The Town of Light Charity Campaign

This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Xbox Wire.

We’ve just embarked on a campaign for Mental Health Awareness, alongside our publisher Wired Productions, and until September 6, 25% of the profits from every digital sale of the game will be going towards a fund for Mental Health… Why? To understand the relevance, I have to take you back to The Town of Light, why we started the project and what it means to so many people.

I started work on The Town of Light back in 2014. My background was in theatre and film, but for this project I set about a completely new objective, with a new medium. I wanted to create an interactive narrative experience to talk about mental health and to do my part to dispel the stigma that surrounds it.

Through my research I very quickly discovered the ‘Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra’ – a now defunct mental hospital, nestled in the hills of Tuscany. Just a short distance from my home, this facility held over 5,000 patients at its peak, was the backdrop for many thousands of lives, and quickly became known as somewhere people went and didn’t come back from. The Town of Light tells a story within this Asylum, its protagonist Renée a composite of many carefully researched historical records, her story is not for the faint of hearted but within it lay many truths and lessons from the past.

In one way or another mental health has touched all of our lives; whether we’ve suffered personally or seen a friend of family member weighed down, in silence or otherwise, 50-60 million people suffer with depression in Europe alone and it is truly mad that in 2017 there is still a stigma around mental health and those that suffer.

The motivation behind The Town of Light has always been one of compassion, to shine a light on mental illness and to tell the stories of those who suffered without a voice in the past. So, to now have an opportunity to help people in the present, I have to say that it’s more than we really hoped for. Please join us, have the conversation, talk to a friend in need and help us in the fight to drive mental health awareness and support great charities like Take This, Inc.

If you want to find out more about the campaign check out the following page: http://www.wiredproductions.com/charity