Just a few years ago, Justin Jacobson was working as a therapist to help improve the lives of children coping with trauma. Often that meant strengthening the bonds between kids and their parents.
But he quickly realized that talking was not an ideal way to build connection.
“When a child has a hard day, they don’t say ‘can we talk?’ They say play with me,” Jacobson said. “Although they can communicate verbally, children actually communicate in other ways more naturally, and play is one of them.”
Jacobson quickly began working to get certified as a play therapist. Yet, he often struggled to hold sessions effectively when children and their parents were not living in the same home. Jacobson then wondered whether he could fuse some of his skills gained as a web developer years earlier to create digital play experiences for his patients and their parents. He experimented with the idea a bit and later enrolled in graduate school at the University of Miami to learn how to create more immersive virtual experiences.
As his capstone project, Jacobson built and launched Gather-2-Gether, a two-person cooperative game available on Roblox, a popular gaming platform among youth that boasts 132 million active daily users. Launched in April, Gather-2-Gether encourages children to play with a parent, caregiver, or friend to gather seeds, grow plants and craft their own community together.
“It is focused on helping parents have these beneficial playful experiences with their children,” said Jacobson, who earned his Master’s in Fine Art in interactive media from the School of Communication last May. “And I hope parents will be willing to enter the digital spaces where their kids are.”
While it has been played by more than 1,000 Roblox users so far, Gather-2-Gether is gaining even more exposure this month. It won first place in the Encouraging Positive Connection and Well-being Challenge from Roblox and Games for Change, a nonprofit that hosted its annual festival last week where they recognized Jacobson’s innovation with a $15,000 prize. Each year, the festival celebrates new video games that empower real-world impact, but this is the first year they introduced this challenge with Roblox.
“It’s not a competitive game, so this is a great way for caregivers and kids to work together cooperatively,” said Daniel Haun, senior manager of civility and partnerships at Roblox. “It’s also a great opportunity to have a good, positive, fun experience. And Gather-2-Gether can open up conversations about why gaming is important to kids, so parents can better understand the lives of their children.”
Jacobson is thrilled that Gather-2-Gether is being featured at the festival, and in its arcade this year.
“For a lot of years, I have dreamed of going to the Games for Change Festival, but it hasn’t been possible until now, so this is very exciting,” he said.
Jacobson moved to Miami for graduate school to create games that could help children and their parents connect, but knew he needed to garner more technical background. This made him an attractive candidate to the program, which encourages students to create digital experiences with a focus on social impact, said his adviser, associate professor Clay Ewing.
“Justin had this notion that play was powerful and had already started making games for his patients to play before grad school,” Ewing said. “With Gather-2-Gether, a child and a parent who do not live together can still share an experience through the game, and that’s what I think technology should do: help people maintain meaningful relationships across distance.”
Lecturer Lorena Lopez helped Jacobson refine Gather-2-Gather and to focus on its design, which is grounded in play therapy research. Therefore, the game includes obstacles that encourage structure, nurture, challenge and engagement in its nine challenges. Players must overcome these tasks to gather different types of seeds, which ultimately help the players build their own world, Jacobson said. While Jacobson did the design, his brother, Jalen Jacobson, helped create the art for the game.
Jacobson used the Roblox platform because it allows you to focus on the storyline of the game, rather than the back-end development. This helped Jacobson launch his game in a matter of minutes once it was ready, he said.
For adults, Jacobson offers “parent hacks” in the game that offer tips on how to forge healthy interactions with a child during play.
“These ‘parent hacks’ can enrich the moment with their child, and it’s that level of guided therapy that makes this game stand out,” Lopez said.
Because it was chosen for this award, Jacobson hopes that the popularity of Gather-2-Gether will grow to benefit even more families.
During testing, Jacobson was energized to see how excited kids were able to do little things like play tag, or dance with their parents’ avatars as they walked through their world together. He is hoping to do research about its effectiveness as the number of users grows.
“When parents and kids get in there, the children light up because they get to share something they love with their parents,” he said.
Yet, his initial goal remains.
“I would love to get more users, but I don’t care about that as much as if I could know it was helping parents and children who need it,” he said.
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