A groundbreaking video game can train away premature ejaculation

Myhixel knows that video games are a perfect medium for improving all aspects of your health and wellness — even your sexual health. The company’s flagship game, Myhixel Play, is a game experience designed to help men work through issues with premature ejaculation (PE).

It’s a premise that sounds wild but, upon some further thought, absolutely makes sense. We use video games and similar simulation methods to overcome real-world issues all the time; why not extend that to sexual wellness?

Myhixel Play is equal parts education, experimentation, and play. The game connects to Myhixel’s innovative forest-green penetrable sleeve. The sleeve contains a complex array of sensors and vibration-makers, which the game uses to send and interpret signals from the player’s penis. Here’s the premise: you’re an astronaut hoping to “blast off” to eight different planets. In order to do so, you have to watch educational videos — and, of course, you have to masturbate.

A match made in sexy heaven — Though sex-related video games are nothing new, Myhixell’s entry into the market is a far cry from VR sex toys. The ultimate goal of Myhixel’s products is to feel good, but it approaches that mission from the brain side of things rather than the pleasure side.

Patricia López Trabajo, founder and CEO of Myhixel, learned during her four-year tenure at Fleshlight (yes, that Fleshlight) that as few as 20 percent of men worried about premature ejaculation will see a specialist for help. She decided one of the best ways to reach the other 80 percent of men would be to allow help to be found from the comfort of their beds — and that gamification would be the perfect way to reach them.

Solutions for premature ejaculation often include medication like SSRIs with lots of side effects, but these aren’t solutions so much as roundabout methods of numbing your nerves. Your mind plays a big role in PE, though, and it can quickly become a vicious cycle. So connecting your penis to a video game — which you work through with your mind — is actually the perfect match.

Prepare for take-off — Myhixel has done well for itself since its Kickstarter launch in 2019. It’s sold about 6,000 devices so far, according to CNET, and users report lasting between four and seven times longer after completing the program.

We may just be witnessing the birth of an entirely new industry. Jurrian van Rijswijk, founder of Games for Health Europe, says he expects products like Myhixel’s to take off in the near future. “I strongly believe that this industry will grow and it will grow fast,” he told CNET.