Re-Mission, Hopelab’s first program, was inspired by co-founder Pam Omidyar’s bold idea to create a video game to help young cancer patients with treatment compliance. This history remains deeply embedded in Hopelab’s mission to support evidence-based innovations that can bring about a world where young people, especially Black, Brown, and Queer young people, are thriving, free from barriers to their mental health and well-being.
Created in 2004, Re-Mission is based on the vision of Hopelab founder and board member Pam Omidyar. Early in her career, Pam worked as a researcher in an immunology lab. As a video game enthusiast, she had the idea that a video game for young people with cancer might play a positive role in helping them fight their disease. Hopelab worked with doctors, nurses, psychologists, cancer experts, video game experts, and young people with cancer to create this groundbreaking game.
In Re-Mission, players pilot a nanobot named Roxxi as she travels through the bodies of fictional cancer patients, destroying cancer cells, battling bacterial infections, and managing the effects of cancer and its treatments. The game addresses the importance of:
Re-Mission helped define a popular new subgenre of video games, now referred to as “serious games,” which encourage players to carry out activities and learn skills that teach important lessons. In the case of Re-Mission, the games were a fun, interactive way to explain to young cancer patients why they must take oral chemotherapy for years despite unpleasant side effects. Understanding the needs of patients was pivotal in the design and testing of the game. That co-creation process is a principle Hopelab carries through to our current work in partnership with young people and organizations working to improve youth mental health and well-being.
From 2004 to 2005 Hopelab conducted a randomized controlled trial to gauge the efficacy of Re-Mission as it relates to compliance with prescribed chemotherapy and antibiotic treatments, cancer-related knowledge, and self-efficacy. The study enrolled 375 cancer patients ages 13-29. Results indicated that playing Re-Mission led to:
These findings were published in August 2008 in the journal Pediatrics. Results of a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study of Re-Mission showing the impact of the game on neurological processes were presented the same year at the 10th International Congress of the Society of Behavioral Medicine and later published in PLoS One.
Confident in the game’s clinical effectiveness, Hopelab deployed Re-Mission to young cancer patients through a network of partners, including Cigna, the Starlight Foundation, and the ESA Foundation. Delivering interventions at scale would not be possible without a devoted network of philanthropic partners, hospital systems, clinicians, nurses, child life specialists, and caregivers. To date, Hopelab has distributed more than 200,000 copies of Re-Mission in 81 countries. In doing so, we’ve helped 135,000 patients adhere to their cancer treatments and gain a greater sense of personal empowerment over their disease.
Further clinical trials based on fMRI data showed an explicit link between the excited states caused by Re-Mission gameplay and susceptibility to retaining knowledge about treatment compliance. A deeper understanding of this research was incorporated into the development of a series of mobile games released in 2012 — Re-Mission 2.
Hopelab’s learnings from our first project would inform much of our future and current work, providing insights into the link between behavioral science and physical health, youth co-creation, the power of partnerships, and investment opportunities.
Interactivity and Reward-related Neural Activation During a Serious Video game
