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A Wii Bit Smarter? New video games attempt to activate the mind, but even those in the business question whether the games really boost brainpower 
The rising popularity of Nintendo's Brain Age and other video games that challenge thinking skills reopens a puzzling question: do these games actually make us smarter? New research by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS), a government educational body in Scotland, reported in March that school children who played a daily 20-minute brain training session on the Nintendo DS Lite apparently improved their concentration and learning skills, including the ability to do mental arithmetic. Children between the ages of 10 and 11 played More Brain Training from Dr. Kawashima in the 10-week study. Other studies have shown video games can make people who play them more perceptive or analyze things faster. But the jury is still out on whether these thinking games really make us smarter. Even Nintendo, which banks on the success of these games – Brain Age, Brain Age 2 and Wii's Big Brain Academy sold more than 26 million copies worldwide in 2007 – makes no claims that these games add to our intelligence. "Nintendo's brain games were created to offer fun and stimulating activities to the consumer and are meant to offer daily brain exercise,” says Amber McCollom, senior manager of public relations for Nintendo of America. “We’re not making any medical claims about them. They should be viewed in the same category as crossword puzzles or brain teasers: just something to keep your mind stimulated, active and challenged." Ben Stokes, a program officer in the Digital Learning and Media area of the MacArthur Foundation and a co-founder of Games For Change, says games like Brain Age and Big Brain Academy may be effective at honing particular brain functions, but “the thing is, we don't know. There hasn't been enough research done." Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association says he agrees. "Those games in particular, Brain Age and Big Brain Academy, I don't know if there’s any research that says it will help someone become a smarter person," he says. "One of the games in Brain Age is rapid-fire arithmetic. So if I played it every day, I would get better at doing arithmetic very fast. But does that make me smarter? I already know my arithmetic. I suppose I'm skeptical to the extent that if I play that game for a year I'm going to be a genius and solve quantum physics." But experts believe that other digital and video games – like Sim City and Civilization – can help improve learning in a variety of other ways. "You cannot play a game and not learn," Della Rocca says. "In playing a game like Civilization, building a community in Upper Mesopotamia, you're building pyramids and learning about history, economy. That's what I call extrinsic learning. The other element is what I would call intrinsic learning, stuff like problem solving, teamwork, trial and error, spatial recognition. If you fall in a pit, you don't go in that direction. Every single game has intrinsic learning." Games are also very good at fostering a new kind of thinking, called systems thinking, says Suzanne Seggerman, president and co-founder of Games for Change. Systems thinking is about understanding complex problems – like global warming and other international crises – and the different interrelated variables that affect that problem. "A lot of scholars are saying games are a great way to engage young people in serious subject matter because they are fun, hold attention for a long time and allow them to see a complex problem and its interrelated variables from many different perspectives," Seggerman says. "Many people say that 21st century skills are going to be based on these strong systems thinking abilities." In fact, expect more games in the future to wrap our minds around solving society's greatest challenges, Seggerman says, "We’re going to have a game in the future like An Inconvenient Truth and Fast Food Nation."
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