A Generative AI Driven Interactive Narrative Serious Fame for Stress Relief and Its Randomized Controlled Pilot Study

TL;DR

This study developed 'Reverie', a Gen-AI driven serious game for stress relief, and found it effectively reduced stress and improved emotional regulation in a 14-day pilot with students.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Gen-AI based framework for serious stress-relief games and provides preliminary evidence of its effectiveness and user acceptance.

Findings

Significant reduction in stress levels (p=.016) after using 'Reverie'

Excellent user experience reported by participants

Improvements observed in cognitive emotion regulation strategies

Abstract

Background: Stress has become a widespread phenomenon, and serious games are increasingly recognized as engaging tools for stress relief. However, despite the rapid advancement of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen-AI), its integration into stress-relief serious games remains insufficiently explored. Objective: This study aimed to address this gap by developing "Reverie", an Gen-AI driven serious game powered by the Unity engine and ChatGPT, and to preliminarily evaluate its effectiveness in stress reduction, user experience, and cognitive emotion regulation. Methods: A 14-day pilot study was conducted with 20 students experiencing moderate to high levels of stress. Participants used "Reverie" as a stress-relief intervention. Stress levels, user experience, and cognitive emotion regulation strategies were assessed to examine the game's feasibility and preliminary efficacy. Results: The results showed that "Reverie" significantly reduced participants' stress levels over the intervention period (p=.016*), indicating a cumulative positive effect. In addition, the game demonstrated excellent user experience and was associated with improvements in cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Conclusions: This study proposes a Gen-AI driven design framework for serious games for stress relief. Besides, this pilot study provides initial support for the feasibility and promise of combining LLM-driven gameplay in a personalized digital intervention context.