Via Wonderland comes this Australian news clip of a game aimed at helping kids work through problems via role playing real-life situations. Called Reach Out!, the game got off to a good start with a $500K Australian from the Sony Foundation, and describes itself thusly:

Reach Out Central (ROC) is an interactive program that's designed to help you explore how your thinking, behaviour and feelings all interact with each other. Choose your own character and try out different ways of reacting to real-life situations. On the way, you might change the way you feel by changing the way you think - it's easier than you'd expect.

Some of these newer games-that-aren't-really are going in some pretty interesting directions - I wonder how effective this kind of training (therapy? something?) is, but I suppose anything that opens discussions about touchy issues and problems is not usually a bad thing.

Reach Out Central: a game for tough times [Wonderland]

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