82 days

Matthew Hawkins

First person shooters can help rare eye disorders

In addition to the recent revelation that a massively multiplayer online game can be beneficial to the elderly, a second study states that a first person shooter may help those born with a rare eye disorder.

Research conducted by Daphne Maurer, of McMaster University in Canada, is based upon previous studies that involve adults born with a rare cataract disorder in both eyes. The condition required surgery and corrective contacts as children, and while their conditions improved into adulthood, their vision never reached 20/20. Other deficiencies include those related to face perception, sharpness, direction of motion, plus both peripheral and binocular vision.

The previous studies indicated an improvement of conditions after playing FPSs, which Maurer sought to verify. Six test subjects between ages 19 and 31 played "Medal of Honor" for 40 hours - no more than two hours a day, five days a week. Five among the group exhibited improved vision afterward. Their ability to recognize faces, read small print, and judge the direction of moving dots also saw improvement.

As Maurer notes: "About two-thirds of the things we measured improved simply from playing an action videogame." Though most encouraging of all is her following statement: "I think it tells us that the visual nervous system is still plastic enough to either form or reveal connections in adulthood... and we suspect that might be true for any kind of visual defect."

In its report, The Daily News points out how Maurer is not a gamer, and how apprehensive she was about asking test subjects to play a violent game on the study’s behalf: "Certainly we don't relish asking adult patients who are nongamers to play a first-person shooter for 40 hours… They know what they are getting into and they know there is a small risk they may become addicted to such games as a result of our intervention. That is why we limit them to 10 hours a week and no more than two hours a day."

But she believes the benefits speak for themselves. The next step for Maurer and her colleagues is to create their own game based upon her findings. One of the additional elements will help train people's brains to improve binocular vision. Maurer is also hopeful that the game will be better than "Medal of Honor" because  "it won't be violent." 

Matthew Hawkins is an NYC-based game journalist who has also written for EGM, GameSetWatch, Gamasutra, Giant Robot, and numerous others. He also self-publishes his own game culture zine, is part of Attract Mode, and co-hosts The Fangamer Podcast. You can keep tabs on him via Twitter, or his personal home-base, FORT90.com.