Upside to Video Game Violence

At least there is one shining light in all this video game violence: a study showing games help get through pain.

Nicole sent me this article that was about video games in hospitals helping people (not just children) through unavoidable pain before and after surgeries or injections (the spinal tap type. The most affective games that took patients minds off the hand-in-painfully-cold-water test, were games like sports and fighting games. Tetris was found most likely to cause pain.

Just kidding. At least they did show it didn't help at all.

Even though this is something I already knew and even handed out good money for, I was glad to see a dissenting (ascenting?) opinion about violence in gaming.

To that I would also like to add the fact that getting immersed into a game like GTA, that is so vivid and real (forgetting my last post), it's more therapeutic and relaxing to someone like me. Not that my life is hard by any means, but having an alternate reality to wander around in is as immersive, if not moreso, than a Tom Clancy book. Except with video games, your making the story your own and not wasting away, unmotivated, unexcited, in a chair reading someone else's script.

Also Read: The Escapist - Despite All Our Games

"Some gamers get caught in a Skinner box of their own design, and keep leaping on the lever until their only friends have guild tags after their name and the whole house smells funny."