BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

This 27-Year-Old Founder Is Helping Sick Children Heal With Video Games

This article is more than 6 years old.

If you were home sick from school as a kid, chances are you either watched The Price is Right or played copious amounts of video games. Though Bob Barker was assuredly chicken soup for the soul, the Mushroom Kingdom and Hyrule could both engage and relax the mind as the body worked through illness.

This is the thinking behind Gamers Outreach Foundation, a nonprofit that provides gaming hardware and software to children’s hospitals across the country to help its young patients better cope with long-term medical treatment. And at the head of the ship is its 27-year-old founder, Zach Wigal, who landed on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list earlier this year.

“There are all these different scenarios where the video game are helping to aid the health care process, whether that be through distraction or therapy,” Wigal says in his Los Angeles office. “It’s a way for kids to be motivated to get out of bed, and interact with other kids in the hospital.”

Forbes

Founded in 2007, Gamers Outreach works with hospitals nationwide – from Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA to Boston Children’s Hospital, from Dallas VA Medical Center to Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. The nonprofit helps over 100,000 children each year with what Wigal calls recreation therapy through entertainment, and it’s done primarily with its signature GO Karts.

The clever contraption is a medical-grade rolling kiosk equipped with a video game console and monitor, allowing nurses to easily roll games into the rooms of patients who cannot leave them.

“We feel really fortunate to have the GO Karts available,” says Carol Kim, the child life manager at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

In addition, Gamers Outreach’s Player 2 initiative invites gaming enthusiasts into the hospitals to “act as digital activity managers.”

“They’ll assist hospital staff with minor tech support issues, sometimes they’re helping distribute games to various kids throughout the hospital and other times they’re actually just playing games with kids,” Wigal says. “You know kids get really excited when somebody comes along and wants to help them build a world in a game like Minecraft.”

The roots of the company stem from a now-ironic incident in Wigal’s teen years. Attempting to organize a Halo 2 tournament at their high school, Wigal and his friends were abruptly shut down when a local police officer belonging to a media censorship organization complained to the superintendent. As the story spread across the web, a wily Wigal concocted a new plan to counter the protester’s assertion that interactive games were corrupting the minds of the youth.

“My friends and I thought, well you know what, let’s put together a new event for charity,” Wigal says. “We’ll still be able to host our video game tournament, and at the very least we’ll be able to illustrate to this police officer all the good things that actually happen when gamers get together.”

From the incident came Gamers for Giving, a charity event they ran for two years before taking a profound next step. The group began providing software to their local hospital but wanting something more sustainable, devised the rolling kiosk. In 2009, Gamers Outreach delivered its first GO Kart to the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in their hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“I knew immediately this thing is going to make such a huge difference, for the hospital, for the kids, and I can’t wait to get it to them,” Wigal says.

Research has emerged noting the beneficial impact of games on the minds of adolescents, helping with cognition, emotions, motivation and social skills, and the proof was in the pudding early for Wigal and Gamers Outreach. Though originally a one-off project, the team soon expanded and began providing the kiosks to hospitals nationwide. Spurring on enthusiasm for its efforts, Gamers Outreach also started to partner with major outside organizations like Twitch, Activision, Microsoft and NCompass, who for example, held a Mario Kart tournament to help build GO Karts. This year, Bluehole, the developers behind 2017’s biggest surprise hit Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds both held a charity invitational to raise over $200,000 and is sharing profits from merchandise sales.

With a reach nationwide, Wigal has his sights for expansion globally for Gamers Outreach. As he puts it, “Every time we get the chance to go into a hospital and deploy a GO Kart or get the chance to see volunteers interacting with kids, it’s incredibly powerful. It’s the most fulfilling thing that people can do.”