Mattel Mindflex: Thought-controlled ball game

By Rafe Needleman on 08 January 2009, 5:28pm

Hold on to your scalp: Mattel's new Mindflex game lets you control a floating ball with your mind as you navigate it through hoops, cages and hurdles on a circular racetrack. Control is by brainwave -- a headset measures the level of your concentration, and the more you concentrate, the faster a little fan spins that's blowing the ball up in the air, which controls its height.

The goal is to move the little orb around the customisable course as quickly as you can (you control the speed of rotation with a hand-operated knob). The device keeps score for several people.

We tried a similar, experimental product at a trade show in Sweden about six years ago. It was a head-to-head (sorry) game in which two people at either end of a ping-pong-size table tried to move the ball to their opponent's goal line. The more you 'relaxed', the farther the ball moved. As with the Mindflex, a headset read brainwaves. The trick with the Swedish game was that you had to relax to win, which is counterintuitive. With Mindscape, the more you concentrate, the higher the ball goes. That makes more sense.

We asked Mattel senior marketing manager John Ludwig if future versions will offer more axes of control -- not just height, say, but speed or lateral direction. "It's all possible, it's just a matter of money," he said. Mindscape will be $80 (£50) when it ships this autumn -- no word on whether it will make it over to the UK, however.

Ludwig also told us that future games might respond not just to concentration, but to fear (wouldn't want to to be the lawyer representing that one), anxiety, happiness or frustration. "We're always looking for the newest way to control things," he said.

The issue we have with Mindflex is that it seems like a solution looking for a problem. It's cool to be able to spin a blower fan faster by concentrating, but is the game itself engaging? Once the novelty factor wears off, we're not sure the replay value of this experience will be very high.