Brain Age Professor Disses Games

Brian Crecente over at Kotaku is quite the investigative journalist. Not only did he find my phone number buried in that game concerts story, but he found an old 2001 newspaper piece in which Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima – famous now for Nintendo's upcoming Brain Age software – wasn't too high on video games five years ago:

“There is a problem we will have with a new generation of children — who play computer games — that we have never seen before.”

“The implications are very serious for an increasingly violent society and these students will be doing more and more bad things if they are playing games and not doing other things like reading aloud or learning arithmetic.”

Of course, he's now getting rich off games. It's not as hypocritical as it sounds, though, because Brain Age is the response to his criticisms of traditional games. Note that he wants kids to read aloud and learn math – two of the exercises in Brain Age.

I'm feeling kind of stupid today. I should go play some more video games...