If you’ve got a problem, I’ve got a video game for you.

You want to improve your memory? There’s a game for that. You’d like to boost your ability to focus? There’s one for that, too. You think your child needs to develop empathy? A game is available to assist.

Video games of all types, whether used on a computer, a TV or a phone, are often derided as mindless entertainment, or worse. But another line of thinking is gaining traction. Games aren’t a menace, the thinking goes. Just the opposite, in fact: Video games can save the world.

Case in point: An iPad game released earlier this year, "IF," is designed to encourage empathy and help improve a child’s emotional intelligence. If You Can, the company behind "IF," raised nearly $10 million in funding, in part because its chief executive and founder, Trip Hawkins, also founded Electronic Arts, a major force in computer games.

The concept of "IF" sounds decidedly counterintuitive: A kid sits with an iPad, alone, playing an adventure game that’s about empathy — a personal quality that’s all about connecting with other people and understanding their feelings and perspective.

Ridiculous, right?

But let’s not be too quick to discount this type of effort. Reading a book, after all, is also a solitary activity, and many of us, myself included, believe you can foster empathy, among other qualities, by entering the world of a memoir or novel. "IF" aims to do the same type of thing, except it’s designed from the get-go to do just that, providing incentives and rewards to help kids develop the tools and strategies of emotional intelligence.

One of the leading proponents of games as world saviors, Jane McGonigal, gave a talk at a TED conference in 2010, "Gaming Can Make a Better World," that’s now been viewed more than three million times.

"My goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games," she said in the talk.

Her plan?

Convince people "to spend more time playing bigger and better games."

McGonigal’s 2011 book, "Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World," furthered the argument. "Games are providing rewards that reality is not," she wrote. "They are teaching and inspiring and engaging us in ways that reality is not."

In the book, she foresaw games to reduce stress at work, fix our educational systems, treat depression and anxiety, and augment qualities such as happiness, resilience, and creativity.

Games, that is, like "IF."

Of course, there’s a fair amount of skepticism about the claims about video games. In Dave Eggers’ satirical novel about Silicon Valley, "The Circle," the protagonist, awestruck by her job at a Google-like company, has this thought about the power of video games: "Homelessness could be helped or fixed, she knew, once the gamification of shelter allotment and public housing in general was complete."

If only it was so easy.

But video games are now a part of our lives, as much as newspapers and movies and other media, and there’s something to say for McGonigal’s ideas about using them for good. Games, after all, capture our attention and motivate us toward a goal in ways other media do not. Though I wouldn’t wait for the game that’s going to solve climate change, games are now emerging as a force in education and as tools for personal improvement.

Brain games, in particular, have become popular as a way to boost memory and problem-solving skills. One of the leaders, Lumosity, offers mobile apps and a website for playing more than 40 games designed to challenge core cognitive abilities. More than 50 million people are members.

Will this save the world? Not quite. But it may be a hint of a future with games integrated into every aspect of our lives.