Las Vegas Vet Center helps Veterans with gaming therapy

A Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Marine Veteran walk into an empty Las Vegas diner at 8 a.m. on a Friday. Instead of coffee and donuts, the group is greeted by a 6 foot long, mutant irradiated cockroach. These Veterans must work together to defeat this monster who has his own plans for breakfast. While this may sound like the beginning of a bad joke or a sci-fi novel, it’s actually a gaming therapy session at the Las Vegas Vet Center.

This group of Veterans gets together once a week to roleplay for a few hours, enjoy some breakfast, and share stories with the coaching of Kriston Anderson, Director of the Las Vegas Vet Center. Anderson manages several weekly gaming therapy groups for Veterans. The Friday morning sessions feature a role-playing game (RPG) set in the post-apocalyptic Fallout universe, a popular video game and setting of a new Amazon Prime hit series. In it, players take the role of survivors who must work together to tell a story, all while battling an unforgiving environment full of hostile creatures and villains. Anderson acts as a narrator as well as referee, giving players the freedom to make their own decisions, but shaping the story based on the consequences of their actions.

“What sets RPGs apart in the therapeutic landscape is their capacity to foster high levels of interaction and social engagement among participants,” said Anderson. “This modality has been observed to facilitate more profound communication and self-disclosure than traditional group therapy sessions. I have had guys in traditional group, individual, and couples counseling for many months and I thought that I knew them pretty well. But once I get these same individuals into the gaming group, so much more comes out that I didn’t know.”

The story that Anderson creates encourages the group to work as a team, using each other’s strengths and covering each other’s weaknesses. In the game, Veteran Army Ranger Jason Cluxton is the group’s medic, a case of art imitating life, as he served as a real-world medic during his tour of duty. Some players prefer to take on characters vastly different from themselves. Marine Corps Veteran Richard Vela plays an irradiated survivor so badly scarred that he is referred to as a “ghoul,” but plays a critical role as he can safely access areas that would hurt his teammates.

Just as in life, each player brings his own perspective to the game.  “This group of Veterans is as diverse as you get,” said Goins. “We come from different services, different states, and different social and political opinions. We can talk about anything because we all respect each other.”

The conversations can move topics drastically throughout the game. “We typically meet for 4 hours, and today we actually played the game for about 45 minutes total,” said Anderson. “The rest of the time was actual sharing and processing. One guy was talking about delivering medical aid to enemy combatants while simultaneously triaging our wounded soldiers, then another talked at length about his combat experiences dealing with captured enemy combatants. These were stories and processes that I have not yet heard from either of them even though I’ve had them in other modalities for well over a year.  They just spontaneously share and process, then we game for a little bit, then back to the processing.”

The groups said that the game often serves as the catalyst for them to get together, but their bond is stronger than the characters in the game. “We have comradery without judgement. Here we can be creative, be social, and solve problems with my brothers in a way most of us haven’t done since we were in the military.” 

Cluxton designed a morale patch for his team that incorporates symbols representing their characters, their branches of service, and Anderson as the leader. Inscribed at the bottom is the motto of the group: “Frater Auxilium Ex,” a Latin phrase that loosely translates to “Help from Your Brother.” 

While the evidence-based results of gaming therapy justify the sessions, the “fallout survivors” of the Las Vegas Vet Center have their own reason for getting together every week. Air Force Veteran Michael Horn summed it up best: “We’re just a group of dudes getting together and having a good time while helping out one another.”