THQ announced today it has obtained the exclusive rights to make video games based on the teachings of spirituality expert and alternative medicine proponent Dr. Deepak Chopra, Gamasutra reports.

“We look forward to translating Dr. Chopra’s teachings and practices into a video game that provides gamers with a truly unique and rewarding experience,” said Martin Good, Executive Vice President, THQ Kids, Family, Casual Games, and Global Online Services.

Chopra worked as a doctor and professor before studying traditional Indian Ayurvedic medicine under the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the ’80s. A prolific self help and new age author and public speaker, Chopra has drawn criticism for his support of alternative medicine and his conflation of scientific evidence with faith healing practices.

On one level, 51-year-old James Arthur Ray—who, the year after his life-altering television appearance authored the runaway bestseller Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want, and these days is involved in a homicide investigation—is just another Oprah guest gone bad.

On another level, he is a wakeup call for anyone who would dismiss all New Age dabbling as merely risk-free recreation, like incense and crystals.

Two people have died and 19 others were taken to hospital after being overcome while in a sauna-like room at a spiritual retreat in Arizona.

Investigators are speaking to staff and guests and carrying out toxicity tests in an effort to find out what happened.

Reports said some of the sweatbox participants had paid up to $9,000 for their stay at the retreat. [video]

Marilyn Ferguson, the author of the 1980 bestseller “The Aquarian Conspiracy” and a galvanizing influence on participants in scores of alternative groups that coalesced as the New Age movement, died Oct. 19 at her home in Banning.

Ferguson was embraced as a beacon. Her book became “the most commonly accepted statement of Movement ideals and goals,” wrote J. Gordon Melton in the New Age Encyclopedia.