Games are Good for You

2. They can help you focus.

We know, it sounds crazy. After all, how many homework assignments were left unfinished due to late nights spent searching for the Triforce?

Too many, to be sure, but for kids suffering from ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), the inability to focus and finish a task goes beyond a love of Link.

Though in its infancy, the burgeoning field of gaming as a means to contend with the negative effects of ADHD was bolstered by a Cornell study demonstrating the positive effects of video game training in ADHD-afflicted youth. Even at an early age, kids seemed to respond well to games as a treatment method, showing significant improvement over their non-gaming peers.

This comes on the heels of an emerging effort aimed at directly contending with focus issues by tapping into brainwaves themselves. Expanding upon technology first created by NASA, the whimsically-named Play Attention system allows ADHD children to control customized video games simply using their minds.

Via a red bicycle helmet lined with sophisticated sensors, children are rewarded for focusing on certain gameplay elements, watching their scores rise as they maintain focus on a moving onscreen object. Over time, they begin to understand that paying attention produces higher and higher scores, equating focus with success. It might sound far-fetched, but as of 2006 Play Attention has been adopted in over 450 school systems nationwide.

And you thought helmets were for the slow kids.

Watch DDR Revolution Video Watch Wii Sports Trailer

3. They can help you lose weight.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of marketing reps, the image of the overweight, undernourished gamer is, at last, slowly fading. Still, there's no question that gluing your butt to a couch for six hours a day doesn't do anything good for that spare tire, not to mention your proclivity for high cholesterol and heart disease.

So how do you get a gamer to work out? Simple: build exercise into the game.

And in the case of West Virginia, build it into your curriculum.

Anyone who has been to a mall in the past five years has seen Konami's Dance Dance Revolution work its cardiovascular magic on unsuspecting teens, but state and school officials in the Appalachian state have upped the ante by partnering with Konami to put DDR machines in all 765 of its schools. School officials see it as an innovative way to engage kids in physical education, while the kids see it as, well, video games in school. Not exactly a hard sell.

For those of us no longer stuck in classrooms all day, there's certainly no shortage of excer-games designed to fit in the living room. From the myriad home versions of DDR to Sony's Eyetoy Kinetic, consoles have certainly tried helping you shed a pound or two without boring yourself into a stupor. Just watch what they did to one of our own in Yahoo's infamous Project Gutbuster (Mike has kept the weight off, by the way).

And of course, anyone with a copy of Wii Sports knows that an evening of virtual tennis has real-world ramifications, particularly in the triceps and back muscles. Is anyone working on Wii Masseuse?