WASHINGTON - Video games are often challenged as harmful, but a wave of games designed to do good are grabbing headlines and bringing together experts from multiple fields, opening the way to a future of cooperation.

"There is a lot of concern about video games. This one has demonstrated that they can do great good," said Pat Christen, president of HopeLab, which created "Re-Mission," a video game designed to empower kids with cancer.

And "Re-Mission" is not alone. Most recently, mtvU added darfurisdying.com to the growing list of video games that are designed for a positive purpose.

Unveiled at a recent rally in Washington for war-torn Darfur, MTV's university channel published "Darfur is Dying" to raise awareness among college students of the plight of Sudanese. In the game, players dodge armed Janjaweed as they forage for water with one of eight characters. They also get a glimpse of life in a refugee camp in the game that takes about 15 minutes to play.

By the Friday following the rally, the game had been played 65,000 times by 40,000 people.

In addition to their good intentions, "Darfur is Dying," "Re-Mission," and the virtual reality "Snow World" also bring together experts across a variety of fields.

And for the most part, the funding comes from private resources allowing for easy, low-cost access for those who need or want to play these games.

The crossing of expertise in the development of the games opens doors to future cooperation by overcoming the social tension that inevitably exists when strong egos must work together in achieving a common goal. In the process of creating these games, "we're grappling with these issues of how to balance a team of people who are used to being the boss of their own team," said Hunter Hoffman, a research scientist at the University of Washington.

Hoffman, who has a background in psychology and radiology, worked with pain expert David Patterson in developing "Snow World" - a game meant to distract burn patients from pain during treatment..

"There is a social dynamic in trying to work together with other senior researchers," Hoffman said. "It's a good model for other teams in the future."

Much like pain medication, "Snow World" shifts attention away from the pain and transports burn patients to a soothing, winter wonderland where they destroy snowmen, penguins and robots with snowballs.

"Pain requires conscious attention," Hoffman said. "Virtual reality is very attention-grabbing and lures attention away from pain."

Using MRI brain imaging, Patterson and Hoffman studied "Snow World's" effectiveness, finding that the parts of the brain that register pain were less active while patients were in the virtual world.

The game, first used by patients at Seattle's Harborview Burn Center, is now expanding to William Randolph Hearst Burn Center at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center and Shriners Hospital for Children in Galveston, Texas.

mtvU, the cable network that targets college campuses, turned to its audience to create a video game that would get the word out on the ongoing slaughter in Darfur. Six months after the start of a competition, mtvU launched the winning game, designed by students at the University of Southern California.

"The point of the game is to get this issue under your skin so you will hopefully act," said mtvU General Manager Stephen Friedman.

"I think it screams out the need for various disciplines to work together," said Friedman, who noted that the USC students worked closely with humanitarian aide workers in devising the game. "It's the next generation of activism."

Cooperation was the key to creating "Re-Mission," the brainchild of Pat Omidyar whose husband, Pierre, founded eBay. With its main character, Roxy, teens with cancer navigate through a cancer-afflicted body, battling disease-ridden cells while learning the importance of keeping to their treatment.

For the game to achieve its goal of empowering cancer patients, it "needed to be fun, biologically accurate and target very specific health outcomes," Pat Christen said.

To do that, Omidyar set up HopeLab in 2001, bringing together psychologists, game developers, nutritionists, epidemiologists, and teen and young-adult cancer patients.

And that approach worked.

In March HopeLab released the findings of a year-long controlled study of 375 cancer patients between the ages of 13 and 29. After only playing the game for several hours during the test year, Christen said patients showed a greater ability to communicate and their blood tests indicated they were sticking to medication regimens.

"Re-Mission" is available free-of-charge through HopeLabs in Palo Alto, Calif.

These games are only the beginning. In September, mtvU is scheduled to launch "Crates of Cash," a multi-player online game designed by students at the University of Denver. The game is an attempt to relate the hardships of life as a migrant worker to college students.

HopeLab is looking to use video games to address other diseases like sickle cell anemia, obesity and major depressive disorder.

Hoffman is already rolling on several fronts. He and his associates are working on "Super Snow World," and he has reached out to psychologists, developing a simulation of the World Trade Center and the events of Sept. 11, 2001, to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

All of these uses of video game technology, future and present, underline the necessity of cooperation.

"You need to occupy several disciplines to do it," Friedman said. "Crossing boundaries that you wouldn't think needed to be crossed in the past, but make sense in this new world."