We all know big corporations like to throw ridiculous amounts of money around to entertain their senior executives, but this?
The latest trend in corporate team building is a game called Mindball. In a fashion reminiscent of fiction Star Trek technology, players strap control devices to their heads in order to play a competitive game where each player attempts to coax a ping-pong ball into his goal by relaxing themselves.
According to Interactive Productline, the inventors of the game, Mindball works by measuring the alpha and theta brain waves of a player and determining the relaxation level of the player based on those readings. While this all sounds very scientific, critics are skeptical.
Mental games have been around since the seventies. EEG technology was first used through a biofeedback system to create a game called Will Ball. Will Ball astounded scientists at the time because, before then, there had never been a practical use for these measurements.
However, in a time where EEG, EKG, and other mental scanning devices are used daily in hospitals around the world, Mindball is significantly less impressive. Some even say it’s a fraud.
According to Daniel Engber of Slate Magazine, the game uses faulty electrode that cause an unstable link between a players mental readings and the computer equipment used to run the game.
Another problem exists. People have different kinds of alpha and theta brainwaves. There is really no way to measure the mental might being dished out by players of Mindball because to players will likely have brains which produce radically different brainwaves.
While it’s true the electrodes used in Mindball might have the capability of reading the mental waves, the information produced on the screen of the Mindball computer is not very… specific. The readouts claim to be measurements of alpha and theta waves, but there is no way to prove it.
Additionally, testers at a 2006 exhibit report that 9 out of 10 winners sat on one side of the Mindball table. While this fact didn’t take away from the excitement of the crowd (as well as a mentally disciplined student of Mudra’s defeat to a six your old kid), Mindball is a huge disappointment.
So is Mindball the game of the future? Actually, it just might be.
While the game itself is not so highly regarded by scientists, the technology it claims to employ does exist, and has been used in the past for similar purposes. In fact, there are amazing trials being done with handicapped children’s brainwaves being used to operate a computer.
Big corporations will continue to shell out 23,000 dollars for these machines and scientists will continue serious study in this field. This is the way of life when it comes to miracle products like this. Just as snake oil remedies fooled millions in times of old, the masses of today will be tricked by devices such as this. Luckily mental wave technology is advancing at an exponential rate, meaning real mental games accessible to the public may not be too far away.
