The kids are alright

Using a video game to zap simulated cancer cells won't by itself make a sick child well. But the morale boost can give young patients an edge in the fight.

Roxxi (above), a "gutsy and fully armed nanobot," stars in Re-Mission, in which players journey through the body (below) searching for and destroying cancer cells. The game is designed for young cancer patients. (Mike Stotts/WPN/for The Boston Globe)

When 12-year-old Taylor Carol contracted a rare, virulent form of leukemia, it took aggressive medical treatment to save his life. That and a video game.

Taylor gives part of the credit for his recovery to the hours he spent playing Re-Mission, a computer game that lets children with cancer fight back by zapping simulated cancer cells.

"It's just such a morale boost, being able to kill what's been keeping you in the hospital bed and away from your friends," Taylor said.

His father, Jim Taylor, a technology entrepreneur and philanthropist in Dana Point, Calif., said the game helped his son endure a painful bone marrow transplant and months of chemotherapy.

"When a kid has cancer, everything's being done to them," he said. "The game gave the kid a chance to feel like he was in charge."

Today, Taylor is cancer-free and attending voice lessons, hoping to become a professional singer.

Children's advocates say that Re-Mission is an example of how high-tech products can inspire and educate kids, instead of just amusing them. At last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, they teamed up with software companies and toy makers at the Sandbox Summit, a conference aimed at creating more beneficial digital games and toys.

Robin Raskin, cofounder of the summit and former editor of Family PC magazine, said the consumer electronics industry spends too little time thinking about the needs of children. "You're not just filling these guys' free time," Raskin said. "You're teaching them to be the creators and the innovators of the next generation."

A new study from Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization that produced the long-running children's TV show "Sesame Street," found that 8- to 10-year-olds spend an average of 90 minutes a day using videogame consoles or personal computers, on top of three hours spent with television and an hour listening to music.

"We're not saying we need to turn off this stuff," said Michael Levine, executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center of Sesame Workshop. "We're realists." But Levine said that designers of electronic toys and games can do a lot more to make their products educational. He cited his own organization's "Sesame Street" - a show that's grown into a multibillion-dollar entertainment empire - as proof that companies can make big money with educational products.

One company that specializes in education, The Princeton Review Inc., is using digital technology to extend its reach. Based in New York, the Princeton Review publishes college admissions guides and offers courses to help teens prepare for admission exams like the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Vice president Robert Franek said the company publishes most of its college guide material free of charge on the Internet, and sells online versions of its test-prep courses. The Princeton Review also has a deal with Texas Instruments Inc. to offer a new line of calculators preloaded with hundreds of SAT questions. "Students can now prep for the SAT while they're in study hall, while they're waiting for the bus, or whatever," Franek said. The new calculators will go on sale in April.

But young people use digital devices mainly for fun, and experts are mostly focused on ways to develop toys, games, and online services that would teach as well as entertain. Levine sees a big opportunity in the growth of online virtual worlds for children - sites where children can create their own online characters and participate in games and activities with other kids. Sites like Club Penguin, Barbie Girls, and Webkinz are among the most popular social networking sites on the Internet, rivaling the popularity of online games like World of Warcraft.

Sesame Workshop and the financial services firm Merrill Lynch & Co. recently launched Panwapa.com, a virtual world designed to teach children about their peers in other countries. Available in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and English, Panwapa lets children "travel" to learn about other languages and cultures. "Kids need to know other kids and their needs to be good global citizens," Levine said.

Conference participants also see a need for videogames that educate as they entertain. "If it isn't fun and entertaining at its core, it won't work," said Richard Tate, spokesman for HopeLab, the Redwood City, Calif., nonprofit group that created the Re-Mission game. Instead of lecturing kids about cancer, the HopeLab game lets young patients imagine themselves as heroic cancer warriors, swimming through the body of a sick child and defeating the monster that threatens his life.

The player learns about how cancers grow and how medical treatments keep them in check. Just as important, the game gives the patient a sense of control, which translates into better compliance with doctors' orders. Since releasing the game in April 2006, HopeLab has studied 375 cancer patients to measure its effectiveness. "Kids who actually played the game took their antibiotics regularly, took their chemotherapy more frequently, all of which leads to better health outcomes," Tate said.

The results were so encouraging that a health insurance company, CIGNA Corp., now distributes the game for free. Meanwhile, HopeLab is working on new games to help children cope with conditions ranging from sickle cell anemia to obesity.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.