Games - A New Hope?
So I'm here on vacation, visiting beautiful scenery, catching up on some reading (FINALLY finished the Cuckoo's Egg, which I borrowed from Steve Taylor of NinjaBee a YEAR ago), getting some amount of coding done on my game, and fighting off a pretty nasty cold.

Besides the cold, and keeping the children from climbing the walls, one of the challenges here at my in-laws is my wife's grandparents. Specifically, her grandfather. It's been only a year or so since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. I've known him for several years now - I have had a few political arguments with him, and he was encouraged me as I was finishing college with how much respect he had for me getting my degree, and how he felt confident that I was going into a good career field and that he knew I would be able to take good care of his granddaughter.

Now he's living in a half-dream state, as near as I can tell. He gets lost in the house, not sure how to find his own bedroom. He is on anti-psychotic medicine, and hallucinates about seeing food flying off of plates and his wife keeping imaginary boyfriends. It's unbelievable how far he's been reduced. As I said, my nearest understanding is that his brain is floating in and out of a dreamlike state, and as in a dream he finds it impossible to make simple connections of people and time, and takes for granted impossible fantasies occuring around him.

I read somewhere (a blog?) about how one woman managed to show few signs of Alzheimer's disease while she was voluntarily teaching a mentally handicapped relative for two years. For some reason, that no longer became possible, and after that the onset of symptoms came upon her very rapidly. I did a little bit of Google-ing tonight, hoping to find a reference to that article, but instead found several other articles confirming that staying mentally active can help reduce the effect of aging on the brain, and may delay Alzheimer's Disease. Good nutrition and physical exercise are also an important part of this.

But for exercising the brain... can you think of any better way to do this than games? If you believe Raph Koster, then fun is the feedback the brain gives while successfully absorbing a pattern --- in other words, learning. Whether it's learning the best way to beat the Episode 2, Mission 2 map, or mastering the left-right-left-right-A-B-A-B timing to pull off a mega fire repeating kick, or improving upon your build strategy in an RTS, the spawn timings of a new zone in an MMORPG, or even learning to predict which set of three jewels to connect would provide you with the best chance of getting enough moves to finish a level - it's still learning. It still keeps the brain mentally active.

Could elderly gamers be at a reduced risk of Alzheimers, or the other natural effects of aging? Studies and anecdotal evidence certainly indicate this is possible. If so, we as gamers and game developers have a potentially massive higher calling! Not that we should neglect our dominant market (which still remains younger males), but we should really be trying to get the seniors on the X-Box! Or on their computers, playing bridge online with other people that they can have chats with using dirt-simple voice over broadband. Or get them fragging each other in UT - whatever it takes.

Maybe making games geared more for seniors? Casual games? Are there certain games that might provide better mental stimulation and activity than others? It's impossible to know without research. I'm just throwing the suggestion around, not really sure where to take it. But the idea that with all the flak that we get over kids supposedly getting turned into mindless gun-toting killers after playing GTA and the like, it's nice to think that there's a real opportunity for us to do some good and that our creations may really help people.

We should really give this more thought.
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:58 PM (Permalink)