Not Just Child's Play
With their unique ability to distract, educate, and entertain, video games are increasingly being used to help heal and soothe the sick
A teenager with Hodgkin's lymphoma blasts away at cancer cells in a computer game, all the while learning to do a better job of conquering her own cancer. A traumatized soldier returns to the cybergenerated streets of Iraq, in the hopes that he may be able to one day cope with the horrors of war. A young boy with severe burns delves into a virtual wonderland of snowmen, penguins, and snowballs, escaping, if only for a little while, the unbearable pain of having his wounds cleaned and dressed twice a day.
Welcome to the upside of computer games. Their legendary powers of distraction and ability to create synthetic worlds are turning one of the most popular--and disparaged--entertainment media into a promising and potentially powerful medical tool. Long derided as the enemy of health for transforming children into weapon-loving, overweight zombies, computer games are now proving effective for everything from reducing pain and managing chronic disease to treating post-traumatic stress disorder and promoting fitness and exercise. Although these so-called serious games are still in their infancy, there's a growing body of evidence backing their health-improvement claims. "Games can be extremely motivational and useful in therapeutic and medical settings," says Albert "Skip" Rizzo, a clinical psychologist and director of the Virtual Environments Lab at the University of Southern California. "There are a lot of researchers looking at this technology because it makes things fun, and it's very engaging."
Take that. Anyone who doubts this characterization need only attempt to come between a child and a Game Boy. Yet marshal that same hyperfocus in the service of, say, reducing pain, and it becomes a virtue. In Re-Mission, for instance, a new computer game for young cancer patients, the Tomb Raider-ish Roxxi leads players on a biological journey through the body. The patients zap cancer and infectious cells with chemotherapy and antibiotics, reinforcing the importance of keeping up treatment. The game is the brainchild of HopeLab in Palo Alto, Calif., a nonprofit founded by Pamela Omidyar (the wife of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar) that focuses on improving the health and quality of life of young people with chronic illnesses. Users say Re-Mission is as fun and challenging as popular commercial games. But it was designed to educate kids about cancer and its side effects and motivate them to stick with their treatments and promptly report symptoms. "It's hard to fight a teenager when they won't take their medicine," says Janet Franklin, an oncologist and clinical director of the Leukemia Lymphoma Program at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. "Video games draw teenagers in in a way we can't do with conferences and pamphlets."
Take Monzerratt Patino, 15, who has been playing Re-Mission since she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma two years ago. "Before I played the game, I didn't really know how sick I could get if I didn't take my medicine," says Patino, who lives in Los Angeles. "The game explained how my white cells get affected by things and what happens to me," she says. "It was cool."
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