InformationWeek's Geekend: Gamers Battle Cancer

NEW YORK, Sept. 12, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- PR Newswire – Remember when you were a kid and your mother told you that video games would rot your brain? Well, now you can finally tell mom she was wrong all this time.

It turns out that video games can actually help cancer patients, as well as children with other types of ailments, such as diabetes. In fact, Saturday Night Light Live alum Will Ferrell is hosting a special charity auction to benefit cancer patients. The prize: a chance to play video games with Ferrell on Twitch.

The notion of video games as an unexpected health benefit has got Geekend author David Wagner thinking about the power of these games. Spending hours in front of a screen searching for lost treasure or trying to outmaneuver that troll on Level 7 has some perks.

In his latest Geekend column for InformationWeek, Wagner observers:

"A game called Re-mission 2 has had wonderful results with people aged 13-29. Young cancer patients have difficulty sticking to a routine or seeing how their medicine is helping. So a group called HopeLab designed a video game to show what the body is going through when fighting cancer."

If that doesn't get your mom to rethink her stance on video games, nothing will.

Each week, Wagner takes an often humorous look at a variety of scientific studies about the convergence of technology and human behavior to see how we're changing our world, and how the world we built is changing us. This week, Wagner dusts off his Dungeon & Dragons set to battle cancer. Check it out here.

Contact:
Scott Ferguson
Community Editorial Director, UBM Tech
212-600-3208
Scott.Ferguson@UBM.com

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SOURCE InformationWeek