Andrew Williams

The long-term implications of COVID-19 for wellbeing are predicted to be both significant and enduring. Data from previous epidemics indicates long-term detrimental effects are more pronounced among particular demographics, including individuals with pre-existing mental health conditions. The Mental Health Independent Support Team (MhIST) is a charitable organisation offering a range of free-at-the-point-of-contact services via self-referral for a range of mental health and wellbeing concerns, both with and without diagnosis. Since March 2020, the organisation noted significant rises in demand for services. Serious games and their active involvement in eliciting rapid positive behavioural change is associated with their emergence as a key learning tool, with effects transferable to the real world. While a growing number of gamified interventions exist for a range of mental health diagnoses, their presence in the domain of positive psychology is more limited. The chapter reports two studies conducted to enhance the development of an educational game for adult wellbeing.

With increasing sophistication of realism for human-like characters within computer games, this chapter investigates player perception of audio-visual speech for virtual characters in relation to the Uncanny Valley. Building on the findings from both empirical studies and a literature survey, a conceptual framework for the uncanny and speech is put forward which includes qualities of speech sound, lip-sync, human-likeness of voice, and facial expression. A cross-modal mismatch for the fidelity of speech with image can increase uncanniness and as much attention should be given to speech sound qualities as aesthetic visual qualities by game developers to control how uncanny a character is perceived to be.