I know we covered this Icelandic outfit not too long ago, but I find these games for brainwave readers and smartphones so uniquely interesting. MindGames‘ newly released iPhone/iPad game, called 28 Spoons Later, puts you in the situation where you’re captured by a gentleman zombie who would like to eat a dish of brains for dinner, but will only do so with a spoon. The game is controlled by a PLX XWave headset that reads your brain’s focus level. By concentrating, you can bend the zombie’s spoons with your mind and stay alive as long as possible.
MindGames probably has one of the most qualified teams behind any app in the “Games” category in the app store. Of MindGames’ six founders, one is an assistant professor of artificial intelligence with a doctorate from MIT, another is a master’s degree holder in neurophysiology of habit learning from MIT, and another is a software developer for mobile phone platforms with 12 years of experience.
By gamifying concentration, players have the incentive to become good at controlling their states of mind when they need to – a useful skill which they can transfer over to real life. In a Youtube video CEO Deepa Iyengar does say it is a good way for children and adults to learn to direct their energies in productive ways. Currently 5.2 million children in the U.S. are thought to meet the diagnostic criteria for Attention Deficit Disorder, and a game like this could help teach prolonged concentration.
CEO Iyengar does hint at such a future where these types of games could be put into more serious practice by commenting, “This game is a first step toward our development of clinically effective mind training games. Such games could be used by psychologists and psychiatrists in medical centers to train people who have problems with attention.”
Here’s a video demonstrating the game:
