1. Highlighting 6D Playbook
Define the Problem
More ex-drug abusers reoffend five years post-release (36.8%) than after two years (22%). The Singapore Prison Service identifies the main challenge as the lack of structure and discipline once individuals leave the Drug Rehabilitation Centre (DRC) and reintegrate into society.
Determine Goals
The primary goals aim to help ex-offenders stay drug-free and reduce recidivism by supporting their commitment, building a sustainable support network, and making resources easily accessible. Secondary goals include promoting healthy lifestyle changes, fostering accountability through goal setting, increasing awareness of available resources, and creating a safe space for sharing experiences. The game goals encourage daily check-ins, active engagement in community forums, and mutual support through commenting, voting, and liking posts to reinforce community participation and recovery.
Decide Target Behaviours and Emotions
The platform encourages behaviours such as having supportive conversations, completing challenges to stay drug-free, competing on streaks of sobriety, sharing problems for community support, and answering quizzes for educational content. These behaviours aim to foster emotions of feeling supported by the community, finding help easily, and being motivated to maintain sobriety.
Describe and Profile Players
The platform serves a diverse group of users with unique challenges. For instance, Raju, a 25-year-old university student, struggles with personal relationships and finds escape through mobile games. James, a 35-year-old chef from Malaysia, faces financial stress as the sole breadwinner and seeks connection with like-minded individuals. Lee Ming Cheng, a 33-year-old accountant, is overwhelmed by work pressure and uses drugs as a coping mechanism. Lastly, Mikhail, a 27-year-old delivery driver, deals with family conflicts and uses smoking as a release.
Despite their differences, all share the common goal of overcoming addiction and rebuilding their lives. Therefore, the platform is designed to offer personalized support and foster community engagement.
Design Gamification Strategy
The platform guides users through recovery stages, focusing on reaffirming purpose and building healthy habits. Interactive elements such as daily challenges, quizzes, and discussion boards allow users to share progress and support each other. We adopted a soothing colour scheme to create a motivational environment, coupled with warm messages like “You’re doing great” to foster empathy and encouragement.
The platform promotes user interaction through social walls, team missions, and mentorship, which build accountability and emotional support—essential for long-term recovery. Additionally, SMART goal-setting, habit-forming exercises, and mindfulness practices help users track progress, manage stress, and reflect on their journey.
2. Addressing a Real World Challenge
The gamified platform aims to help ex-offenders maintain desistance from drugs after leaving a structured regime by helping them internalise their motivations, build a support network, and facilitate easier access to resources. This supports them in making lifestyle changes necessary to maintain sobriety and avoid relapse.
The platform engages users by offering a point system where they complete challenges, track milestones, and earn rewards. These elements provide short-term goals that help keep individuals motivated, especially during moments of vulnerability after release.
It also helps users create a community support network, addressing the need for strong social connections during recovery. Users can comment on each other’s submissions and engage with peers on the discussion forum who are on similar recovery journeys. This network reduces the feelings of isolation that often lead to relapse.
Furthermore, the platform simplifies access to resources that former drug abusers might need during their recovery, such as information on coping strategies, mental health support, and rehabilitation services. By providing these resources in one easily accessible place, it reduces the barriers to finding help, ensuring that users can quickly access the tools they need to manage their sobriety and prevent relapse when facing challenges.
3. Reflection
What have we learnt about drug abusers?
When we first embarked on this project, our understanding of drug abuse and the struggles of individuals in recovery was quite limited. The challenge faced by those in rehabilitation and the need for long-term support wasn’t something that we fully understood. Through research, we learned how under-supported research is during later stages into rehabilitation recovery when the society often assumes they are “cured”. This gap in resources and support significantly increases the risk of relapse, emotional instability, and social isolation.
After engaging with Gametize mentors and hearing stories of those who have gone through recovery, we gained deeper insight into the complexities of the recovery process. These experiences emphasised the emotional and psychological challenges that persist long after rehabilitation and help to reshape our understanding of the recovery journey.
Changing Perspectives
Due to the lack of prior knowledge about drug abusers, their lives and experiences, as well as a lack of exposure to people who fall into this category, our perspectives were influenced heavily by those around us, be it family, friends or school. Initially, we felt that drug abusers were addicted to drugs because they chose to go down this path, and that they only had themselves to fault. We saw drug abuse as a conscious repeated choice, rather than an event that unfortunately happens to some people. After more research into the topic, we have learnt that these people are oftentimes victims, who faced difficult and stressful situations in life, made friends with bad company, and ended up experimenting on drugs, or being exposed to it. We view them as victims of unfortunate circumstances, rather than perpetrators of criminal activities. This understanding has helped us sympathise with them throughout this group project.
Experience with Industry Partner
Our experience with the Gametize mentor has been enlightening, especially in navigating different perspectives. For each change we made to the 6D playbook to enhance its relevance and persuasiveness, the mentor offered valuable viewpoints that we might have overlooked. While we appreciated their insights, it was crucial to balance their suggestions with our vision for the platform. This experience taught us the importance of collaboration and the value of external feedback while maintaining our project’s core objectives.
1. Play the game first.
2. Use the Template game for your own initiatives.
Credits: CHANTEL TEO YI NING, CHEN GUOLONG, CHENG XIN LIN, HU JINGMIN, MUHAMMAD FAWAZ MANSOOR, SEAH WEI JUN SEAN, TAN XIN YU REGIN, THAZIN HTET