Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - Virtual Worlds Dull Pain

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Water Cooler Games

Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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Virtual Worlds Dull Pain

by Ian Bogost February 25, 2004

categories: Game Design , Health & Medicine Games

The BBC reports that Dr. Hunter Hoffman of the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle is using "immersive virtual worlds" to treat pain in severe burn cases.

SnowWorld, for instance, takes users on an absorbing virtual journey through glaciers and ice caves whilst having to defend themselves from attack by polar bears and penguins.

In another example, Hoffman has created a 9/11 simulator meant to desensitize post-traumatic stress disorder patients.

The article calls the treatments "Virtual Analgesia" and "Virtual Exposure Therapy," respectively: a kind of focused, supersensory kind of meditation. In the past, I've been critical of virtual reality or augmented reality as a more "present" form of representation, but these examples do seem to indicate how explicit separation from the real world might enable a therapeutically useful focus of attention.

(thanks to Andrew)

Comments (4)

Here's another, related article, in the NYTimes, about therapeutic uses of VR.

andrew stern on February 26, 2004 12:40 AM

And more! Surgeons warming up with Super Monkey Ball!

andrew stern on February 26, 2004 4:08 AM

The SMB story is fantastic! I like the idea of using the game as a warm-up... it's not that the game has a direct correlation with surgery... it just provides a bit of orientation for precision work. In this case, measurable medical results aren't as important as that warm-up feeling. It's like a kind of anti-meditation.

Ian Bogost on February 26, 2004 4:32 AM

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