Just today, the use of "games" to cure diseases has become a reality.
On April 18, Poker City held an online conference to officially release the "Happy Horizon Planet Vision Training System" (hereinafter referred to as "Happy Horizon Planet"). This is a gamified AI medical software, which has obtained the first medical device registration certificate for digital therapy in the domestic game industry.
The press conference made a specific introduction to "Happy Horizon Planet", which is a bullet screen shooting training software made of unity, based on the mature amblyopia treatment principles such as fine eye training, raster visual stimulation, and red light therapy, so that children can complete the treatment of amblyopia through the game process of defeating the enemy in the characteristic theme scene.
Under the guidance of the idea of "game +" to create more social value, functional games are becoming a new field for many domestic manufacturers to explore, but The "Happy Horizon Planet" of Poker City has somewhat "jumped out of the ceiling" and truly realized cross-industry - it is a medical software jointly created by game companies and professional medical teams, and its medical value has been recognized by the regulatory authorities. Curious about the production process, Game Daily learned more about "Happy Horizon Planet".
Why is Happy Horizon Planet not a game, but a medical software?
The functional games in the conventional understanding still belong to the category of games themselves, but they have strong information transmission or guidance functions, such as promoting carbon neutrality/garbage classification and other knowledge, helping children with autism learn to communicate, etc.
The core of "Happy Horizon Planet" lies in "treatment", which corresponds to the solution of the common childhood eye disease "amblyopia".
The main cause of the onset of "amblyopia" is that children's vision is not stimulated enough externally when they are young, and the brain determines that it is "not needed" to have such good vision. This eye disease can only be treated in the early stage (5-6 years old is the best), the treatment effect is very poor after the age of 12, and it cannot be corrected by medical glasses in the later stage, which ultimately affects vision and physical and mental health for life.
In fact, before Happy Horizon Planet, there were already some online training software for "amblyopia" on the market. The core principles used are the same as "Happy Horizon Planet", which are raster visual stimulation, fine eye training, eye muscle training, stereoscopic vision training, etc., and even have no shortage of training software that considers children's interests, and has joined the training software for small games such as Lianlian Watch, Aircraft War, and Tetris.
But here we have to face the most important problem in the treatment of "amblyopia", that is, the long treatment cycle + poor experience of treatment products, and the weak attractiveness to children. In this context, sick children are often trained under passive supervision, which is extremely time-consuming for parents, and it is also necessary to communicate with doctors frequently to confirm the training.
"Happy Horizon Planet" solves these two major problems: one is based on the child's perspective, through high-quality gamification presentation, so that the sick children are willing to take the initiative to train; the other is through the AI function embedded in the software and the exclusive parent-side APP, so that parents/doctors can understand and monitor the treatment process more simply.
From the information released by Poker City, it can be seen that compared with the rough mini-games built into the common amblyopia training software on the market, "Happy Horizon Planet" has more game elements (15 kinds of props, 16 maps, 46 kinds of creatures) and the picture quality is more high-definition, and the gamification mechanism is used to the extreme, even for the current children who are exposed to the Internet enlightenment earlier, there is enough attraction.
Secondly, "Happy Horizon Planet" also embeds many functions, such as a vision assessment system that can self-test, real-time monitoring and reminder of attention, AI intelligent correction of children's posture, automatic generation of instant training reports, and customized training standards according to vision conditions. Parents and physicians can directly understand the treatment of sick children through the client, thereby reducing the cost of treatment.
Second, how did Poker City, which came from the game industry, make "Happy Horizon Planet"?
Being able to get a medical device registration certificate is enough to explain the effectiveness of "Happy Horizon Planet", and it is curious that the track of gamification digital therapy has been concerned by many domestic game manufacturers, why was it pulled out by Poker City? How did they make this product?
At the press conference, we saw Chen Hang, a medical consultant at Poker City.
Chen Hang has a professional background in optometry from Wenzhou Medical University, and is now committed to the field of national eye health, and in the research and development process of "Happy Horizon Planet", he and his team provided the project team with intellectual support related to the treatment of amblyopia.
At the press conference, Chen Hang mentioned that the treatment results of amblyopia not only depend on the effectiveness of the treatment method, but also on the degree of cooperation of patients, which is also the focus of the "field of amblyopia rehabilitation". Most other medical software tries to enhance patient compliance with more accomplished or ritualistic methods (such as VR devices), while "Happy Horizon Planet" starts from the content and uses its accumulated user preference analysis advantages to empower "amblyopia" treatment, emphasize the child's perspective, and solve the problems encountered in parental monitoring in terms of supporting functions.
In addition to the guidance of professional medical consultants, Poker City's ability to make Happy Horizon Planet is also directly related to the "input cost".
Game Daily learned that the core production team of Poker City's "Happy Horizon Planet" has more than 10 years of experience in the game industry, and from producers to ordinary members, they are full-time invested in only this one product, which is indeed called "big money".
Of course, it should not be ignored that even if the game is experienced, the team is initially a "layman" in medicine.
Therefore, they have established a discipline development mechanism from understanding and knowing to integration and exploration and research, and integrated innovative thinking into learning and exploration. In addition, unlike traditional medical experiments, the experience of the game industry allowed the team in Poker City to actively try more diversified test environments such as communities, etc., so as to collect more real data for product verification adjustments.
In response to the problem of children's addiction that parents are more worried about, "Happy Horizon Planet" not only ensures that parents can understand the child's training time in real time in the parent-side APP, but also provides parents with a one-click exit function. The system's built-in AI monitoring will also prompt children to maintain a certain distance and correct sitting posture to prevent myopia.
Under the guidance of ESG, the game industry can bring better changes to society
According to the "ESG Game Industry Report" of the Game Daily Research Institute, the game industry has had a significant change of thinking in recent years, and fulfilling social responsibility is no longer a traditional simple donation of money and materials, but more on the basis of the industry, using the industry's unique way of thinking to help solve practical social problems.
For example, the integration of public welfare knowledge publicity in the game, the realization of public welfare to help farmers in the preparation of holiday gifts, the use of social products to help the rescue of disaster areas, etc., including the use of "game +" to empower functional games, are the directions that the industry is actively exploring. This new change, which further emphasizes practicality, turns out to be more accessible to younger generations in form, and the impact is long-term.
The Happy Horizon Planet developed by Poker City is another breakthrough exploration in the game industry.
It is worth noting that in the "2021 China Game Corporate Social Responsibility Report" released by Gamma Data, Boke City was rated as a "Company with Outstanding Social Responsibility Performance". According to Game Daily, Poker City continues to explore the "game +" model, and has launched popular science games such as "Garbage Classification Battle", "People's War "Epidemic" General Mobilization", "Four Histories Chasing Dreams" and "Game +" practice projects such as the public welfare version of "Stir-fry jianghu", in addition to carrying out a series of science popularization cooperation with the Shanghai Association for Science and Technology to practice corporate social responsibility in many fields.
In addition to the Happy Horizon Planet mentioned above, Poker City is also advancing another direction of gamified digital therapy, aiming to slow and delay the progression of cognitively impaired patients to Alzheimer's disease in old age.
It can be seen that Poker City has been actively exploring the field of game empowerment society, so it is not a surprise that "Happy Horizon Planet" can get the first certification of the Food and Drug Administration this time.
I believe that in the near future, Poker City and even the entire game industry will find the "second value" of games and use their professional strength to build a better society.