What is it about?
This study investigates the realism of medical treatments and recovery timelines portrayed in video games. We analyzed 416 unique medical scenarios across 55 popular video games, ranging from Resident Evil to The Oregon Trail. By using the "Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan" (SOAP) note format, we charted these in-game injuries and scored their accuracy against real-world clinical guidelines found in UpToDate.
Featured Image
Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Millions of people spend hours every day immersed in video games, yet the impact of medical portrayals in this medium is underexplored compared to television. Our results showed that the average medical treatment in games is only "half accurate" (scoring 3.0 out of 5), and recovery times are frequently depicted as implausibly fast. This is significant because, according to cultivation theory, repeated exposure to unrealistic medical outcomes—like instant healing from a gunshot wound—may warp players' expectations of real-life healthcare and recovery processes.
Perspectives
As medical students and avid gamers, we were fascinated by the gap between the 'HP' bars we see on screen and the patients we treat in the hospital. While we don't expect a zombie survival game to be a perfect medical simulator, we noticed that inaccurate portrayals—specifically the 'instant recovery' trope—could be contributing to a misunderstanding of how the human body heals. We hope this research encourages game designers to see medical realism not just as a constraint, but as a tool for deeper storytelling and public health education.
Nam Tran
Pennsylvania State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Low HP: Evaluating the Accuracy of Medicine in Video Games, Games Research and Practice, November 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3777902.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
