VentureBeat

The battle of the brain games is underway. Nintendo set this trend in motion when it launched “BrainAge” for the Nintendo DS in 2006. Since then, a number of startups have sprung up and launched additional games aimed at improving the cognitive abilities of gamers with puzzles and brain teasers.

Research suggests that older adults in particular can benefit from playing games that improve memory, concentration and problem solving. Today, Lumos Labs is announcing it has raised $3 million in venture capital from Pequot Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and existing investors. The money will go to its brain game web site, Lumosity.com.

Michael Scanlon, CEO of Lumos Labs, says that gamers now play 50,000 games a day on the site. Each of the games (one pictured left) has been built in conjunction with scientists who study cognitive training. The site launched in its free beta form in January, 2007, and then it moved to $10-a-month paid subscriptions in July, 2007. When you play games on the site, you can compare your performance against everyone else’s with the “brain performance index.”

Lumos Labs has 10 employees and is based in San Francisco. Scanlon said that his company emphasizes the science, but he acknowledged that no one has yet done a conclusive study that brain-oriented games can ward off cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Scanlon said that subscriptions are growing about 25 percent each month. The company previously raised its first round of capital of $400,000 from angels in October, 2006.

Also, in a separate announcement, Vivity Labs will launch its Fit Brains site (pictured left) today. Back in March, Vivity raised $1 million in angel money. Vivity has nine casual games on the site now. You can follow a “brain circuit” by completing the games one after another or just play randomly. The site’s metrics tell you whether your performance is getting better or worse. You get trophies for certain achievements and can vy to be the best on 11 different leader boards. The site says the games are “guilt free” because they’re good for you.

The competition is heating up. Michael Cole, CEO of Vivity Labs in Vancouver, Canada, said that brain games got a huge boost from Nintendo, which sold 26 million copies of BrainAge and Big Brain Academy. The Fit Brains site has 10,000 beta testers. The average session is 25 minutes. About 125,000 games have been played to date since March. The company has nine employees.

Before running Vivity, Cole worked at Happy Neuron, another brain game company. Another competitor is Posit Science, which targets assisted-living residents with CD-ROM based games. All of these gaming companies try to strike a balance between entertainment and science-based education. Cole says his company has hired professional game developers so that it can ensure that its games are fun.

Listen to Dean’s audio post on Vivity Labs’ FitBrains.com brain-training web site

Researchers say that older adults and others can benefit from brain-training exercises.

But it took Nintendo’s BrainAge video game for the handheld DS to break the market wide open. It led you through basic math-related activities and literature passages, pointing to research that said if you did such math and read out loud, your brain functions much better.

In a couple of years, the title and its sequels have sold more than 26 million copies, according to Nintendo. That’s something like a half billion dollar business.

Vivity Labs hopes to extend that market opportunity with Fit Brains, a casual games web site that allows people play games that help their brains in some way, VentureBeat has learned. Michael Cole, CEO and founder of Vivity Labs in Vancouver, Canada (pictured here), says that his company is targeting the older casual game players who may want to view their game playing as productive.

“We call it guilt-free gaming,” said Cole, whose company recently raised $1 million in funding from undisclosed angels. “We’ll go after the casual games audience that wants to keep their minds sharp.”

That’s a contrast to people like me, who want to turn our brains to mush. Actually, given the way my brain works these days, I might want to give Fit Brains a whirl.

The Fit Brains site is a combination of online games, brain fitness tips, and a social network that includes competitive brain teaser competitions. People can also play cooperatively, and they check out their rankings and achievements.

Competitors include Nintendo, of course, but it’s not very direct since Nintendo sticks to its own hardware platforms. The Brain Age games are based on the work of Japanese researcher Ryuta Kawashima. They include math and recognition problems that designed to keep certain parts of the brain active. The game was built in 90 days by a team of nine game designers. But it turned the game world upside down with its elegant simplicity. Read the rest of this entry »