Get your money for nothing and your Brain Training for free

The pun in today's post title is... ridiculously bad. I make no apologies for that, however.

At any rate, I'm a big fan of Nintendo's DS game, Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training. Yes, that name is quite a mouthful. Not only because it introduced me to the madness that is Sudoku puzzles, but also because it's damn fun.

Both this game and its sequel have been a rousing success worldwide, reportedly 17 million games have been sold so far, netting a total of approximately 14.6 million Euros. This has helped the DS establish itself firmly as the most successful gaming console of the current generation, as well as introducing more people to gaming, especially to people who traditionally snubbed videogames.

There's a lot of talk going around on how this game has started the trend of targeting "casual gamers" with projects such as this one. If anything the DS's library would indicate that the people that have bought the console are mostly interested in quick puzzle/party games rather than conversions of big-name projects from home consoles.

A little sidenote here, but if there's one term that's being used in the gaming industry that I abhor is the term "casual gamer" (the other one would be "hardcore gamer.") There's too many definitions on what constitutes a casual gamer, and seemingly everyone has a different opinion on the matter. But that's besides the point, I may get back to this one day.

In any case, there's a lot of criticism going around about these games, and how they're how they're a bit of a sham and don't really make you actually smarter or make you remember the name of your second big love interest in life. Well, how to put this... they're, y'know, games.

Nobody would like these games if they were as strict as a professional test, not if they played them while trying to relax, anyway. But as all games, Brain Training and More Brain Training have the ability to both entertain you and make you just a tiny bit smarter. Or make you think/calculate more quickly, give you a new method to use when trying to remember things, something.

More legitimate concerns have to do with the fact that it's easy to cheat in this games. For example if you think that the correct answer in a math puzzle is either 1 or 2, you can write a number that could resemble either one, and the game will fill in the blanks and take your answer as correct every time. That's the part where the limitations of it being a game come in. But hey, nothing's perfect. And why would you cheat in such a game, you ask? If you're looking for a more elaborate answer than "because you can," you're in for a disappointment.

Anyway, at this point I'd like to return to the title of this post. The gaming site Eurogamer (one of the better ones of its kind) posted an article earlier about Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, the doctor who gives his name and his testing methods to the game. What's of interest in the article is the fact that while these games have made tremendous profit so far, the good doctor hasn't gotten a single penny of it. And that's his choice.

He does have an annual salary of more than 66,000 Euros, but as we all know, there's one thing about money. You can never have enough of it. Except for this guy, apparently. He could choose to become filthy rich, and pay whatever consequences come with that, but he preferred to focus on his work and research.

I find that really admirable. Knowing when to stop is never easy, especially when it comes to money. I guess it comes with being really friggin' smart and all.