Video Games For The Elderly

• Wednesday June 14, 2006 in: Video Game Consoles Tag(s):

  Video games, especially today's more graphics-intensive, albeit violent ones, are almost always associated with younger people. Try entering an amusement arcade in a shopping mall and see if you'll find somebody's 65-year old grandma mixing it up with zombies on House of the Dead 4 or shooting criminals dead on Virtua Cop. Chances are, you won't.

  In Japan, however, the sight of elderly people playing video games is not exactly a surprising thing. As a matter of fact, more and more older people there are playing video games designed to help them keep their brain cells active despite their advancing ages.

  Not that they have already taken to kicking each other's butts on Tekken 5, of course. Nothing of that sort-yet. Instead, Japanese games makers have come up with a slew of video games designed to help delay the onset of dementia in aging individuals. At least that is what the games' developers claim, according to the BBC News article.

  The games are pretty simple. One such game tests the player's mathematical ability. There is also a golf game that tests the hand-eye coordination of the players. This, says the BBC article, is brain training, that the games are actually using special software designed not only to stimulate the brain's grey matter, but also to keep the player's fingers nimble.

  And in a society like Japan's, with its growing population of ageing people, the games have proven to be a hit, with millions of copies of these games having been sold so far.

  What I find really amusing in the BBC article is the mention of two elderly ladies in a facility operated by video game company Namco, banging away on amusement arcade-type electronic drums, playing their hearts out to the tune of some old song. These grandmas rock!

  Now who would say that video games are nothing more than mindless entertainment for kids with nothing better to do?