Just yesterday, they were all busy researching how to rescue the near-bankrupt banks. Today, when they met, 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 games; they understood trends. They smelled money.
Regardless, with the official and media 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 businessmen in suits, their receding hairlines a testament to their age, and even housewives with shopping baskets.
"Um—excuse me, 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 customers 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 home 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 parameter tables touting "hardcore functionality" and replaced them with more straightforward handwritten signs: "Stress Relief Miracle," "Fun for the Whole Family," "Prevents Alzheimer'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 Department contacted its alma mater, the Tokyo Institute of Technology. They commissioned the Department of Game Social Psychology to produce a research report analyzing the experiences various demographics expect when first trying video games and the types of games best suited for them. This would help Sega develop more effective marketing strategies and messaging for this new type of customer.
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 Department 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 time, Takuya had already become 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 embodiment of an "outstanding alumnus" and a "super patron."
Thanks to the mediation of his advisor, Professor Akinori Yonezawa, the collaboration between the two parties had long since expanded beyond the initial, rudimentary campus network.
Under Professor Yonezawa's guidance, the Tokyo Institute of Technology began establishing a variety of majors and disciplines related to electronic games.
These included research in game-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 Department of Game Social Psychology.
The research mentioned earlier had already begun after these departments were established, so some preliminary findings had been published earlier.
This research report from the Tokyo Institute of Technology was merely 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 Department of Game 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 medical field.
Together, the experts from both universities formed a research group with a topic that sounded outlandish to the Japanese academic community at the time: the "Joint Research Group on Video Games and Psychopathology."
Teikyo University contributed several authorities in psychosomatic medicine and mental disorder intervention.
They stared at the Sega prototype machines and thick stacks of game cartridges, their initial expressions a mixture of scrutiny and even hostility.
After all, in the traditional medical 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 arguments about games 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 meeting. "I want to understand why some people can play games to relieve anxiety without becoming addicted, while others play day and night until they're exhausted and listless."
"Where lies the boundary between healthy engagement and addiction? Is it a dopamine threshold in the cerebral cortex, or a specific interactive mechanism? What kind of gameplay 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 Mechanisms."
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 some 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 mechanisms of 'game 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 immerse players in a state of selfless Flow, regulating emotions and even aiding in the treatment of mild depression? But once they cross a certain red line, that immersion can devolve into pathological compulsive addiction."
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