We've reported in the past that a hospital was using Gameboys in lieu of anaesthetic for superficial surgery. The concentration a player had on the game meant that he or she effectively ignored the pain levelled by the surgeon's knife. While this seems remarkable in itself, another research team at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia have extended these findings, releasing a report suggesting that sports and beat-em-ups are the best games for reducing real-life pain.
The Wheeling study compared several different genres of games in their effects on pain. Six types of games were used: action, puzzle, arcade, fighting, sports, and boxing, all varieties that encourage high attention and stimulus. (Games such as RPGs and graphical adventures were likely left out of the survey for their low-impact nature.) The game types most effective in distracting from pain, meted out by cold pressor tests after 10 minutes of each subject playing a particular game type, were the sports and fighting games.
That should confuse the critics.
