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Common PC Video Games Used To Treat Phobias
NoData writes "Treating phobias with exposure therapy--gradually putting patients in fear-inducing situations, is a well-established method, even using virtual means, like VR simulators. However, now CNN is reporting on research that shows off-the-shelf PC video games can effectively treat phobias as well. Games like "Half-Life" were used to treat arachnophobia, and "Unreal Tournament" to treat acrophobia and claustrophobia."
I feel an attack of dukenukemforeverphobia coming on....and I think my halflife2phobia is also playing up...
Unfortunately, doctors have told me that my dukenukemforeverphobia may be incurable, but halflife2phobia has a cure on the way, even though the secret formula has leaked out.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Now I have to get to work on the recently released Halo for the PC fighting my ringworld phobia. I may get over the vehicle with mounted heavy weaponry phobia simultaneously.
is "The Sims", treating the "Having a Real Life" syndrome.
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
... especially after playing those games at night, when it's really dark. I'm STILL scared of Half-Life. (AND spiders)
What are they talking about? Half-life GAVE me arachnophobia. Now whenever I go through a dark narrow space, I start imagining huge spiders jumping up at me and gnawing at my head.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
In Half-life, the spiders often win. That can't be good for the patient, can it?
There are some Phobias that are good to have. Personally I like my "fear of being shot in the face"-aphobia. It helps me stay alive. Which probably explains why I don't like FPSes...
___________
"Build a man a fire warm him for a day, set a man on fire and warm him for the rest of his life."
i just picked up my copy of everquest to do that job
Now I can get treatment for my shot-with-a-bfg phobia, or my falling-off-the-edge-of-the-map phobia.
I find UT is the cure for my frequent attacks of workophobia. An application at lunch and at quitting time seems to correct the condition.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Slashdot helped me overcome my fear of shiny objects and obscure technologies. Thank you /.!
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Crudely Drawn Games
How come these guys (who run high-tech simulators) are totally unable to present anything better than a 16-colour logo?
So, what do they use to treat Luposlipaphobia?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Japanese Dating Sims have been helping adolescent men combat their fear of approaching the opposite sex for years now!
What's convenient is, when your attacked by a spider in a video game, you lose one of 15 remaining lives, and when you fall from extraordinary heights in Unreal, you end up with a little less health. It will be interesting to see if this will create a breed of former phobics who now fling themselves off buildings or into dens of black widow spiders under the misimpression that the damage done won't be too great...
Another game that can be used to treat another phobia: the fear of using a badly made product.
Controlled exposure to Daikatana (this has to be carefully regulated) should lower people's expectations of what they use, and thus feel better when being forced to use something poorly made.
Anyone for a game to help get rid of fear of commitment issues?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
They were treated to Barbie goes shopping so they can survive the long shopping trips with the wife/gf
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I use Counter-Strike to treat my anger management issues. =D People complain that video games increase violent tendencies... bs... blowing up people's head is just what I need to relax after a hard day...
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
But what can they do about papaphobia?
"Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Take over the world."
So... what video game do you play if you have a fear of video games?
...I'll procrastinate tomorrow...
Curing my fear of dots.
I'm not sure what's worse... Drippin' Dots or flash photography.
Will Tomb Raider help me overcome my fear of girls?
Couldn't help myself.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
And the first level of Dr. Wily's castle where you were forced by the bastard scrolling to time jumps fluidly so you could get to the robotic dragon? I fell for an hours on end.
But as therapy for phobics? Hah. Am I getting in an airplane anytime soon? Hell no. Knock me out like Mr. T in the A-Team and I'll consider it.
I've lived with acrophobia all my life. While it might be possible to treat it with video games, I think I'll just keep my phobia, thank you. I've learned to deal with it (I've flown over the Atlantic 13 times) and would probably miss it if it were gone.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
what phobia does Tomb Raider treat, and why do so many geeks suffer from it?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Grand Theft Auto cured me of my phobia of going to prison for running over pedestrians...
Uh, sorry to burst your bubbles, but there are no spiders in halflife, ergo, it makes NO SENSE AT ALL to use it to treat a fear of spiders.
I suppose if you _really_ used your imagination, the little facehugger-things could be spiders.
...to get over my phobia of killing lots of people.
5 years of pac man and im still afraid of ghosts. 10 years of tetris and im still afraid of falling bricks. probably even moreso.
This post cannot be re-broadcast without the express written consent of Major League Baseball.
Doom gave me a phobia of giant mechanized spiders with frikkin laser-beams on their foreheads. The incessant omni-directional sound of grinding gears sneaking up on you still give me the willies!
Try out another "superreal"-combat mod for Quake3:
:)
"True Combat"
Tactical shooting with the real iron sights of each gun. Was pretty interesting, a bit like counterstrike with wave-type respawning, many players. Punching a hole of lead through the enemy never felt that real before the "iron sights"
Fear of snow: Tux Racer
Fear of killer robots: Gnobots
Fear of cats: Wing Commander
So was Diakatana used to treat fear of failure?
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
Relates to stepping out of a teleporter and onto a mine... is there any work being done on this horrible affliction?
Everytime I think about HL, that one part where you're crawling around on the side of that mountain looking off in the canyon...
Still makes my palms sweat.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
Half-Life 2 will soon be used to cure the fear of products whose source code is completely out in the open.
I'll play the devil's advocate here...If video games can be used to treat such phobias, do the claims that they desensitize one to violence, making it more likely that they will commit violent acts, hold water?
-R
I'm all for curing them! We need to get them out in the open where we can frag their asses. :)
--
Power to the Peaceful
Playing the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's Sweet 16 video game has given me pedophilia...
I can also cure my fear of ROOMS THAT ALL LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME thanks to Halo for the PC...
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
me: sorry, i can't come into work today...i'm getting phobia therapy by video games.
boss: oh, sorry to hear that. what is it that you are afraid of.
me: zombies.
boss: zombies?
me: uh, yeah...terrified.
boss: stop playing half life and get into work.
R.I.P.
britney's dance beat got me over my fears of pop singers.
Duke Nukem Forever cured my phobia of vapor.
"Derp de derp."
Slashdot has let me avoid the shiniest object, glaring hatefully in the sky. And I can troll/flamebait about obscure technologies too!
Ok, this is a kind of a scary admission - especially for slashdot... Anyhow, here goes.
When I was about 6, my Dad got a pirated copy of Aliens (video stores did not exist at that time) and he sat down to watch it. I wanted to watch it with him (mistake!!!)
I had nightmares of the Alien, for years, and I always found it creepy - I hated even looking at H. R. Gigers Alien's. More recently, I picked up a copy of Alien vs. Predator - and I played through the entire game. It was difficult at first, but after getting used to killing Aliens (and being killed...) My fear went away. Irrational fear? Yes, but it was a fear I had none the less.
On a separate note, my friend saw The Exorcist when he was about 6 too, and he had nightmares about it. Recently he got the DVD extended version, and forced himself to watch it about 20 times. The movie no longer bothers him either.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I used to be afraid of shotguns and blood splatter. But I'm better now.
Really.
In my teenage years I was able to overcome my fear of being eaten by a grue in a similar manner. Unfortunately this is undocumented so it can probably not be considered prior art.
Videogames may help cure acrophobia, but it'll just instill new fears in you, mainly kakorrhaphiophobia and thanatophobia (Phobias)
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Video games gave me fear of endless pits. Even though nothing is that endless here on Earth you're just afraid to instantly die if you jump in instead of falling forever =)
Quake 2 cured my herpes!
Well, ok, it PREVENTED me from getting herpes. Or any other sexually transmitted disease and most airborne diseases.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I can believe some of these games might help, but to be honest I ended up more freaked out about spiders and anything spider related AFTER playing Aliens vs. Predator.
Those damn face huggers scared the crap out of me in that game. I can honestly say that out of every game I've ever played (a lot), that is the only game where I was truly freaked out while playing. You'd be tooling along, minding your own business, while that creepy music and sound effect combo worked it's way into your brain.
Then the aliens would start rushing you. Your proximity sensor would start going nuts. You look left, right....nothing! Then you look up! Oh crap, here comes three of them. You kill them off, and just as the rush is wearing off, WHAM!!!
Big 'ol face hugger slaps up against your monitor. I yelled and fell backwards out of my chair. If you tried to treat someone afraid of spiders with a game like that you should lose your license.
...XBill!
o bia?
Monopolophobia?
Insecuriphobia?
Bluescreenaph
DelusionalBillionairephobia?
Persuasive Computing is the title of a cool book of Stanford researcher B. J. Frogg, that discusses how computers can be used to change people behaviours. One of the examples are about using virtual reality to threat fobias.
..rumours that Counterstrike may be used to treat "fear of accute boredom" may be true...
Scientists have known for years that the game can cure even acute cases of insomnia. It is hoped that the intense boredom generated by hiding behind a box for ten minutes sniping at other players hiding behind their boxes, will help patients confront their phobia.
I can can personally vouch for the sleep inducing properties of CS - having often woken up to find myself on an empty map at 4am.
One top researcher in the field, also speculated that 3wave Capturestrike may similarly be used to confront "fear of shopping in the sales", and "fear of using the underground at rush hour".
No one was prepared to comment on the potential psychological uses for "black and white" although several cows were looking shifty in a nearby field.
My biggest fear is being modded down as a troll for admitting that I fear being modded down as a troll.
Table-ized A.I.
I was sick and now I'm ok.
I WAS sick and NOW I'm ok.
I Was Sick And Now I'm Ok.
I wa s sic k an d no w I' m o k.
I waS Sick anD Now I'M Ok.
I think the university of quebec website got slashdotted...
MOD DOWN! The post was inadequate to say the least.
That most of these phobias can be aggravated by playing System Shock 2. Headcrabs are like a friendly therapist after you've met SS2's spiders! And the hybrids! 'You do not hide foreverrrrrr....'
Which reminds me of when I first got my original NES system: My mom didn't approve of the violence in Duck Hunt. That night I awoke to erie sounds, climbed out of bed, and made my way downstairs to find my mom enthralled by the game. She was really good at it too.
She never complained about the game again.
The fear of boxes. Half-Life would work perfectly and that's just the single player game, wait till they install Box Wars.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK.
Aliens came out long after Video Stores were around - Alien however, is what I meant.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
So, say, half-life can cure arachnophobia. But didn't someone think it can induce paranoia or schizophrenia just as efficiently?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Anyway, that movie gave me the creeps until my late teens after having seen it another 20 times or so. Great horror movie! I don't think there's any other films that have scared me that much.
Of course, even at such a young age, there was always something fun about having the shit scared out of you by a movie :)
Cheers
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I just told her about this story and suggested we should get Half-Life to help her. Oddly enough, she fell for it.
I should go through the game lists and make up a few phobias for myself.
-- Will program for bandwidth
"The researchers made the environments they used for their study available for download on the university's Web site."
..
That would be very interesting to check out...if any of us could read french .
Still haven't cured my phobia that I dance like a twat...
to treat anorexia nervosa.
According to video game critics, subjects of the recent video game phobia research study are now acting as if they are in the game, whenever their phobia surfaces.
"Arachnophobic people have begun to carry shotguns around, to take care of spiders," said Officer Montoya. "Yeah," continued Office Bullock, "and those crazy people afraid of heights are now jumping off buildings when they don't feel like taking the stairs."
The mother of one boy, formerly claustrophic, is suing the creators of Unreal Tournament, because her son decided to crawl into a ventilation duct and attempted to break through a fan with a crowbar. The boy was seriously injured when the fan did not disintegrate after two swings of the crowbar.
the Leisure Suit Larry games are used to treat...
This also reminds me of my then-girl friend and I playing Duke 3d. When we'd get done, she would be jittery and jumping around corners for 10 minutes.
What if they're afraid of VR or video games...talk about messin with their heads!
I'm still scared stiff of the 'chompers' in Prince\ of\ Persia* - when I was 5 or so I had to get my brother or dad to walk through them for me.
Google didn't work this time...
Everything2.
Humans, at least adult humans, aren't simple creatures. You can tell them shit like "you will die if you fall off a building" and they will believe you. They don't have to try it themselves and die (there are also other psychological blocks preventing it).
A phobia is something special. A person has an irrational fear of something. They KNOW it is irrational, but they can't help it anyways. One of my friends is arachnophobic. He knows it's stupid, I mean he's big and spiders are small. He can crush them easily. He's not afraid of other bugs, I've seen him sqish cockroaches. However he is really afraid of spiders, even fake ones. It's not something he can logic away.
Well, that means you have to resort to alternate methods of curing a phobia. You can't just rationalize it away. If you try logic with a phobic they'll AGREE with you. They KNOW they are being rational, they just can't do anything about it. So you do things like expose them to things that cause the fear, but in small amounts. Slowly they get acclimated to that (if it works) and then you continue. Eventually you can eliminate the fear (again, provided it works for them, not all treatments work on all patients).
Well eliminating the fear isn't the same thing as making them a moron. Just because you cure someone's archnophobia doesn't mean they won't know that black widows are bad news and avoid them. All you'll have done is eliminated the automatic and uncontrollable fear response.
It's helping me conquer my fear of not graduating from college.
A phobia is, by definition, an IRRATIONAL fear. It is rational to fear dying. Also a phobia is generally speaking an exagerated response. So if you were archnophobic you might be paralized (literally) with fear at the sight of a tarantula. This is not rational, a tarantual poses no threat to you. You could kill it with no effort, and even if it wanted to attack you, it could do almost no damage. Also the fear response is highly exagerated. Most of the time, even when faced with a life threatening situation, teh fear response acts in a beneficial way. You get more on edge, alert and ready to do what you need to do to survive. Paralisis is not generally useful so that response is exagerated (espically given the non-threat).
Hentai games have caused me to lose any desire for sex.
Maybe I should play GTA3 to get over my fear of walking down a city block waiting for a stranger in a leather jacket to beat me with a baseball bat (or a chainsaw) and take my stacks of cash.
Hope they dont use that game to solve problems people have with not knowing which way is up.
Fear of gravity (Barophobia) - I suggest a game of Lunar Lander
Fear of laughter (Geliophobia) - See Fear of fear (below)
Fear of sitting (Cathisophobia) - I can only recommend what I consider to be the most addictive game I have ever played, Frontier: Elite II on the ST or Amiga!
Fear of taste (Geumaphobia) - No gaming recommendations here, just go to the pub
Fear of freedom (Eleutherophobia) - Er, don't play video games
Fear of blood (Hemophobia) - Probably quite a common one. I suggest a game of Resident Evil or Hitman 2
Fear of vegetables (Lachanophobia) - Reading Slashdot daily should cure this! Fear of anything new (Kainophobia) - I suggest avoiding the GTA series like the plague
Fear of fear (Phobophobia) - As a phobia this must be the most ridiculous I have ever heard of!
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
that's right. you don't have to be lonely/afraid/afraud anymore. & you won't need to be subjected to eXPerimeNTal games being played with your main processor.
get ready to see the light.
you know where to look/who to trust?
As a specialist in treating phobias, I can confirm your comments. Phobias are triggered by basic sensory input (usually sight), which is why people can be phobic of pictures of spiders.
Phobics actually have 2 simultaneous responses because there are 2 separate pathways in the brain. The faster one goes straight to the amygdala and the other via the visual/auditory cortex. It's this faster pathway which is the problem.
So a phobic will always feel fear first, and a split-second later can know that their response is irrational whilst being unable to do anything about it.
The only way to treat a phobic response is to retrain the amygdala, and can be done quickly (10 mins) and painlessly.
All of this goes out the window for anticipatory anxiety, which we can loosely define as a 'rational response to an irrational yet automatic thought.'
Eg those afraid of flying are convinced the plane is going to crash. The inside of their minds look like those airplane disaster movies. Retraining their amygdala would be akin to making them feel better about dying ie probably isn't going to work. Instead, you might edit those internal movies to make them unrealistic eg see everyone in the plane wearing bowler hats.
They could get them to have lucid dreams perhaps...
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...Because despite strong exposure, I'm still shit-scared of it. In fact, it gets worse the more I see.
Ade_
/
Big Bubbles (no troubles) - what sucks, who sucks and you suck
I use pornography to treat my sex phobia.
#!/
Always think. This sounds like the industry paid for a study to swab away some of the well earned bad rep of ultra-violent games. So, when's someone tells you it's good for you to be kicking a prostitute in the groin for no reason until she bleeds and dies, I don't know.
...where I'm in a maze of corridors all looking exactly. Then, the light goes off and I'm scared of being eaten by a grue. Could you please enlighten me and tell me what game should I play?
Confidence is the best thing some of those bad guys have going for them. No one wants to date someone whiny and insecure with no social skills.
(If you have female friends, I recommend asking them if you have social skills, and if you don't, getting tutoring.)
Sometimes it helps when the "good guys" set aside quality time to spend with the girl in question after they've got her, quality time being defined as time spent on mutually interesting pursuits. So if your lady really really DOES like playing Counterstrike, no problem. If she doesn't want for whatever reason to sit around bored while the men play some mind-numbingly repetitive game, you're SOL. "Bad guys" sometimes don't mind spending a couple hours BSing with a girl, flattering her, making her feel special.
Not that some girls don't like gaming. But figure out what she likes and spend at least an equal amount of time doing (or sitting through) something she likes as she winds up doing something you like but she doesn't care much for.
Self-confidence will get you, if not everywhere, at least many interesting places that you might not have gotten without it. (Confidence in your ability to get some, and a willingness to follow through -- and a willingness to back off if you read the signals wrong -- may actually lead to getting some, in other words.)
If a guy runs screaming into the night, a girl's probably not going to think that he was just a little nervous and not used to talking to girls -- she's going to think he thought there was something wrong with her, and get upset, offended, and dismiss him as being a loser for not appreciating her.
Make sure that you are acting like a nice guy, and aren't actually playing the passive-aggressive asshole instead. Hint: if you are living together, complain about how messy it always is, then never pick up after yourself, you're an asshole.
If a "nice guy" has girls hitting on him, and then complains that no one will date him, all the girls who have been trying to get his attention want to REALLY KILL HIM. If you don't think that any girls are interested in you, before complaining about this in the hearing of one of your female friends, ask if she's noticed any girls being interested in you, because you are male and blind and cannot spot these things!!! Girls will generally feel better about you for admitting that you are not good at noticing these things than you attempting to bluff your way through. A simple "Please tell me about any social mistakes I am inadvertently making, as I'm not so good with these things," gets you sensitivity points and maybe pointers on where you screw up.
I also discovered some ways to know when a relationship between a "nice guy" geek and a girl is over.
If the guy doesn't have a working box because his has a fried power supply, and he complains that power supplies are too expensive (and then buys a game every paycheck), and insists on using his girl's sweet laptop...
Curse you, Ocarina of Time, with your wonderful gaming and Chickens of the Apocalypse!
"Here, hold my purse."
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.