For years, the best way to get no government funding for a research project was to put “video game” in the title.
The National Institutes of Health, which doles out more than $20 billion in research grants a year, has traditionally rejected projects to develop healthy video games due to fears that video games create unhealthy behaviors, game developers say.
In 2005, the agency gave just $99,000 for preliminary studies for a video game to assist autistic children. Most of the video game projects funded that year examined the link between gaming and violence or gaming and child obesity.
However, the NIH’s stance has softened in recent years as scientists discovered gaming technology could have a positive impact on health. The number of people playing games has also increased, with about 1.2 billion people around the globe playing a game on a computer, gaming console, tablet or phone, according to a 2013 study from Spil Games, an online gaming company.
The institute has started to open up its wallet. In 2014, NIH gave researchers more than $6 million to develop games to do everything from help adults stop smoking, deal with anxiety and even get kids to eat vegetables.
“NIH supports a full range of research using interactive multimedia, including video games,” a spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
The institute gave $1 million to researchers to develop a game that would help lower cravings for drug and alcohol addicts and ensure they adhere to addiction treatment. The game, being developed by Washington, D.C.-based Media Rez, is set to begin a second clinical trial later this year.
Media Rez President Daniel Greenberg didn’t go into specifics during an interview with the Washington Examiner about the game since it is still in development. He did say preliminary results were very promising.
Boston-based Akili Interactive Labs is also performing clinical studies on a mobile gaming platform called Project Evo that would help improve cognitive functions such as memory and processing information.
The game would press users to multitask, an ability that is one of the first capabilities lost due to neurological disorders or brain injuries such as a concussions, Eddie Martucci, co-founder and chief operating officer of Akili, told the Washington Examiner.
The game is largely being studied on smartphones and tablets. The user would navigate a river while on a hovercraft and adapt quickly as obstacles come up.
The game appears to be more complex version of a popular, fast-paced mobile game called Temple Run, in which an adventurer who stole a precious artifact must avoid obstacles while running away from ravenous apes.
Martucci said the company is trying to get Food and Drug Administration approval for the gaming platform as a medical device. The agency recently weighed in on what mobile medical apps require regulatory approval.
Akili’s studies build on a prior 2013 NIH-funded research project that used a 3-D driving game to examine the multitasking ability of seniors.
The institute provided funding for other gaming projects. In 2013, it gave researchers in Houston $428,000 to create games that promote physical activity.
The project might seem odd to parents who must drag their kids away from a game to go outside. However, the game being developed by the University of Houston would have kids create avatars that would explore a virtual world that would show them the benefits of playing outside.
NIH also partially funded one of the biggest success stories for healthy video gaming called SnowWorld, an immersive virtual reality designed to help burn victims manage pain.
While opioids were helpful in managing pain while burn victims rested, that wasn’t the same during daily wound care, such as bandage changes.
“Patients often report re-living their original burn experience during wound care, SnowWorld was designed to help put out the fire,” reads a 2012 article from the University of Washington – Seattle and the University of Washington Harborview Burn Center, which developed the technology.
The patient is placed in an icy, virtual world while healthcare workers redress their wounds. The idea is to have the patient focus on something else.
Getting funding isn’t the only challenge game developers face. They also have to make sure people actually want to play the game.
This is where popular games like Call of Duty and Halo come in. While healthy video games have different objectives than those multimillion-dollar titles, they set the bar in terms of graphics and playability, said Greenberg, a developer who worked in the gaming industry.
Experts cautioned that there are some negative health effects to video games. During a November workshop held by the Institute of Medicine, one expert noted that some games could get players addicted to the game itself.
Certain designs in video games play an important role in addictiveness, like the frequency of rewards, according to Mark Griffiths, a professor at Nottingham Trent University.
Greenberg noted at the workshop that the term “addiction” should be reserved for chemical and substance addictions, according to an institute summary of the event. Withdrawal and relapse symptoms from substance abuse are more severe than behavior compulsions from problematic gaming.
He added that research on a link between gaming and violence is murky.
Nevertheless, transparency in research will be important to ensure healthy video games won’t cause any negative effects, Martha Farah, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said during the workshop.
