Newsworthy is an interview show that aims to talk about the intersection of news and games with newsmakers and thought leaders both inside and outside the game industry.

Today we sit down with Erin Reynolds to discuss using video games as therapy.

In 2014, Reynolds turned her master’s thesis project at USC’s Interactive Media Program into a video game made up of the stuff of nightmares, literally. Nevermind was designed to virtually drop people into the terrors of a trauma patient’s psyche. A player’s real heart rate is monitored in the game to tweak the difficulty and adjust Nevermind’s ability to rattle the player.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Flying cars, robot servants, personal jetpacks: This was the life envisioned for us by the futurists, science fiction writers and gadget makers of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. And one of the most memorable of those fictional inventions was the famed Dick Tracy watch.

While the Apple Watch may be one of the most advanced takes on that famous idea, it’s far from the first smartwatch to deliver on a comic book future. The history of smartwatches, computerized watches that deliver more than the time, dates back to the ’70s, and gaming on those watches has just as long a history.

Throughout that somewhat muddled five-decade period, gaming has pushed the technology forward. It was gaming that helped turn calculators into handheld toys. It was gaming that inspired Casio to try to create a new sort of technophile lifestyle. And even today, it is gaming that is empowering a new generation of developers to push the boundaries of what a smartwatch can do.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.