completely out of balance," Hewitt tells Gamasutra. "My health, my relationship with my wife... I was really stressing out." "I recognized that what was happening to me was that I was really motivated by fear of failure. I had to figure out a way to do this job and still have some semblance of balance in my life." He found it a strange experience at that point in his life, to have achieved so many of his goals and yet to be less happy than ever. "It's deceiving to think if you just put everything into your work you're going to do better," he says. "Even spending just a little bit of time taking care of your health, practicing music, even a little bit in the other areas of your life, makes you more effective. The most creative moments that we had on F.E.A.R. were the times when I felt like we were talking care of ourselves." After the success of that title Hewitt was able to spend two years at home with his family, a period of reflection and fulfillment. It was then when he noticed on daytime television programs like Oprah that the quest for a balanced life was an unsolved problem throughout society. "It made me realize there are millions of people who struggle with this," he says. Hewitt decided to combine his life's work in game development with the lessons from his own experience and the experiences he saw others having. He saw an entire self-help industry that saw people attending seminars, purchasing books and materials, hiring coaches and drumming up loads of motivation -- only to rapidly fizzle out while real change remained elusive. Thus the idea for Mindbloom was born, a daily-use browser-based app with a mobile companion that encourages the user to visualize her life as a tree with numerous branches, each of which needs equal nurturance in the form of small goals and tasks. "Any of the tools at the time... were really un-engaging, and here I was creating these high-end, immersive game experiences and I felt we could do a lot better," he says. Hewitt was joined in co-founding Mindbloom with longtime friend Brent Poole and creative director Paul Ingram, and they consulted behavioral change experts in the development of the game-like app. He says in particular those who work in the behavioral change field have been inspired by the effort, seeking ways to get clients to stick with their advice and counseling. "Game designers know how to tap into human psychological needs to keep people feeling effective," he suggests. Amid criticism of gamification's extrinsic rewards, Hewitt says his team has aimed specifically to differentiate. "Instead of focusing on points-based solutions around fitness and nutrition, or instead of using gimmicky rewards to help people stay engaged... we know that intrinsic motivation is really the key," Hewitt says. When a user completes a goal, "is it really to earn a $10 discount at Arby's, or is it because you want to have the energy to grow in other areas of your life?" Users build a tree based on a few key areas of focus, such as fitness, relationships or finances, that they want to focus on, an interactive visual representation of the life they want to have. Pursuing goals in each "branch" helps keep the tree looking healthy. "Our beta testers really resonated with this whole tree metaphor and how it acts as a visual representation of their priorities and progress in life," he says. The team hopes it's working. During beta testing, they noticed a "very engaged" audience, that has used Mindbloom on average for 16 weeks and continue actively using it. Those users log in on average about four times a week, and spend just under 15 minutes per session with it. "Using some gaming elements to provide positive reinforcement... makes people feel good, and feel effective with this kind of feedback," says Hewitt.