Games Are Still Good For You

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Still think all video games are evil? Then you haven't been paying attention. Read on to learn about gaming's good side.

4. They can ease your pain.

Okay, so we openly admit to faking a cold just to skip school and spend more alone time with Super Mario Bros. But could it be that in our duplicity, we were unknowingly tapping into the potential of the video game as a therapeutic healer?

Workers at the Glenrose Rehabilitation Center in Edmonton seem to think so, at least when it comes to Wii Sports. They've been using the motion-based activities of Nintendo's hit game to help treat patients suffering from movement and balance issues caused by brain injury. Dr. Grigore Burdea believes patients prefer the inherent challenges and rewards that come with gaming to other, more tedious forms of rehabilitation, which often leave them bored and frustrated.

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"The problem here isn't the patient not wanting to do it," said Burdea. "The patient wants to do it too much ... People are addicted to games, but in this case, the addiction is towards a good cause."

You'd be hard-pressed to find a cause more honorable than the one taken up by Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In fact, the center's monthly video game socialization therapy program was spearheaded by a nonprofit soldier's aid group actually called Cause. For soldiers plagued by both physical and emotional injuries sustained in the field, the group gaming session is a boon.

"When you're just sitting in your room thinking about what happened, it drives you crazy," said Army Spec. Juan Alcibar, who suffered a leg injury while serving in Baghdad. "This is something to get your mind off your sorrows. . . . I wish they had it every week."

The benefit of gaming as a pain distraction was the topic of a 2006 study at West Virgina's Wheeling Jesuit University. Researchers examining the effects of six different game genres found that sports and action games provided dramatic distraction levels from pain.

Dr. Bryan Raudenbus, Director of Undergraduate Research, put the findings into perspective. ""There are implications here for children, adolescents, and young adults, all of whom are the primary users of such video games. Physicians could possibly implement this in their office to aid in distraction during a painful procedure such as injection or dental work."

We're not sure Madden 08 would be a worthy replacement for Novocain, but we're willing to, uh, give it a shot.

5. They can brighten your day.

In a bad mood? Feeling a bit stressed? Then consider turning that frown upside down with Mindhabits. Initially designed by Dr. Mark Baldwin, a psychology professor at Montreal's McGill University, the online game purports to help users develop positive thinking habits through a series of games based around the psychological triggers of inhibition, association and activation. By clicking on smiling faces or circling 'positive' words, players are theoretically relieving stress and reshaping their attitudes towards acceptance and rejection.

If happy faces aren't your thing, maybe Doom is. Researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland have found success determining the severity of clinical depression by using a first-person simulator (very loosely) based on Duke Nukem. A 2007 study overseen by Neda Gould suggested that those suffering from depression had a much harder time navigating a virtual town than otherwise healthy control subjects.

Gould believes this could play a major role in determining the severity of clinical depression. "Our results suggest that spatial memory performance on a virtual reality navigation task may represent a quantifiable measure to assess possible hippocampal deficits in patients with depression," she writes.

Hmmm...first-person shooters could stave off depression? No wonder we smile whenever we think of Bioshock.