Media Coverage

Powering Up: Are Computer Games Changing Our Lives?

By Rebecca Mileham Science Museum TechKnow Series

Can Games Tackle Physical Problems?

Games’ potential to help people recover from physical and psychological injury (not just those inflicted by games themselves) has been under test in a number of labs, hospitals and companies. Back in 1988, a study with upper-limb burn victims found good rehabilitation results using computer games controlled by a range of large and small joysticks. Therapists found that games helped their patients overcome fears, as well as distracting them from pain. Far from being sterile or artificial, players found the computer-based therapy encouraged natural hand and arm movements by providing feedback.

And the power of game-based therapy to motivate people undergoing therapy has been underlined continuously since then. In 1993, scientists were already working with 20 people experiencing spasticity in their arm as a result of brain injury. The results showed that the game generated a much wider range of motion than a rote exercise. Indeed, many participants carried on playing their ‘therapy’ even when they’d completed the session. What’s not to like?

Life-Changing Play

GestureTek is a California-based company with an intriguing story. It pioneered the use of camera-enabled computer control – the art of telling a computer what to do simply by moving your body. Today, GestureTek technology is used in countless locations from hospitals to top corporate offices, for therapy, for videoconferencing and in toys (it’s licensed to Sony for the EyeToy). But it started out with very different uses, as its creator Vincent John Vincent explained.

‘Back in 1986 when Francis MacDougall and I first created this technology, I had just graduated with a psychology degree and was working as a psychotherapist’, Vincent told me. ‘The technology got people excited about engaging their full body in virtual activities, and so part of our intention was to use it as a tool in psychotherapy and rehabilitation. However, most of the early applications were in the area of live stage performance, educational and experiential museum and science center installations, as well as a TV production tool.’

The stage performances to which Vincent refers were something really new. His idea was to reverse the role of the dancer, from one of dancing to the music, to creating music and visual effects directly from the performer’s movements. He worked with MacDougall to make the Mandala Virtual Reality System which allowed Vincent to use his skills in dance, music and juggling to create unique stage shows.

‘In 1995, a therapist purchased a system to use in clinical work, and to do research’, says Vincent. ‘The results were positive right from the start, with patients consistently doing their therapy for two to three times longer, and being two to three times more eager to participate in sessions. There are now over 200 systems in therapeutic use around the world.’

Ron Kelusky now leads GestureTek’s health division, working with a version of the technology called IREX. He explains why the system is so suited for rehabilitation. ‘We’ve found that people have a tendency to want to engage with virtual reality games even if they aren’t usually motivated by conventional exercise, or tend to lose interest over time. It’s a mixture of cognitive and physical stimulation, which can lead to a reduction in the amount of support people need to live their life.’

In a typical game, the system projects a player’s image onto a computer screen, where they can interact with a virtual game or activity that automatically adjusts to their capability – and stretches it, bit by bit.

‘Our technology is unencumbered: there’s no remote device, no wires, you don’t need to have tracking dots stuck on you. You’re immersed in a graphical experic01. 21 can computer games affect your health? ence so that you can react in real time. It’s also realistic – if I move my arm 90 degrees from my hip, that’s what I see on the screen’, Ron told me. That’s of great importance when the change from lifting your arm 10 degrees to 20 degrees might be an incredible physical achievement.

In one notable experiment, patients who’d had a stroke more than a year previously – and thus tended to be resistant to further therapy – tried playing games using IREX. To enhance players’ motion, balance, stepping and walking skills, scientists asked them to play virtual games involving swimming with sharks, or snowboarding down a narrow slope.

The experiments were intensive. The patients, who had experienced paralysis on one side of their body as a result of a stroke, played the games for an hour a day over a 4-week period. Players of the snowboarding game had to leap out of the way of obstacles while those in the swimming game bobbed up and down to avoid being virtually eaten. After the therapy, the majority of players reported in the post-test questionnaire that their use of the weaker limb was improved. Daily activities such as getting in and out of the bath, stepping onto the kerb or even putting on trousers were now possible for them.

Brain imaging after the experiment showed the root of the improvement. ‘The games seem to create some cortical redevelopment’, says Kelusky, ‘and they’ve now found the same in people with cerebral palsy. The more that people manage to do reaching and flexing exercises, the less need there is for surgical intervention or medication.’