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Xbox and Calm are teaming up for the zen art of video-game soundscapes

The partnership is part of a broader push from Microsoft’s Xbox into mental health awareness.

Xbox and Calm are teaming up for the zen art of video-game soundscapes

[Source Photos: Sea of Thieves, Jess Loiterton/Pexels, and rawpixel]

BY Connie Lin2 minute read

Video games and serenity might seem like opposing forces, at a surface glance. Case in point, Xbox is famed for wildly popular combat warfare games like Call of Duty and Halo, as well as high-octane-fueled thrills such as Grand Theft Auto, which might just be an adrenaline junkie’s paradise.

But many gamers will tell you that video games are their zen art—an escape from the day-to-day stresses of real life, into a virtual world where new adventures can be discovered around every corner, the villains are obvious, and your purpose is clear—everything else just fades away, like noise into the background.

Now, Xbox is teaming up with the pandemic breakout meditation app Calm to bring its own noise in the background to Calm’s platform for soothing soundscapes. In a quest to share the idiosyncratic tranquility of video games with a greater audience, the partnership will offer two new, video game-themed soundscapes. One will spirit listeners away to a ship on the water, surrounded by the whirling waves and chattering birds that live in Sea of Thieves, a Microsoft-developed video game where players are ocean-faring pirates who battle rival voyagers to ferry their loot to various trading outposts.

In the other soundscape, listeners will be treated to the “ambient alien sounds” of the space ring Zeta Halo, from Halo Infinite, an installment in the Halo series in which human supersoldiers must fend off intragalactic species in a post-apocalyptic universe.

Both will be available through Calm’s Premium membership tier, and Xbox will also offer three months of Calm Premium free, then 50% off the first year, as a perk to purchasers of its Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription.

The partnership is part of a broader push from Xbox into mental health awareness. Among its other initiatives, The Coalition, an Vancouver-based Xbox Game Studio, will donate 1% of profits from its Gears of War games to organizations working to fight suicide and loneliness. It will also sell a T-shirt benefitting the Crisis Text Line, a mental health messaging service. Throughout December, Xbox-sponsored gamers will host Twitch Takeovers with guest streamers to share their favorite feel-good games and stress relief tactics, and Xbox Ambassadors will share stories on how gaming has shaped their mental wellness.

That question, of what exactly are video games’ effects on mental wellness, has been hotly debated over the past years—particularly when it comes to youth whose brains are still malleable. Historically, parents often feared that violent video games could agitate their children into fugue states of rage and aggression. However, more recent literature has suggested just the opposite.

Last month, a study published by the University of Oxford found that 44% of adolescents who game heavily reported a better sense of well-being than those who game less, or don’t play video games at all. Others have claimed that video games could help ease depression, in both children and adults. Companies have even begun to crop up that seek to treat mental illness with video game therapy, such as DeepWell, a startup from gaming and medical industry veterans, which hopes its scientifically engineered games can attack neurological disorders. Developers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab have also launched games such as Paradise Island, which rewards players for taking care of their mental health in a fun manifestation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Xbox’s partnership with Calm is now the latest in the rising trend, which hopes to banish the stigmas around video games and instead celebrate them—as virtual, but no-less-real worlds where minds can flourish.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Connie Lin is a staff editor for the news desk at Fast Company. She covers various topics from cryptocurrencies to AI celebrities to quirks of nature More


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