MindHabits

Rating Everyone Genre puzzle Publisher Got Game Entertainment External Links Official MindHabits Website

You know, I'm getting kind of tired saying "Well this game is like X, but only Y." over and over again, as I hate to always compare every game against what has come before it, as in some ways that is not far. But then again, the industry is not a vacuum and everything will be judged in context of existing games that shared a similar approach whether I do or not. So today we come to MindHabits, which is like Brain Age, but instead of just trying to decrease your "brain age" by sharpening your wits, MindHabits tries to encourage positive moods and thinking as well as boosting your social intelligence. You're probably wondering, as I was when I first began reading the press packet on the game, "What the heck does that mean?" Well, I'm getting to that.

"Social intelligence," as originally put forth by Edward Thorndike in Intelligence and Its Use , s "the ability to understand and manage men and women, boys and girls, to act wisely in human relations." Essentially, how well you get along with others, including how well you deal with negative interactions with other human beings. MindHabits attempts to train you in three mental habits of "social intelligience": Inhibition, or the ability to disengage from 'social threats (i.e.: "let it go"); Association, changing thoughts you associate with yourself from critical and negative to positive and encouraging; and Activation, bringing yourself into a more positive frame of mind. Dr. Mark Baldwin at McGill university has been studying these three habits and has done research on using repetitive game-like tasks to reinforce them (expanded upon in several published papers), which led to a website for the general public to try out prototype ideas of these games, http://selfesteemgames.mcgill.ca. Success from this website led Dr. McGill to partner with Got Game Entertainment on MindHabits.com and development of that site has led to the downloadable, tailored experience present in MindHabits.

The first time you start up MindHabits, it asks you for some personal information that it will use in later tests. This isn't shared with Got Game or anything like that, the game just needs some words you will associate with yourself. When you get into the game itself, it asks you to complete the Outlook trackers, a series of five tests that rate your personal outlook, stress levels, and mood on a scale from 1 to 10. The five tests are actually customized versions of tests used in actual psychological research and therapy. The MindHabits versions primarily focus on seeing how words or images associated with social rejection or acceptance affect your ability to perform tasks like color or direction matching. Afterwards, you will have to complete a short questionnaire to rate how a series of statements applies to your current state. Armed with your Outlook score, you are encouraged to play through the four mini-games included in MindHabits for about five minutes each day. You can track your Outlook score on a daily and/or weekly basis and see how playing the games and the daily goings-on of your life affects it.

In the first mini-game on the list, Matrix, all you have to do is click on the pictures of smiling faces and not click on the frowning faces. This game is meant to encourage the 'Inhibition' habit, by encouraging you to look for warm, accepting faces and ignore the disapproving ones. Experimental results have shown that subjects who played a prototype version of this game showed much better ability to focus and concentrate as well as reduced stress levels. The game starts off deceptively simple, offering up two images to choose between and giving you generous time to complete enough choices to finish the level. Clicking on several correct faces in a row will eventually provide a 2X or 3X score muliplier, and you can really rack up the points in early levels. This changes quickly, however, as the game starts adding more and more faces and giving you less and less time to make a decision. In some of the higher levels the game started to take on a serious "twitch" playstyle that was too challenging even for me to keep up with.

The second game, Who Are You, replaces the faces of the first game with words. Your job is to click on the personal words you gave the game when you first started it and ignore the words that are not associated with you. When you click on a word associated with you, a sound plays and you're flashed an image of a smiling face. This game is supposed to train you in the habit of Association, by associating personally identifying information with positive thoughts and acceptance. Honestly, it drove me a bit crazy, as several of the 'non-personal' words the game inserted for me were in fact words with personal meaning to me, such as the randomly generated years substituted for my birth year being the birth year of my wife or a sibling, so I wasn't quite so good at this game as Matrix in the higher levels.

Third is Words, which is a crosswords game where you are given a list of 'positive' words (Loved, Embraced, Charmed, etc.) and have to find them in a square of random letters. Eventually some of your 'personal' words are added into the mix, and choosing them gives you a score multiplier for a few seconds afterwards. This is supposed to encourage Activation, or thinking about positive/reassuring things to help you deal with stress. This game is probably the favorite for me out of the bunch, as it's much less 'twitchy' and more about finding patterns and quick thinking. There is also a strategy element to the game, as well, as activating a 'personal' word can allow you to increase your high-score, but only if you can get several words afterwards in quick succession.

The final game is 'Grow Your Chi,' where you literally try to grow a fur coat for your 'Chi Pet', a sad, scrawny looking sheep-thing, in the lower left corner as it cheers you on. This is done by clicking on clouds that float by with smiling faces on them and not clicking on the frowning faces. Alternately, balloons with words tied to them will pass and you must click on personally identifying words while avoiding others. This game is meant to combine all three habits in one, like some sort of psychological sampler pack. Unlike the first two games, it doesn't seem to get too twitchy as the levels increase, so it ends up being a more relaxing experience than Matrix or Who Are You.

MindHabits also includes a 'Science Lab' that explains in simple terms the science behind each of the games, tests, and mental habits contained within. It will also show off your high scores so you can indulge a competitive streak with your friends or family. All in all, it's not a bad package, with a cute, pastelish, cartoony interface that's pleasing without being gaudy or silly and some simple mini-games that can keep you occupied for a few minutes each day. After personal experiences with Brain Age making me feel much sharper mentally in the past, I could be led to believe these little distractions could reduce stress and help an individual deal with social anxiety. If there's anything the average person in the modern world shares, it's stress. A chance for stress relief at $20 will probably end up being worth a try for most people, but if you're looking for more 'fun' and less 'therapy,' you might be better served putting your money elsewhere. The mini-games aren't annoying, but they're also not a blast. MindHabits is going in the right direction, but until it manages to find a way to accomplish its goals while concentrating a little more on 'fun' factor it's not quite there yet.