Just yesterday, they were all busy researching how to rescue the near-bankrupt banks. Today, when they t, they couldn't help but ask, "Which console does your grandson play—Sega or Nintendo?"
This bizarre transformation left Takuya Nakayama, the man at the heart of this whirlwind, torn between laughter and exasperation.
Sitting in his office, he watched the news as politicians clashed heatedly over the title of "Gaming Industry Spokesperson." With a casual flick of his hand, he turned off the screen.
These people didn't understand gas; they understood trends. They slled money.
Regardless, with the official and dia hype, the gaming industry's fire had thoroughly ignited Japan's winter.
As Christmas approached, Akihabara's air, usually thick with the steam from oden stalls, now carried a strange, restless energy.
At this hour, the counters would normally be crowded with students in school uniforms or otaku with fervent eyes. But in the past few days, store clerk Yoichi Miyazawa found himself constantly adjusting his professional smile. Before him stood a crowd of middle-aged businessn in suits, their receding hairlines a testant to their age, and even housewives with shopping baskets.
"Um—excuse , do you have that... that thing?"
A man in a beige trench coat looked flustered, his fingers absently tracing circles on the glass counter. "You know, the one they're talking about on the news? The one that's all the rage right now—the one that makes you smarter? Or is it the one that makes you money?"
Yoichi Miyazawa froze for half a second before swallowing the "32-bit RISC Processor Architecture Analysis" he had prepared.
Trying to explain polygon counts to custors who couldn't even figure out how to set their VCRs to record was like playing the lute to a cow.
"Do you play golf? Or maybe watch baseball?" Yoichi quickly changed tack, grabbing a box of Live Power Baseball from the shelf. "This one's easy to play—no brainpower needed. Just connect it to your TV at ho and start playing. A lot of company presidents are into it."
"Oh? Presidents are playing this?" The man's eyes lit up, and he fumbled for his wallet with much more enthusiasm than before. "Then I'll take this one, and a machine to go with it."
This scene was playing out in electronics stores all across Japan.
The sharp-witted managers quickly removed the parater tables touting "hardcore functionality" and replaced them with more straightforward handwritten signs: "Stress Relief Miracle," "Fun for the Whole Family," "Prevents Alzheir's (crossed out) Brain Training."
While these unconventional retail outlets were making such changes, Sega's response was more professional.
Guided by Takuya Nakayama, Sega's Sales Departnt contacted its alma mater, the Tokyo Institute of Technology. They commissioned the Departnt of Ga Social Psychology to produce a research report analyzing the experiences various demographics expect when first trying video gas and the types of gas best suited for them. This would help Sega develop more effective marketing strategies and ssaging for this new type of custor.
As it happened, the Tokyo Institute of Technology had already begun this research two years prior.
It all started when Takuya Nakayama had Sega's PC Software Departnt help establish Japan's first university-wide Internet BBS at his alma mater.
Even after the BBS was built, Takuya Nakayama maintained close ties with his alma mater.
At that ti, Takuya had already beco a hotshot Managing Director at Sega, wielding considerable influence within the company and the gaming industry. For a prestigious science and engineering university like the Tokyo Institute of Technology, he was a living embodint of an "outstanding alumnus" and a "super patron."
Thanks to the diation of his advisor, Professor Akinori Yonezawa, the collaboration between the two parties had long since expanded beyond the initial, rudintary campus network.
Under Professor Yonezawa's guidance, the Tokyo Institute of Technology began establishing a variety of majors and disciplines related to electronic gas.
These included research in ga-related hardware and software, as well as the cultivation of talent in various aspects of the gaming industry.
Additionally, they introduced interdisciplinary fields like the Departnt of Ga Social Psychology.
The research ntioned earlier had already begun after these departnts were established, so so preliminary findings had been published earlier.
This research report from the Tokyo Institute of Technology was rely the tip of the iceberg in Takuya Nakayama's grand plan.
Although Professor Yonezawa was an old academic eccentric, his connections throughout Tokyo's university circles were impeccable.
Thanks to his connections, the Departnt of Ga Social Psychology at the Tokyo Institute of Technology didn't go it alone. They partnered with Teikyo University, a prestigious institution with a strong reputation in the dical field.
Together, the experts from both universities ford a research group with a topic that sounded outlandish to the Japanese academic community at the ti: the "Joint Research Group on Video Gas and Psychopathology."
Teikyo University contributed several authorities in psychosomatic dicine and ntal disorder intervention.
They stared at the Sega prototype machines and thick stacks of ga cartridges, their initial expressions a mixture of scrutiny and even hostility.
After all, in the traditional dical community, these devices were seen as little more than "digital opium."
But Takuya Nakayama didn't care about these prejudices. He wanted data—scientific evidence that would slam the door on those moral guardians.
"Sega doesn't want those tired old argunts about gas being harmful without rigorous evidence, nor do we want paid-for puff pieces," he told the gray-haired professors bluntly at the project's kickoff eting. "I want to understand why so people can play gas to relieve anxiety without becoming addicted, while others play day and night until they're exhausted and listless."
"Where lies the boundary between healthy engagent and addiction? Is it a dopamine threshold in the cerebral cortex, or a specific interactive chanism? What kind of gaplay processes have an impact, and what are those impacts?"
He even proactively proposed a sub-project to his alma mater called "Reverse Engineering of Addiction chanisms."
This proposal startled Professor Yonezawa.
Takuya Nakayama's reasoning was both thorough and "capitalistic": "Rather than waiting for the PTA or the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare to point fingers at us with so pseudo-scientific report they cobbled together from who-knows-where, it's better for Sega to fund our own research now to thoroughly understand the pathological chanisms of 'ga addiction.'"
"We need a yardstick," Takuya Nakayama said, pointing to the diagram of the "Flow" model on the whiteboard. This concept, proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi just a few years prior, "We need to find that golden ratio. What kind of design can imrse players in a state of selfless Flow, regulating emotions and even aiding in the treatnt of mild depression? But once they cross a certain red line, that imrsion can devolve into pathological compulsive addiction."
Please Support by becoming my patreon mber and get 30 chapters.
[email protected]/Ajal69
change @ with a
Thank You to Those who joined my Patreon
User Comments
0 comments from readers