Happy People Games (HPG), the game development company founded by Sharon Wood, announced today that it’s launching a new offshoot brand called The New Forevers. This new venture focuses on creating games with one specific purpose in mind: Memory wellness, and helping those with cognitive decline keep their minds sharp.
I spoke with Wood, CEO of Happy People, about the creation of The New Forevers and the launch of these two games. Wood herself is a veteran of the industry, having helped launch the original Grand Theft Auto in 1997. She launched Happy People Games in with the intention of creating games that offer health and behavioral benefits to its players. One of its previous products, Level Set, uses gaming strategies to improve workplace and school conduct and avert misconduct.
The New Forevers, created under HPG’s subsidiary Happy People Forever, is created with a different goal in mind: To help bring joy, connection, and health benefits to millions of users who have dementia, Alzheimer’s, memory loss and other forms of cognitive decline. The games are designed to be played by not only the person with the illness, but also their friends, families and caregivers.
Wood told GamesBeat, “There are brain-training games on the market, but they can be very dry and you can only do so many crossword puzzles… We wanted something that would preserve [the player’s] dignity that they could find real achievement with. That’s what games can do for any generation: Give them that sense of achievement at being able to do something.”
Timeless Tunes is a memory game based around music. Players are given visual clues to guess popular songs from the 1950s-1970s, which The New Forevers has licensed via partnerships with Sony Music and Universal Music Group. The songs on offer include “Elvis, Motown classics, The Clash and more” according to the company. The game is designed to stimulate and strengthen memory recall while helping to connect different generations through music.
Still Frames is a game meant to be played cooperatively, a turn-based game where players add pictures in response to prompts. The goal, according to Wood, is to spark connection with older, more stable memories and prompt conversations about the stories connected to each picture. The prompt can be something like “Prom” or “First Car,” and users can share photos related to those events.
Wood told GamesBeat that the purpose of the games is not necessarily to be wholly therapeutic or scientific in nature. “As someone who is a mom and a daughter, and who has created a company with the mission to create joy, my most important barometer is ‘Did it make them happy? Did it break the isolation? Did it connect them in new ways?’ Because that’s really the most important thing.”