We've seen video games used for charity and gamers starting new charities, and now the Washington Post brings us this story of a game being created to help fight disease.

Redwood, California-based nonprofit group HopeLab has created a computer game titled Re-Mission. With a distribution deal by health insurer Cigna Corp., the game will be sent free-of-charge to any cancer patients who want it. Cigna national medical director Dr. Glenn Pomerantz says the game, "allows teens to visualize what cancer cells look like" and understand how to fight them." Copies of the game are also freely available to doctors and medical facilities.

According to a study on the game's outcomes featured on Cigna's website, the game increased patients' "quality of life, knowledge about cancer... and their self-efficacy to communicate about cancer." Even more interestingly, young patients who played the game apparently maintained higher blood levels in chemotherapy and had higher rates of success in staving off the cancer in their bodies, suggesting that the game succeeded in convincing players to stick to their therapy.

As more experimental video game projects like this come out, gamers have more and more positive media stories to point to in order to counter-act all the flack our hobby gets. A round of applause (or two or three) for HopeLab and Cigna.