In May 2016, Sea Hero Quest VR released for mobile devices, but it wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill mobile game. The goal behind the game was to detect dementia and help identify those with signs of dementia early. Now, the developers behind the game have revealed that it has generated the equivalent of 15,000 years of lab-based research in the fight against this devastating disease.
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The developers, Glitchers, explains on their website that:
To address this growing health threat, in 2016, we developed Sea Hero Quest for mobile to disrupt data collection methods and create the first global benchmark for how humans navigate. Assessing one’s spatial ability is an important stage in the diagnosis of the condition. Since its launch, 3.5 million people in 193 countries have played Sea Hero Quest and contributed the equivalent of 15,000 years of similar lab-based research.
That’s an amazing achievement and just goes to show how gaming can make the world a better place and hopefully this research will get us one step closer to help those with dementia. The Chief Executive of Alzheimer’s Research in the UK, Hilary Evans, further talks about how much the game has achieved.
We have never seen anything undertaken in dementia research at this scale before. The data set that Sea Hero Quest generates is truly unprecedented.
For those who want to check out the game, you can download it for free on your mobile device by following one of the links below.
What do you think about this achievement for a mobile game generating so much research in the fight against dementia? Let us know in the comment section below.
