affected by conflict and war, and we thought
that was the best way of doing so. That
was part of our bigger Armistice campaign
that happens every year.” War Child runs a
number of games-related campaigns each
year – alongside Armistice, Wayne Emmanuel
highlights: “Day Of The Girl, War Child FC or
Replay, which is all about retro gaming. We’ve
got various campaigns that allow us to speak
to different studios and genres.”
Harnessing Minecraft
Away from the charitable sector, other
examples of the therapeutic power of games
have emerged in recent years. Keith Stuart,
The Guardian’s games editor, made an
entrance to the world of literature in 2017 with
a novel entitled A Boy Made Of Blocks, a work
of fiction informed by Stuart’s experiences
of his autistic son Zac’s transformative
experiences of Minecraft.
Stuart picks up the story: “We knew from
even as early as 18 months that he was
developed mentally differently from his peers.
He had a very limited vocabulary. He found the
school playground just terrifying because it
was so noisy and chaotic. Eventually, he was
diagnosed on the autism spectrum.”
By the time Zac was about seven, the one
thing that engaged him, Stuart explains,
was playing games on an iPad. Stuart then
went to a Microsoft showcase featuring the
Xbox 360 version of Minecraft. “I immediately
thought that it would be quite good for Zac,”
he remembers. “When I got home, I sat him
down with me, in front of the Xbox 360, put
Minecraft on, gave Zac the controller and, as
I’ve often explained, it was like one of those
classic light bulb moments. He instantly
understood what Minecraft was all about and
what he had to do.”
Minecraft had a transformative effect on
Zac. “As soon as he started building stuff in
Minecraft, he developed this quite strong
vocabulary, almost over the space of a few
weeks, because he wanted to share his
experiences with us,” Stuart says. “Also, he
really struggled at school socially. But if we
got his peers from school to come home and
sit and play Minecraft with him, he was so
good at the game that for the first time in
his life, he became a social leader. Because
Minecraft provides a distraction, it allows him
to talk without all the worries and concerns
that he usually has about socialising.”
News of Minecraft’s potential therapeutic
effects on those on the autism spectrum has
since spread, and there is now even a special
autism-spectrum server for the PC version
of the game called ‘Autcraft’. “Minecraft hascreated a community for people who often
don’t get the chance to be in communities
or socialise in large groups,” Stuart explains.
“And it has created almost a mini-civilisation
online for people who are non-neurotypical.
I think more than anything I’ve encountered,
that shows the value of videogames.”Improving health
Mark Griffiths, professor of behavioural
addiction at Nottingham Trent University’s
Psychology Department, is a lifelong gamer
who boasts over 30 years’ experience of
researching the psychological effects of
videogames. He supplies a sheaf of papers he
has written detailing the therapeutic effects
of games, saying: “The basic point is this:
there is no evidence that moderate gaming
has any negative effects at all, and most of
the research shows that it has very positive
effects. I have published loads of research
on the positives of gaming, but of course it’s
always the negatives that get attention. The
negative effects only occur in a tiny minority
of individuals.”
One eye-catching item of research which
leaps out concerns the use of games as a
sort of surrogate for painkillers: “Videogames
are so cognitively engrossing that you literally
forget about everything else. You find study“It was like one of those light bulb
moments. He instantly understood
what Minecraft was all about”
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