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Andrew Alfidi

Intro to Rhetoric and Composition

Professor Ferrara

December 11, 2020

The True Nature of Gaming and Its Impact On the Medical World

It is no secret technology has massively overtaken and reshaped the world we currently

live in. A once mindless thought, technology is simply the application of the human mind to

further develop day-to-day interactions. From the barbarian forging a stone tool out of his vast

resources to the latest MacBook by Apple, technology, by nature, is ever evolving, its existence

resulting in an alteration in the function of society. The net result: a society searching for the

newest and latest technological advancement, hoping to revolutionize the area of expertise they

are individually familiar with. Nonetheless, certain aspects of our society face paramount

advancements in order to combat the latest societal threat. The medical community probing for

the cure for a world crisis, facing evading threats from the Ebola Virus and the Corona Virus.

While others might necessarily not need such an imperative need for the newest technological

advancement, think the basketball community, whose field does not necessarily need any

technology to focus on improving a player’s success rate when shooting a basketball.

Nonetheless, basketball, along with all sports internationally seek the latest machinery and

technology to develop a player’s form or focus on methods of recovery a game. To be frank, it is

safe to assume at this point in society, technology has made its way into every aspect of life,

ultimately providing a net betterment to society. With all this being mentioned, it is quite

puzzling to witness such imperative areas to development lack in technological advancements

and new methods of development. Despite facing this predicament, a quirky, yet effective

technological tool has been present in youths’ minds for generations: Video Games.

Video games, which on its own has gone through drastic improvements and changes

within its industry, albeit being a technology driven industry can revolutionize key areas in

society. While it may seem to be a controversial yet random selection to fix aspects of society,

video games, and the world it develops, has all the necessities to build a successful cinder block

of society. While video games receive a negative stigma surrounding their use, the possibilities

unlocked by its technology allows for advancements in our medical practices and education.

Before identifying and evaluating the correlation between the video games and the key areas of

society, it is imperative to understand the video games industries own foundation, development,

and history.

An industry which began as far back in the early 1950s by the intelligences of educators

and students at MIT and a spark of curiosity, did not reach mainstream popularity until the 1970s

and 1980s. By 1962, the small community within the industry unlocked an entire realm and

possibility within its industry: two-player games. A commonplace concept nowadays,

multiplayer in videogames was revolutionary in creating the mega-industry it is known to be

today; the ability to interact with a tool of technology with another individual can not be

duplicated. While the statement seems to be an exaggeration to further the development of the

argument, the ability to build towards an ultimate goal as a team is one of the strongest programs

to build an individual’s character. This encompasses the strengthening of essential traits for

individuals to have in the workplace, engaging the brain in communication, problem-solving,

and multitasking. Many years later, the Atari released the “Atari 2600”, a home console that

features joysticks and interchangeable game cartridges which played multi-colored games,
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effectively kicking off the second generation of the video game consoles, being the console,

many generations refer to as their introduction to video games, as the Atari 2600 birthed the

mainstream video game industry. Despite some hardships including the 1983 video game crash,

the video game industry blossomed to the mega-industry it has become today generating a

massive 30.4 billion dollars in 2016 in the United States allow a distinct improvement from MIT

students’ creating a game of tic-tac-toe on the newest cutting-edge machinery.

While the industry has undoubtedly blossomed and evolved from its grounded beginning

seventy years ago, the video game industry has taken its far share of notches. To begin with,

since its inception and first ‘boom”, the video game industry has been scrutinized and questioned

heavily by skeptics who would have never believed it the industry’s ability to succeed longer;

being viewed as a “child’s activity” and slowly evolving into a believed determined to children’s

development many critics have questioned the potential effects it has on its users. This believe

has no chance to fizzle out either, as since their inception, video games have been subject of

concern due to their depicts of violence, which has only heightened as years past and visual

detailing improves to make video games more realistic. For the better half of the last two

decades, gaming has been linked to a state of violent behavior, a scapegoating attempt to destroy

the relevance and success of the industry. As the industry only grows, and graphics and

advertising only become more prominent, the debate surrounding its effects only worsen. Despite

this, multiple studies have provided otherwise, believing “the interpretations of these effects have

varied dramatically” (American Psychological Association), as well as mentioning, “Scant

evidence has emerged that makes any casual or correlational connection between playing violent

games and actually committing violent crimes” (Society for Media Psychology and Technology).

Although there was limited evidence to suggest video games enact violent behavior intentionally
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or otherwise, compromises, regulations, and censorships have been implemented to deter or

otherwise inform potential users of the content within a developer’s game.

While video games receive a negative stigma surrounding their use, the possibilities

unlocked by its technology allows for advancements in our education system, medical practices,

and social standards.

Many students and parents have issues with the current curriculum, calling it outdated.

Video games can be incorporated into the education system and result in students being more

engaged and active participants in their learning. Look no further than clinical learning and

medical training, a hyper-competitive field with medical students looking to outperform their

fellow students. This trend is evident, and recognized by Suraiya Rahman, a medical director and

assistant professor at Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, who

notices that “gaming can appeal to some of the common traits of medical students and

physicians”. Dr. Rahman when discovery the correlation between video games and student

learning first understood the vast reach of video games in his students’ lives. Rahman understood

despite the professionalism that comes with being a medical student and ultimately a medical

doctor, his students are “teenagers”, “millennials”, who are “playing these games where they are

in isolation of their environment, but they’re communicating with others playing the same game

all over the world”. Dr. Rahman, wanting to build off this familiarity, especially in potential

stress-inducing scenarios that can arise during a medical practice, attempted to incorporate a

style of learning that activated the same skills and thinking as the video games the students grew

up with. Dr. Rahman incorporated three medical education games to help students master various

skills in virtual medical settings, including scenarios that focus on diagnostic reasoning when

provided with specific exams and pictorial representations. As gamers, rather than medical
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students, the student can fall back into the gaming mindset they developed from a young age, or

at the very least develop a new way of thinking rather the critic mindset being a medical student

can place them in. The students found that when approaches with the games they were able to be

successfully test and train their skills while simultaneously having the freedom to fail and learn

from their mistakes similarly to how one might fail a mission in a video game and restart from a

certain checkpoint. The user then can identify what when wrong on the previous attempt that led

to their failure and adjust as needed. The American Medical Association, in their analyze of Dr.

Rahman’s practices described it as, “reinforcing the concepts they need to master” all due to the

nature of gaming, which “offer unique opportunities for students to conduct risk-benefit analysis

and follow tailored learning plans.”

The practices developed by Dr. Rahman are overtly distinctive and stray from the normal

education techniques used in the western developed world. However, alongside Dr. Rahman,

many instructors have reconsidered the education program and their own personal instructor.

Professors have found flaws in the traditional model of teaching, finding it to lack empathy and

discourage students to not want to learn. This traditional method is teaching was scrutinized by

Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and philosopher, labeling the method as, “The Banking

Concept”. Friere details the traditional method to be counterintuitive for the purpose of teaching

and education, believing students are ultimately discouraged to learn. Friere reasoning stems

from the student-teacher relationship, which he points out to “reveal its fundamentally narrative

character.” If the teacher holds a lecture style course and preach to students as if it was

“motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable”, the listeners will feel detached from

reality, disconnected from the lecture, holding no significance in the words of the narrator.

Friere, rather proposes a teacher approach he labeled as, “Critical Pedagogy” which emphasizes
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an approach by instructors that encourage students to question and challenge not only the content

being discussed, but the instructor themselves. Opposed to a lifeless, lagging lecture, Friere

encourages communications between students and teachers, allowing for the student-teacher

relationship to be a mutual and benefit relationship.

Therefore, the idea such as Dr. Rahman no longer seems as farfetched as it once sounded.

Dr. Rahman clearly embraced Friere’s Critical Pedagogy by incorporating the video game

culture into his teaching with students. [Link] found the three integrated interactive lessons

to allow his medical students to create an environment where questioning and experimenting are

welcomed. By making lectures and lesson plans interactive, students find the material to be

approachable and consumed through practice problems that result in risk-benefit analysis by the

learner.

This encorpation of gaming into the medical teaching environment does not remain

isolated in its potential. Video games (and its technology within) have been hypothesized to

reach beyond the boundaries of teaching medicine and into the medical world. Video games can

be incorporated into medical practices as it will better success rates of surgeries and will advance

current medical thought and practice. The idea began to be examined in the early 2000s, with

Microsoft’s release of the Xbox 360, which featured revolutionary technology in the Xbox

Kinetic- a line of motion sensing input devices first released in 2010. The release of the Kinetic

was an attempt by Microsoft to birth a new generation of gaming and hoped to draw new

audience with the technology they devised. This hope blossomed into overwhelming outreach by

many in hopes of understanding the motion sensing technology used in the Kinetic; this surprised

Microsoft not by the outreach they receive but the people reaching out to them. This being, out

of all fields to question Microsoft: the medical community. A July 19th, 2012 edition of the
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Montreal Gazette highlights this development, relaying over “500 applicants from around the

world” spent three months in Seattle, Washington, at a program held by Microsoft surrounding

the potential use for the Xbox Kinetic. One Toronto-based startup, “GestSure Technologies”

developed its product, which was one of the first hacks to emerge after the Kinect came out,

allowing doctors to access medical records on computers in the non-sterile parts of operating

rooms using gestural, touchless interfaces. This allows surgeons to scroll through records mid-

surgery without having the follow the necessary sterile protocols which include removing their

gloves and having to scrub back in. While this seems like a minuscule development towards the

medical community, this development marked the first successful attempt to “hack” the Kinetics’

technology and apply it to an alternative field. The ability to develop potential life-saving

machinery via the technology unlocked through the Kinect demonstrates the ever-expanding

outreach of the video game industry, and the versatile of technology. Around the same time

many other researchers and developers became intrigued with the potential of the video game

industry. The American Journal of Preventive Medicine conducted a study titled, “Role of Video

Games in Improving Health-Related Outcomes A Systematic Review” in which a multitude of

researchers examined the potential to use video gaming for therapeutic purposes. The researchers

believed there was potential promise for video games to improve health outcomes, particularly in

the areas of psychological therapy and physical therapy. This theory does not seem as far-fetched

as it may sound given the fact the aforementioned education for medical students was completed

through video gaming interactive problems. It can be reasoned the same practices used to teach

the to-be professions can effectively be applied in treating patients. Prior to their studies,

researchers gathered background on gaming as it relates to health-related outcomes, discovering

video games have been used to distract patients from acute or chronic pain, as well as
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“supporting psychotherapeutic treatment, improving self-esteem, conflict resolution, and

improving pyrometric measurement.” Researchers then selected criteria, determining the

necessary protocols and boundaries in order to establish reliable testing. Among the 38 studies, a

collective total of 195 health outcomes were examined. Overall, the researchers determined

video games improved “69% of psychological outcomes, 59% of physical therapy outcomes,

50% of physical activity outcomes, 46% of clinical skills outcomes, 42% of health education

outcomes, 42% of pain distraction outcomes, and 37% of disease self-management outcomes.”

While these results may seem like hollow numbers with no substantial meanings, the potential

promise for video games to improve health related outcomes, especially in areas of therapy that

involve psychological and behavioral development is exceptional.

Ultimately, what was once considered a harmful, violent pastime, hoping to draw in

teenagers with their addictive nature, has grown to evolve like any other technology, into an

educational tool hoping to reshape the education process, a foundation for potential life-saving

technology, and behavior and physical healing outcomes.

Work Cited

Primack, Carroll. “Role of Video Games in Improving Health-Related Outcomes: a

Systematic Review.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, vol. 42, no. 6, June 2012, pp.

630–38, doi:10.1016/[Link].2012.02.023.

Baranowski, Buday. “Playing for Real: Video Games and Stories for Health-Related

Behavior Change.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, vol. 34, no. 1, Jan. 2008, pp. 74–

82, doi:10.1016/[Link].2007.09.027.

Dobby, Christine. “Technology Taking over Medicine Video Game Programs Adapted to

Revolutionize Health Care.” Edmonton Journal, Postmedia Network Inc, 19 July 2012.

“AMA; 20 Additional U.S. Medical Schools Joining Accelerating Change in Medical

Education Consortium.” Professional Services Close-Up, Close-Up Media, Inc, Nov. 2015.

theliterarycritic. “Paulo Freire and the Development of Critical Pedagogy.” YouTube, YouTube,

8 July 2019, [Link]/watch?v=tyZEJHcY6q8.

[Link] Editors. “Video Game History.” [Link], A&E Television Networks, 1 Sept.

2017, [Link]/topics/inventions/history-of-video-games.

Paulo Freire, The “Banking” Concept of Education, Ways of Reading, (Boston,1996), p.212-223.