Video Games as Neoliberal Therapeutic Techno-Solutions: The Transformative Power of Digital Ludic Wellness Services for Neurodivergence

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.48783/gameviron.v24i24.537

Keywords:

Ludic Therapy, Platforms, Digital Wellness Culture, Neurodivergence, Neoliberalism, gamevironments

Abstract

As ludic therapy becomes increasingly popular, a burgeoning genre of privatised therapy, which utilises video games to treat neurodivergent individuals with disorders such as autism or ADHD, has emerged. These digital ludic wellness services offer privatised therapy, coaching and support to adolescents in a digital environment through the medium of video game play. Through a critical technocultural discourse analysis of the promotional materials and testimonials of three of these digital ludic therapy services – Hero Journey Club (2024a), MindJam (2025a), and Mightier (2025a) – this article explores how digital games are imagined and marketed as therapeutic tools for treating neurodivergence in teens and children. By engaging with theories of neoliberalism, digital wellness culture, and critical neurodiversity studies, this article shows how these services not only commodify video game play, financially profit from the precarity of neurodivergence, and market treatment for neurodivergence as an individual responsibility, but they also imagine video games as digital spaces in which neurodiverse players can develop their socio-emotional capabilities in line with neurotypical (and, by extension, neoliberal) standerds. Through this, we argue that the transformative potential of these emergent digital ludic wellness services for treating neurodivergence will remain limited, so long as they continue to promote the Sisyphean neoliberal ideals of self-responsibilisation, productivity, self-improvement and self-regulation against which concepts of normative and disordered behaviour are measured.

Author Biographies

  • Dr. Deanna Holroyd, Akita International University

    Dr. Deanna Holroyd (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in Global Connectivity at Akita International University, Japan. Her research broadly explores digital culture, with a specific focus on how digital technologies (including video games) impact understandings and experiences of health and wellness, shape diagnosis and treatment, and transform care practices. 

  • Dr. Holly Parker, University of Lincoln

    Holly Parker, PhD, is an Associate Lecturer and Researcher at the University of Lincoln. Her research examines affect and contemporary culture (from video games, novels, and films to ludic therapy), within the cultural backdrop of neoliberalism and postmillennial digital culture. She has published in journals such as Margaret Atwood Studies Journal and Studies of Symbolic Interaction, as well as publishing chapters and edited collections with publishers such as Bloomsbury, Routledge, Sidestone Press and The University of Louisiana State University Press. Her co-edited collection on Affect, Neoliberalism and Twenty-first-century Culture is currently in press with Bloomsbury Academic and her first monograph, All the Feels: Affect, Performance and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Literature is also in production (Bloomsbury Academic). She also works as a copyeditor for Capacious Journal.

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Published

2026-07-20

Issue

No. 24 (2026): Special Issue "Beyond Play"

Section

Peer-reviewed Articles

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