The Benefits of Cooperative Gaming: Interview with Geek Therapeutics

While at PAX West I was very excited for the opportunity to sit down with Lindsey Grove, a certified Geek Therapist who works with the company Geek Therapeutics. They had a booth at PAX with all kinds of things from dice sets to books about the psychology of video games like Pokémon and the Legend of Zelda. I highly recommend checking out their website if the idea of geek therapy is something that interests you, whether you are considering therapy, you are a therapist interested in the subject, or even if you’re just a gamer interested in learning more about how the games we play affect us.

Of course, I was so fascinated with the topic of discussion that I forgot to start recording the conversation until a few minutes in. So to quickly summarize, we introduced ourselves, Lindsey explained her background as a school psychologist for fifteen years, and is now continuing that work as a certified Geek Therapist with Geek Therapeutics. The company recently opened its first physical location in Colorado, but provides services across over thirty states in the US, and is working on bringing services to even more.

Now that I’ve covered what I forgot to record, here is a transcription of my interview with Geek Therapeutics and the amazing things they are doing around the country:

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Matt: Sorry about that, so we were just talking about how to play Breath of the Wild with two players.

GT: Yes, cooperative Breath of the Wild, where one player each holds a Joy-Con. Then we also tried the same thing with Mario, because that one you can actually play two-player with two controllers. I always forget which one is which. It was probably Super Mario 3D World because Super Mario Wonder wasn’t out yet.

GT: So when you’re playing that, you have to communicate. Like “Hey, wait for me,” or “Pop my bubble” for when you fall off the stage and show up as a little bubble. I had two kids playing this Mario game cooperatively and at the end of a couple of weeks, one of the kids turned to the other and said “You’re my best friend.” This is a kid who had essentially not had friends before this. I see the same sorts of things with tabletop games. 

GT: If you think about it, it’s hard for people who are outside to see in, to see all the benefits because they just see that you’re playing a video game or just playing Dungeons & Dragons. A lot of times I’d have teachers say “Oh, you’re just playing with them. What’s the point?” and I respond with “Well, okay, but we’re playing a cooperative board game. So we have to communicate with each other. We have to be okay with not getting what we want. We have to manage our emotions when we don’t get what we want, and we have to accept that something someone else does could make us lose the whole game.” It’s a lot of skills to practice in that one time, and they’re having fun, so they’re learning better, and they’re generalizing. That’s so cool. Not to mention the reading and math that you have to do with it too. I mean, even Pokémon because you have to do all that addition and subtraction. I’ve played a lot of the Pokémon card game.

Matt: That’s so awesome. So I do want to ask, now that you have started a location in Colorado and are having people come to a physical building, is it mostly kids or do you also have teenagers and adults show up as well?

GT: My youngest is seven and my oldest is fifty-two. And my 52-year-old really loves to do the Dungeons & Dragons therapy. It’s really helpful for some of that decision fatigue and decision freezing and that’s what they were experiencing. It’s like, “Okay, let’s do this” because you’re in a situation where you have to make a decision right away, or else something’s gonna happen. I don’t have formal data, but they tell me that this is really helping with this. They say it helps in their everyday life and that they are not paralyzed by decisions anymore.

Matt: That is so great to hear. These are the kinds of things I’ve vaguely thought are real when it comes to gaming, that people are genuinely getting benefits in their daily lives.

GT: Yeah, and especially for kids you don’t have to explicitly say “This is what I’m teaching you” for them to get it, which is really cool. I taught a whole class of fourth graders to play Dungeons & Dragons. Nineteen of them. That’s a lot. I knew I couldn’t run a nineteen-player game. So I trained five fourth-grade Dungeon Masters. They ran their own games on Fridays, and then I did a survey with them afterward, where I just asked the DMs and the players what they learned. What was the benefit? Would you like to do this again? Eighteen out of nineteen said, “Yes, I would like to do this again.” There’s one kid that just hated it. It was miserable for them. It’s not for everybody. But the answers I got back were things like, “I learned that it’s more fun to play with other people than to play just by myself.” And these were kids that were playing Minecraft every Friday. And, they love Minecraft, but they were like, “I’d rather play with someone else. I learned to listen to other people before I judge them. I got to know my classmates better.” I got a letter from one of those fourth graders, one of the DMs when she was in fifth grade, and she said, “Thank you for making our school a better place. D&D made our school kinder and made us get along better.” Yeah, they all bullied me into making a D&D club the next year. They’re like “We have to do it.” And then of course I have thirty-two kids sign up just across two grades.

Matt: Wow, so were you able to bring all thirty-two kids in? Or do you have to split it up somehow?

GT: I tried to bring everyone in. I will say there’s probably crying every week at least from one person, different kids every time. But they all still really enjoyed it.

Matt: So you’ve already talked a little bit about it with Mario, Zelda, and D&D, but one of my next questions I wanted to ask was what are some of the games you have people play, either video or tabletop, when they come into the center?

GT: In terms of video games, I really like teaching people how to use Wii Sports for self-regulation because you can do those three rounds of boxing and it really relaxes your body. I had another kid that really liked tennis, and just that movement for about ten or fifteen minutes can calm your whole body down. Wiis are cheap and easy to find. And Wii Sports is cheap and easy to find too. For the Switch, it’s the same sort of thing with 1-2-Switch, which is such an underrated game for the Switch.

Matt: Yeah, that almost feels like the Wii Sports of the Switch generation.

GT: Yeah, kind of like a successor. And that’s a game where you’re supposed to be looking at each other, and it’s all executive functioning, response inhibition, paying attention to cues. I love 1-2-Switch.

Matt: I love how Nintendo in general has always had the kinds of games that try to get you up and off the couch. Now I also think about VR doing that a little bit too. But Nintendo has been doing it for a long time.

GT: Yeah, the problem with VR is that it’s pretty much a solo experience.  Whereas, you look at things like Wii Sports, 1-2-Switch, and other successors to Wii Sports. I think of the one where you had to ride the cow. And, my parents, they aren’t video game people. At least, not anymore. My dad worked for IBM when I was growing up, so I always did a lot of PC gaming, which is why I have King’s Quest on my arm. *indicates a tattoo* But, my parents aren’t really video game people. There was one Thanksgiving where we all were just cracking up on the floor, riding our cows around.

Matt: Yeah I can definitely remember times like that too. We’ve talked about video games, but what about board games or tabletop?

GT: There are so many cooperative games, anything in that Forbidden Island family of games I really, really like because they’re hard to win for younger kids. Pokémon the card game is also great. I always make my kids play by tournament rules. We shake hands and say good luck before the game. There’s another game that’s so adorable. It’s called Space Escape. Now it’s a board game. It used to be called Mole Rats in Space, but basically, you play as little mole rats that have to go around your spaceship and collect your tools and avoid snakes. You have to beat the snakes to your spaceship to escape. And again, you have to work together, because one person can’t do everything. That was another favorite. Five Minute Mystery was also a really big favorite. There’s also Five Minute Dungeon. But Five Minute Mystery is like a guess who with a couple more steps in it, but again, it focuses on working together. Those are some of my favorite games to use.

Matt: As a DM myself, who runs a group of seven players, I find it can be difficult to schedule a time that everyone can meet, but then also have enough time to get through a scene or battle in the game. So I am curious, when you have people coming in to play Dungeons & Dragons, how long does that run for? Do you have people in there for two hours? More? Less?

GT: Usually, when we do the Dungeons & Dragons group, it’s at least two hours. I had such constraints when I was running it at school because I had to beg, borrow, and steal just for forty-five minutes. And then it’s always fifteen minutes of getting settled and then packing up at the end.

Matt: Ok yeah, I feel like that time is just across the board for all D&D groups.

GT: Yeah, we actually have a therapy card deck that is awesome to use, even if you’re not a therapist. They work really well for warm-up questions or checking-in questions at the beginning of a D&D session, to help focus everybody. They also work really well for journaling prompts, self-reflection, or family dinners. So yeah, usually about two hours for the groups.

GT: We have a therapeutic Game Master program too, which is not just for therapists. We’ve had a lot of forever DMs take it just to improve their game because we cover things like how to have a really solid session zero in your game, what to do when something comes up in the middle of a game, and how to use things like X-cards and lines and veils.

Matt: I’m so glad that, and I’m not a therapist, I don’t have experience with therapy, but I’m glad I still know these terms just from being a DM.

GT: Yes, I’m so happy that DMs know these terms now because I don’t think they really did in the past.

Matt: Yeah, session zero has really become a standard now.

Matt: One of the main reasons I was curious to check out Geek Therapeutics was because one of my best friends back home in San Diego is getting her Master’s to become a therapist. Over the last few years, she has been working her way through Breath of the Wild, which has been really fun to talk about with her.

GT: There’s a lot of easy entry points. I think that’s what’s really exciting about the field now too, because I know… *points across the room to the tabletop booths* …over there at Nomnivore Games, they have an RPG called Emberwind that’s built with mental health in mind. And then Snowbright Studios, their two games, ink and Tea Time Adventures. And Tea Time Adventures is like a Murder She Wrote meets Gilmore Girls with animals, even though I don’t think there’s murder in it at all. It’s super cute and super cozy. And there are all the Powered By the Apocalypse games like Masks [published by Magpie Games], Kids on Bikes, and Kids on Brooms [published by Hunters Entertainment] where you’re doing the same sort of things, but it really pares it down and you’re still working as a team.

GT: There’s also an Avatar: The Last Airbender tabletop RPG from Magpie as well.

Matt: Yes, that’s one I haven’t been able to run yet, but I’ve been reading and learning and trying to get to it.

GT: We’re all big Avatar fans.

GT: The other thing I was going to say, was for therapists, we do have continuing education credits. So we do have a therapeutic Game Master course, which is about a nine-week course. You meet weekly, and then you have videos to watch in between. When you meet, the first hour is reviewing what you learned that week, going over the topics, and answering any questions. Then you get some playtime too. Most of the time you’re playing in a D&D 5th Edition system. But one week of the course you play a different system. When my friend Kayla was teaching, she would teach Junior Braves of the Apocalypse, some people play Call of Cthulhu. I play a Japanese game called Maid, which is so much fun, and probably not safe for work, but basically, you play as maids to a magical mistress.

GT: But we also have continuing education credits and a certified Geek Therapist program. It’s American Psychological Association accredited, plus other organizations as well. So your continuing education credits count for an actual certificate that you can put on your license and credit credentials. It covers tabletop RPGs, it covers video games, but it also covers things like anime, and other pop culture licenses like Star Wars, Star Trek, and Supernatural.

Matt: So I know you just opened the location in Colorado, but is this something that could be done all across the United States?

GT: Yes, it definitely could be done all through the United States, especially if you go through the certified Geek Therapist program. And then you can put that on your credential and call yourself a certified Geek Therapist. Plus, we are a very close-knit group too. So we have our own Discord server where we ask each other questions like, “Hey, I don’t normally work with twelve-year-olds, and I just got some twelve-year-olds, so what should I do with them?” All of this stuff can be found on our website. You can find our Geek Therapy locator, our courses, and any other information you want.

Matt: Thank you so much for taking the time to sit and talk. This has been a really fascinating conversation.

GT: No problem. I love talking about it.

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Thank you for reading! I found this to be a really interesting topic that could be explored a lot further, so if this is a topic that catches your interest let me know! I would be happy to talk to some more people and learn more about the growing field. Plus, it’s also just great to learn more about how these games we play can have a positive mental impact.

It may go without saying but don’t take this as an excuse to sit alone in your room and play a single-player game all day long. All the games mentioned in this conversation were multiplayer or cooperative games that have you engage in some way with other players, usually in person. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild only came up because it was played as a cooperative two-player game where two players work together to play the same character.

There are so many great games to play with your friends, both video games and tabletop. In the future, I would love to write an article or make a video about some great, potentially underrated multiplayer games, both cooperative and otherwise. Let me know if you would be interested to read about that.

Until next time, thanks for reading!