The iconic brain doctor from Brain Age hasn't pocketed any royalties from the games that bear his research and forbids his children from playing video games on the weekdays.
Dr. Ryuta Kawashima's polygonal disembodied head is front and center in Nintendo's best-selling Brain Training video games, encouraging players to do better in mentally stimulating math and logic exercises. But the brain researcher's opinion on the value of gaming sounds more like that of a concerned parent than that of a video game icon.
"I don't think playing games is bad in itself," Kawashima says, "but it makes children unable to do what they should do such as study and communication[sic] with the family."
Indeed, it's ironic that Dr. Kawashima's work has helped Nintendo sell millions of copies of their Brain Training video games for the Nintendo DS. The brain researcher forbids his four sons from playing video games on weekdays and only allows them an hour of game time on weekends. Once, he even destroyed a game disc when the rules were broken.
"Having fun is not studying," he explains. "Making them study is not to entertain children but to pressure them to make efforts. People fall to lower and lower places unless they are driven to go higher."
Further defying expectations, Dr. Kawashima hasn't pocketed any of the royalties from the Brain Training games for himself or retired to a tropical island. ("I wouldn't know what to do there.") Instead, he's used the proceeds to build new laboratories for the Institute of Development, Aging, and Cancer at Tohoku State University, where he works.
"Everyone in my family is mad at me," he confesses, "but I tell them that if they want money, go out and earn it."
These are easy remarks coming from a self-confessed workaholic. "My hobby is my work," Dr. Kawashima says, and his work keeps him so busy that he's even stopped playing the games based on his own research. "I'm confident I'll go senile," he jokes. "Researchers, especially those in medical fields, are said to die of what they are studying." With a grin, he added, "since I've been studying the brain, I'll die of a brain disease."