Canadian Marketing Blog

Boomers Motivated By Mind-Stretching Games

Age-defying boomers are proactively seeking to increase their mental activities so that they can slow the ageing process. A number of things happen normally such as memory loss or forgetting things once in a while.

According to Dr. Roland Auer, neuropathologist and professor at the University of Calgary, there are four elements that are required to keeping your brain healthy even into old age. "Watch your calories, do mental exercises, get active physically and get some sleep," he says. "Eating less and eating the right foods feeds your brain. Sleep boosts immune system activity and the physical interacts with mental fitness."

As boomers are becoming more comfortable with technology, manufacturers and web site producers are also introducing quick and effective brain games at low or no cost. From Nintendo's Brain Age game to rock-paper-scissors, there is a variety of activities that stimulate the brain. According to Future Shop, brain health games are by far the best-selling items among ageing boomers. People can play and have fun, and they can work on vocabulary, memory and life skills. More and more boomers who travel a lot also want something for the road, the hotel room or the plane.

Baby boomers are well-educated and adventurous. The demand for different cerebral activities will grow and expand.

The increasing demand for brain health games creates great opportunities for existing electronics companies. With many baby-boombers being quite up-to-date on what the electronic world has to offer, it is surprising to me that companies like PlayStation and Xbox haven’t jumped on this bandwagon.

I’m talking video games for baby-boomers here. It’s a common argument that video games are mindless entertainment that allow children to “zone out”, rather than engage in other activities like reading and playing with their peers. According to Stephen Johnson, author of “Everything bad is good for you: How today’s popular culture is actually making us smarter”, many video games involve complex math and probability questions that need to be solved in order to excel at the game. Johnson isn’t the only one who supports this view. Authors, Sue Bowness and Jame Paul Gee, have also conducted considerable research on how video games benefit mental health.

The point is, is that video games can do more for us than simply develop our hand-eye coordination. It would be very interesting to see large electronic companies tap into this market and develop targeted campaigns to this large demographic. Developing mind games to play on a system would only contribute to the already popular games being sold at retailers like Future Shop. There is often great speculation that video games are for children, but, like Lina mentions, baby boomers are well-educated and adventurous. If the marketing campaigns play on these qualities, there is no reason why brain health games for adults couldn’t be the new hot commodity.

Brain health games are not the only video games being recommended for the baby boomers, and all ages for that matter. Three University of Wisconsin-Madison professors believe that video games not only stimulate the mind but also have many advantages over traditional teaching tools.
Video games allow the user to attempt to solve problems that they may not be very good at and they receive immediate feedback. The ability to explore immediately makes the game more engaging than traditional textbooks that require the reader mass amounts for reading prior to hands-on study.
Video games provide incentives for users, or students if you will, to keep on improving their performance and enhance their skills. They get to see their results and gradually learn how to reach their desired outcome. Personally I find this type of learning far more encouraging and far less frustrating.
The games allow for �students� to take on their own professional roles such as firefighter or military officer or explore other subjects such as mythology and science, things one may not have thought was of interest. This often leads to reading more about the subject or developing their skills apart from the video game. This is not saying that video games should replace traditional teaching methods it is only encouraging them to be seen in the same light along with other learning technologies rather than mindless entities.
Whether video games enhance cognitive skills, problem-solving abilities, quicker reflexes or better coordination they inadvertently enhance the intrigue to learn, to try, to do, and ultimately to succeed.