Slashdot Mirror
Video Games to Help You Relax
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Irish game developers have unveiled their latest project, a game that helps you to relax, through the use of electrodes that are attached to a player's fingers and as the person relaxes, their dragon moves faster.
The game uses galvanic skin response technology which works by measuring the ability of the skin to conduct electricity."
Is that the same sort of futuristic technology that many table lamps have had for, oh, forty years?
[
like that called sex?
my strategy? drink until i pass out. my dragon moves the fastest when i'm so relaxed i wet myself.
"i can never say no to anyone but you"
Quake 3 already does this for me, provided I win. If I lose, I move on to punching holes in the walls of my apartment.
----- sXe
betcha when they find out it uses the advanced technology of their e-meters, they'll sue.
stored on computers from birth to the grave
This could be very therapeutic. It's funny that people need incentive for well-being. Some of us need to learn to chill out!
...yelling and screaming at the computer because their dragons are going waaay too slow and getting even less relaxed because of it? ;)
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
Cool idea, I admit, but video games already help me relax. I wouldn't play them if I felt like it was going to work (hence the reason I wasn't that fond of The Sims).
And yeah, my heart gets going a bit faster when I'm playing games, but isn't that part of relaxing? The enjoyment and the thrill of the game? It seems to me that if you're specifically trying to get a person's heart rate down, won't that just lead to the player either falling asleep or becoming bored by the game?
...get all worked up and pissed off. I used to get the best results with Tribes2. :)
Murphy was an optimist.
Well, I think this sounds a lot nicer than that Painstation idea we saw a few weeks ago!
But seriously doesn't almost everyone find games relaxing? No matter how heated things get in Unreal (me being rubbish and killed a lot!) I always feel much better when I'm done.
-- I am Jack's sig line.
What would lying look like when animated? Could you design the animation to influence a jury?
I don't know about you, but fast moving dragons always cause me to relax.
It would seem to me, that the developers would have better luck going in the opposite direction (i.e. the goal being to get the dragon to walk). You would start off the game with the dragon flying, and as you relax and calm down the dragon also relaxes and calms down...
"Chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are exceedingly rare, but... you never know." - MIT Physicist Bob Jaffe
I am just wondering how it is possible to be forced to relax.
Won't this put even more pressure on the person?
Please tell me how this should work.
More than a few years ago I saw on TV a game like this, where you begin as a fish, and as you relax more you become a human, and then start flying and getting to the stars....
^_^
... thing!
(I've tried neurofeedback... quite helpful if you give it 8-10 sessions)
Various forms of 'biofeedback' games have been
around for at least a decade. I can clearly
remember a stereotypical british woman 'playing'
some such game on the program Beyond 2000 on
the discovery channel in the early 90s. If I
recall correctly the game had you start off as a
fish or some such 'low' creature, and as you
relaxed you evolved into various higher forms of
life. Thought it got a little weird near the end,
I belive the final form had you turn into an angel
and then a star.
Perhaps the ultimate form of relaxation is to
turn into a space baby.
Just to relax? :)
I preffer the old good way - SEX
of loading up on caffeine to stay up and game all night?
free ipod? yeah.
The first game you can actually fall asleep and win! I have a feeling it won't be much fun *yawn*, er oops =)
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
If you're stressed, your dragon goes slower, and you start to lose. When you start losing a game to your slacker friends, you start getting more stressed, so you go slower and slower. Once you start to lose, you will continue to do so. This is like a drinking game, without the benefits of drinking.
It starts out like this. a game, a pleasant game that surrounds with pleasang glowing balls. If we play the game the game rewards you with a wonderful mellow feeling....... Crap. Next thing you know no one will be controlling the ship.
I vaguely remember an episode where Commander Riker brings back an alien device where relaxing and allowing the little discs to go into a vortex was the way to win.
Eventually the entire crew got hooked on it and had their minds controlled by the aliens.
Seriously, I could beat this game in my sleep!
There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling!
A few months back on here, there was an article about these Germans who invented the Painstation, which offered a little negative reenforcement when you screwed up. I think a truly challenging game would be one where you had to relax, or you risked getting shocked. See how relaxed you can be under threat of torture!
Come to think of it, that might not be a bad way to train yourself for polygraph examinations, either...
They that would sacrifice their
This cool game, tranquility, can help you relax in that flowing, feeling-like-plankton kinda way, you know?
... and more weird stuff that I've found myself addicted to.
There's no dying, all levels are custom built for you by with help from their server
Works with OS X, OS 9, Win 98 - XP, while a Linux version is in the works.
J
I hope that this is not another piece of technology that gets taken too far and inevitably falls into the wong hands. If it becomes popular and we start to see the hardware being destributed free or below cost for use on Internet games, beware! It will have all boiled down to marketing.
Think spyware. If ads are placed in the game, they may be monitoring your subconcios response!
We might see (or not realize) that the progress of a game becomes more prefferable when our reaction to certain stimulii "improves".
The structure of our critical discourse is clearly fractured beyond repair.
The notorious "suicide doctor" (and suspected Canadian) Dr. Jack Horkheimer is all over the news telling us to drop acid and stare at the skies, and not a word is uttered in protest in this allegedly libertarian forum.
Meanwhile, Commander Taco instructs us to vegetate in front of a TV screen, because it will "help us to relax" -- indeed, indeed! Relax you shall, my little ones! Just as the Vichy government relaxed! Just as Mr. Quisling's expedient regime relaxed!
Yes, children, it's time to "relax". Just as the Western Left "relaxed" in the face of clear, irrefutable evidence of Stalin's barbarous atrocities.
But maybe, just maybe, one small voice might make itself heard: Is this wise? As the West descends into apathy and irrelevance, refusing to defend its ancient and hard-won freedoms, I ask you: Is it wise?
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
Biofeedback as defined by m-w.com:
It's often used by psychologists/psychiatrists to help patients reduce stress and relax... just like this "game."
How about a game that delivers painful shocks if you're tense. Now that's motivation.
Can this be used for mind control? "Relax, now repeat after me - Al Qaeda is good, Bush is bad"
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
WaveRider
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
I wonder how long it is before someone writes a linux polygraph app using the electrodes that the game uses. I can see it now--Linux users hired at an increasing rate at the FBI. They pass the polygraph test with flying colors!
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
does this seem strange to anyone else? Now games that were supposed to make us jump and get scared are encouraging us to not react as strongly. Sounds to me like they're just de-sensitizing us even more to those exciting video games that were meant to get our hearts racing and the adrenaline pumping in the first place.
free ipod? yeah.
Hey, where's the rest? At least give the title of the book, dammit!!! Seriously, I want the title please...
I thought the objections to skin response were based on things like sweating. I would think that a person sweating heavily would not be relaxed. What are the reasons behind the rise or drop in skin resistance anyhow?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Galvanic skin response meters have been around for AGES. Basically, they operate on the theory that the less relaxed a person is, the more conductive their skin becomes. It's extremely simple technology.
Back in high school, I took a psychology class and one day the instructor (who had a Phd), brought in a friend who had hooked up a galvanic skin response meter to the serial port of a PC.
This thing had some really trippy colors and effects (much like some visualisations in WinAmp) and it would periodically reset it's "baseline" of your current galvanic skin measurement, then display a corridor or a horizon with some sort of visually indicated goal, such as a door. To move forward to reach the door, you would have to relax more (thus lowering the conductivity of your skin).
It was rather neat, actually.
B.
Wait! Better read that EULA! That cap is uploading your brain waves to the internet and they become property of XYZ corporation!
"If you can get it to fly, it means you have got into a nice relaxed state," he explained. The game takes place in a virtual 3D world set aboard a starship in space. The environment is designed to immerse the player, drawing more of their attention and making the feedback more effective.
Why does this remind me of a certain Star Trek: TNG episode I've seen?
This has been around for a while for the treatment of attention deficit disorder. However, for A.D.D. patients, the goal is to focus better instead of relaxing. Still a very cool treatment if ya ask me.
Here's a story you might find interesting.
I will kick but while I am sleeping....
I've seen a lot of posts about how playing Tribes2 or whatever gets your heart rate up and relaxes you. They mean relaxation in a more clinical sense, like the relaxation you get when you fall asleep, or while under hypnosis. That is a calming feeling, your heart slows and you breath deeper and slower.
That kind of relaxation is very good for you as it reduces blood pressure and all that. Some people might say they play basketball to relax, but they really mean they play basketball for enjoyment. People may listen to music for relaxation, take baths, whatever.
I don't see why they can't make a Slashdot version. They can replace the dragon with the latest Katz article and measure the galvanic response of readers. You could also substitute any article on Microsoft or about the latest Linux kernel. The player wins by either writing the calmest post or just by not saying anything at all.
The game uses galvanic skin response technology
Game my ass. Everyone knows this is technology used by the Romulons to brainwash their victims. Sheesh... You guys go ahead and get one. Nobody's brainwashing me.
You're winning.
:-)
:-)
When I start getting my butt kicked at CS I get really stressed.
But really: I've been using video games to relax for a long time. I can't relax when I watch TV because I keep over-analizing everything (such as picking out all the scientific flaws in a tv program). I can relax much better when all I have to do is point and shoot.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Give me that 1970s setup where my alpha waves drive slotcars around the track.... now *that's* relaxation.
Resident Evil..
You can only fire while in a relaxed state.
I seem to recall a Commmodore 64 game co-designed by Timothy Leary that worked like this. Anyone remember the title?
It had lovely trippy caleidoscope graphics to help you rela-a-ax...
oops I mean run for office. That's the ticket.
<half-way-serious>
that's a dumb idea for a game
</half-way-serious>
...I could beat this game in my sleep!
(sorry, I just felt it had to be said)
Liberty uber alles.
...that helps you to relax, through the use of electrodes that are attached to a player's fingers...
Are you relaxed?
No not really...
zap
What the??
Are you relaxed?
No not now!
Zap
What the hell?!?
Are you relaxed?
How the heck am I suppose to be relaxed when..
ZAP!!
OK! OK!! I'M RELAXING!!
ZAAAP!!
I SWEAR! I'M RELAXED!! I'M SO DAMN RELAXED I'M..
ZAAAP ZAAP ZAAP...
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
If you don't relax fast enough, they should use those electrodes to give you electrical shocks as punishment.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
The Church of Scientology will most likely sue these people for stealing their proprietary and highly secret E-meter technology.
The owls are not what they seem
Does anyone know where I could get an EEG which I could plug into my computer? It would be a killer biofeedback device!
Why am I suddenly remembering an old episode of Star Trek: TNG?
Didn't they have a game like that, where the disks went into the little hole thing when the person relaxed and let it, but really the game was a mind control device?
~Windfinder
About 10 years ago I used to work at a place called the Other 90%. The ownerr was a guy named Ron something or other. He was the guy who killed Atari. We made a device called the MindDrive which basically was a finger unit that used galvonic skin response.
Needless to say it was useless for gamers. Gamers want to sit down and play games, not teach their bodies to react to their thoughts.
A radio station in San Francisco, where we were located, found that a peeled grape could play the games better than they could.
There's a lot more to gvs than relaxing.
This has been done before... I wish companies would do their research every once-in-a-while.
-- -- A truly great man never puts away the simplicity of a child
Or would that be a "steriod."
Would you be tested before a lan party?
I don't know about you but I play video games to escape "Real Life."
That's what games are best at, providing us an imaginary world to avoid the real on ( and to help us forget that we're all in the Matrix )
lunky> c++; lunky> do{;}
... the Scientologists are planning on suing the company into the ground claiming that it violates a patent held on e-meter technology.
You get into the zone and you're all relaxed, then you realize how fast your dragon is going and you get excited, then it slows down again. Sounds extremely frustrating.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
It's 7:30am I just had 3 mug's of espresso a chocolate bar and am allready eyeing the mountain dew. I have a programming deadling this friday.
Let me play that game and see dragons fly BACKWARDS!
That puts a whole new meaning to "chasing the dragon".
Silly Rabbit...Sig's are for kids.
This might have some interesting military/police uses, so people can train to keep their cool under pressure. Maybe they can incorporate this technology into the gun handle on an arcade-style shooting game, for instance, or the steering wheel of a tank/flight simulator.
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
This is just from my memory, but I remember seeing a similar device on TV many years ago.
It featured a cycle race. The player tries to get their brain to generate Alpha, Beta, or Delta waves (at the instructor's discretion). The more he can get his brain to 'concentrate' of one particular type of brainwave, the faster the cyclist on the screen pedals.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
This reminds me of those dreams where you try to run and the harder you try, the slower you get.
It's natural for humans to become tense when in a combat or high-stress situation. The ability to relax under fire is a great skill; it allows you to make wiser, more rational decisions that have a better outcome, and implement those decisions more quickly.
Classic example is my mother, whom you cannot rush. When you try to hurry her, she gets flustered, makes mistakes, and does things in the wrong order. Let her go at her own pace, usually very relaxed, and whatever she's doing will be done quicker and better.
Same thing goes for programming. Take away the deadline, and the programmer will produce a better product, if not in less time, then in not much more time.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
This sounds strangely like some kind of computer-assisted meditation to me, but that can't be right, because if computer games aren't free speech, it stands to reason that they aren't meditation either.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
Black and Tan
Castle Guinnesstein
The Sims: Pub Expansion Pack
Virtua Pub
Tom O'Shaunessey's Pub Recon
World Cup Virtual Hooligan
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
So that the more relaxed you are, the stronger your armor and weapons are. So to become a more efficient killer, you need to be extremely calm while doing so. Imagine the fallout from this.
Instead of having kids walk into a school armed with guns and shooting the whole place up in a violent rage, they'll walk in calmly, casually without any rasied emotion whatsoever, and silently stab someone in the back, and keep going as if nothing happened.
Another fun possibility is a game called "Lie detector trainer" where you can "practice" lying to the computer without generating the appropriate emotional response. And how you proceed in the game is dependant on how well you can lie. Of course, people might cheat and tell the truth. There's always an exploit.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Anyone remember Guru Meditation on the amiga? :)
e ntry/guru- meditation.html
(Supposedly) this came from an early version of the OS, where one had to balance carefully on a skateboard-type controller for a few minutes after a crash, and the system wouldn't reboot untill you'd calmed the hell down and stopped twiching like a psycho.
'Course when I got my A500 you just had to hit the mouse button, that's progress, I suppose
Here's a URL on the subject:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/
Tom Newton
Im not relaxed, Im worn out!
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
... and I've never felt so relaxed as when I am on the run for frags in one on one deathmatch in Doom II. There is something incredibly soothing in flowing through the passages, holding your BFG 9000, shooting it in the corner to instantly clean up the hiding fellow in the blue room with armor and shotgun, take the shotgun as it pops, flow out of the room into the passages again where you shoot the other guy as he poped and took plasma gun and immediatelly follow by shooting him at the chaingun corner.
It makes you feel so relaxed and concentrated at the same time, you've never felt better. You feed on the negative emotions as your opponent dies in quick succession and the whole world (errr.. wad) is yours!
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
The most disturbing part of the article:
"I had a Walkman with an Enya tape so I suggested that he go to bed and listen to it to see if it calmed him and it actually helped him sleep"
First off I want to point out that the majority of posts that I have seen that suggest that sex is a good relaxant: Who you kiddin? We all know you never had sex.
Now for some serious discussion. The paradox for this problem is the way it "encourages" relaxation. Relaxatation is a state when one is at rest and doesn't concentrate on anything in particular (or anything at all). However, this proposed application will most likely impose a stong sensation that intense concentration is required and cause participants to worry on trying to relax (which will add dificulty to the game). This will make it stressful for first-time players who will undoubtedly abandon the experience. Also the term game implies, at least for me, that it is competitive. Need I say more...
However, I must point out to the developers that it isn't possible to coerce someone into relaxing. For a person to be worry-free requires a strong self-image and an apathetic attitude towards daily and life-long problems.
By the way, I fear it would be pretty easy to cheat in this game and therefore would have no possible multiplayer applications. (Who needs auto-aim or proxy bots when piece of copper connecting the elctrodes will do.)
You might be referring to Osmosis, where one controls movement through a stereoscopic 3D/VR world using breathing techniques and balancing.
J
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Remember that scene from Silence of the Lambs, where Lector is wearing the chewed off face of this dude, and is being transported in the back of an ambulance to a hospital? He killed the paramedics in the ambulance, and later it is discovered that his EKG reading never varied from calm and normal.
The middle mind speaks!
actually, smooth fast motion can be pretty relaxing. think about how nice starfield simulation screensavers used to look (comparatively). since we're generally overstimulated much of the time, fast motion is probably more relaxing. (it also looks better on screen.) these days, it seems most people get tense when moving slowly... and though that's rather sad, this gets at *unrestricted motion*, free motion.
in addition, i can see some potential psychological benefits for people that get into this - encounter a slowdown when you don't want one, and impulse.relax becomes more likely. definitely a good thing.
[|]
I'm sorry, but "Galvanic Skin Response" is used exclusively for auditing and "blowing" Thetans. Please promptly forget the contents of the linked article, or else our lawyers will call you promptly.
I'm more interested in that galvanic skin response machine. A few of my classmates in the UCSD physics department tried to build one of these, and found it not only to be messy, but very difficult. While I have no doubt that an engineer could build better circuits than they did, I'm really curious as to how they measure the skin resistivity *accurately* without any conducting gel. It was my assumption that this was needed to get a good connection. Perhaps it has to do with all of us having dry skin out here in semi-arid southern California.
The first few hits are interesting, although some of these seem to get into areas that may hit a few raw nerves for some folks.
You comment makes me recal a story about an electician who would check such things out just like you described. The trick in this case as that they would stand on one leg. Why? The werte disabled, and were missing a leg. They made sure to stand on a wooden leg, and so would not pass electricity to the ground, or a metal floor, etc.
Don't try this at home.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
so now if i am trying to get somewhere(assuming i play this game alot) i will go really slow and if i wanna relax i will start running
A few hours later...
Nick swings around in his chair.
"BZZZZZZT!!!" he sprays out.
"I'm saaaaaad!" ye declares in a scratchy animal voice.
"BaZZZZZZZZZTTTT" he repeats.
"I'm haaaaapy!" (same scratchy voice)
"BZZZZZZZzzzT! I'm saaad! Bzzt! I'm happy!"
Then he swings around in his chair and is quiet for the rest of the day. Later on I asked him what that was about, and he described the obvious, "well, that was me on electro shock therapy. what, you didn't get it? bad tech!" and thats when he developed the (bad) habit of beaning me in the head with pennys as hard as he could. "Just the broze stuff, nothing grey", he retorted. *sigh*
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
has a rig that will hook up to you typical unix box. Pretty pictures too.
http://affect.media.mit.edu/AC_research/sensing.ht ml
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
for about a year now I have come
home from work and the stress of
teaching 260 overly hormonal teenagers
to relax in front of my computer playing
a few games of StarCraft...
Computer games, muds, etc. have always
been my relaxation tool...
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
This is clearly misapplied. It should be built into a fighting game. The more relaxed you are when you push the attack button, the more powerful your zen-master martial arts become! ;)
OK, diseration due in in 18 hours. not started it yet. A quick game of civ 3 before to get me going.
OK disertation due in in 18 minutes, not started it yet. A quick round of quake 3 to get me going.
OK disertation due in in 17 minutes 12 second, not started it yet. Get Stressed.
I play video games to relax, but if the game doesn't involve beating something up, killing numerous somethings, or conquering entire nations, planets, or universes, I'm just not interested.
Wow! That guy has the highest score we've ever seen!!!
We would ask him how he does it, but he is fast alseep...
Here and Here
Finally, someone has invented a game that you actually get *better* at when you're stoned.
Microsoft Pub Simulator.
As Real as it Gets.
Speaking of weed, looking for a picture of stoned Gandalf from the popular Lord of the Rings: the Movie. Including pipe, if possible. This would be for a wallpaper. Many thanks.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I own a device called the ThoughtStream that is a portable biofeedback device similar to this game. It provides both audio and visual feedback. It also allows you to measure how much more relaxed your were at the end of the session than you were at the beginning. The idea is that over time you can learn how to control your own relaxation responses so that you can eventually do it without the tool.
I think it's a great device, although I have to admit I haven't used it in over a year. For more information, check out this site. It costs $119, and I think this site also allows you to rent-to-buy.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
It would be really good if I had to relax (hence think) before I could edit a really important file, like /etc/passwd or before I could even become root. That would resolve 90% of the errors I make when I'm doing sys admin stuff.
Think about it. Get a battery and some cheap airline headphones. Your soundcard is an analog to digital converter, meaning that you could strip the ends off the headphones and attach the ends of the wires to your skin with tape, while having a power source in between the two wires. Your sound card could measure conductance, and could probably do a pretty good job of it.
Any program designed to record and manipulate audio could also manipulate your results...
Anything I'm missing here?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Game:
Did you purchase this game legally?
Player:
Yes
Game:
. . . No you didn't. [dials up BSA]
-Dave
UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A (Select simply moves the cursor to the two players option) START
It's probably required that you press start a few fractions of a second after doing the first part of the code.
This code rally does give me less stress. Contra pisses me off so bad when I only have 3 guys before game over. How the hell can anyone beat that game like that?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
because it was a blatant karma whore ? yes, I admire the quick reading and thinking that lead to a logged-in first post seemingly on-topic, but it didn't actually bring anything to the discussion
Whoop-dee-doo. I bought a biofeedback machine at radio shack twenty years ago for about ten bucks. If I hooked it up to a video game I would've been considered an "inventor"?
"Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top. " - Edward Abbey
I mean .. what could be more therapeutic after driving home through countless retards on the road called "drivers" with cellphones or whatnot ... and then coming home... pulling them out of their cars beating the blood out of them ... and then making designs in the pavement with your bloody footprints... oh and steal their car and money!! :) I love it.
People who quote themselves bug the crap out of me -- Me.
Wouldn't some other pleasing visual relax you more
than a fast flying dragon?
Does Die Hard calm you down more than 2001:A Space Oddysey?
The one where the whole crew gets taken over cause of the game where they got a blast of seratonin whenever they put the ball in the hole?
Heck, it was even called "Relax"! Here's a link to an old preview from an 1984 8-bit home computer magazine
Polygraph tests have become completely useless due to a whole new generation growing up with the ability to stay completely calm while raping and pillaging much less lying.
;0)
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
The game environment reflects your state of relaxation and lets you know if you are relaxed, but it doesn't help you relax. You force yourself relax and the game reflects it. You could easily do this by taking your pulse every minute. Thus, applying my fingers to my wrist helps me relax.
:)
(I know, semantics, semantics, who cares
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
It was anonymous... hardly the best way to whore karma.
the idea of using games to make people relax isn't anything particularly new (as has been noted). Here's another example of 'prior art':
_ eng/press_eng.htm) lets players win by relaxing some of their mental activity more than the opponents.
The Brainball game by the swedish Interactive Institute (http://smart.interactiveinstitute.se/smart/smart
Speaking of which, I saw it demonstrated at the Nordic Interactive Conferance last November, where the NASA head of reasearch and the Danish minister of research 'battled it out'. Basically NASA won flat out. Apparently learning how to relax is a big part of a managerial position.
_
-
The psychologist Csikszentmihalyi (I think I spelled it right...) calls that state "flow" and it probably is the same that a top athlete feels. You can enter it under virtually any activity that has well defined rules, the right difficulty and fast feedback on success and failure. Check out one of his books.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
It's been around since the late 1980's. This is nothing new.
Georgia Institute of Technology were running tests for a similar project at SIGGRAPH last year in LA. It involved a VR headset, finger electrodes and a thing they wrapped around your chest. The more relaxed you were, the faster the sun set. They gave you a printout of your galvanic skin response and respiration afterwards. I loved it 'cos my sun set faster than my husband's, and he usually wins the video games. Competitive relaxation rules! see http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/meditation/
This "game" seems like a good idea, but let's not forget that there have been ways to do this for a long time that only involve the technology of taught methods.
-- Bird in the Bush: The Renewable Energy Blog http://www.birdinthebush.org
Just out of curiosity, what happens to the loser? One person gets real relaxed, and wins, then the loser gets even more ajada than before. Seems that there's an alternative to that, a cheaper one, at that, that I like to call yelling.
Or you might wish to check out Go Rin No Sho (the Book of Five Rings) by Miyamoto Musashi. This is rather akin to what he describes as "the Void."
The point where self awareness diminishes and all your conscious mental processes essentially consist only of what you are doing. Rather cool if you can pull it off.
When we have lan parties over hear even the more relaxing games such as starcraft are an adrenaline rush!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I've always been curious about biofeedback devices like this.
Is it possible to learn how to control one's own heart rate, given enough practice?
How about body temperature or stomach contractions?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Yea! Thanks, dude! I've been mangling that thing for ages (read "twice, once here and once in a a discussion about managing anger") now, and now I can do so more accurately. It's like, I don't know, Google. :)
Liberty uber alles.
Interstingly, the real danger path for alternating current for a human is through the heart. This is one reason some folks working on custom video boards and monitors and such do so with one hand tucked in the back of the belt. That way a worst case path is through the hand, through the body, through the leg, to ground. Not good, but better than one hand to the other by way of the chest.
I recall being taught that the most lethal currents are alternating, in the 100-200 mA range. (Now, obviously an UberCurrent is gonna blow chunks out of you...). Also, for AC, the most dangerous frequency is supposed to be around the same frequency the heart beats. Standard 120 Vac will setup a wonderful fibrilation. For some reason I recall power mowers being dangerous as they'll lock your hands to them if you somehow cut into the cord in such a way as to cause a problem.
Electricity is neat... and most varieties (ie car batteries, etc) are pretty harmless. But some things (like a main from the street or high voltage) you don't screw with. At least not twice...
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
yep it's called Super Monkey Ball
Repeat my job title 3 times fast.
GSR measures measures skin conductance, and perspiration is not an objection to the measure, but is the cause of the measure itself. The EDG sensors are placed over major sweat glands (usually on the palm of the hand or on the fingertips). What is going on in this measure is that a very small electrical current (a few microvolts, less than is being produced by muscle contractions) is introduced and the resistance is of that current is measured. Changes in resistance occur due to changes in skin conductance which, for the most part, are due to minor perspiration changes.
The reason this measure is used is because the sweat glands are part of the autonomic nervous system. The greatest things that affect this (besides increase to body temperature) are attention, emotional arousal (which is really just attention), and respiration.
So, decreased respiration and decreased physical/emotional arousal will predictably reduce skin conductance. There are individual differences, however these are calibrated for.
I'm personally not into biofeedback, but there are cases where it can be effective for training, especially relaxation. This is just a public display of a relaxation training technique that has been used for quite awhile. In many biofeedback clinics they will use this to have a person control the brightness of a light, or simply move a line on the screen. The object is to get the person to understand how they can control their own body states to get to a desired result.
As somebody mentioned earlier, there are other ways to do so. Meditation is (extremely basically) the end result of learning how to control body states to relax. It uses internal cues while biofeedback uses external cues.
The desired end result of biofeedback training is the same. Once the person understands how to get their body to the relaxed state (ie learn how to get the external object to the certain state) they can later produce the same results without the game. IE: another form of meditation, just one that is more externally cognitive.
Your dragon lose to L33tZ3nM@ster
.. Hey, Not fair. nobody told me I'd be playing againts a Zen master Tibetan monk
The most relaxing PC video game I ever owned was The Game of Harmony by Accolade in 1990. Take a look at a brief review here. The object was to "push" various similar-colored balls into each other. If you moved your "ship" in a calm and controlled manner, you could rack up a very high your score. However, you were directly penalized if you moved around haphazardly.
Forget about "bio-feedback"!!! This is one of the most relaxing and intriguing games I have every played. In fact, I might go buy it from ebay right now . . .
I remeber a galvanic (sp) skin response machine radio shack sold like 10 years ago, it was a little beige box with a speaker in it and a headphone jack. you were supposed to make the tone go lower by relaxing your body. There was a program for the color computer model 1 that read the signals by pluging the tape input into the headphone jack on the box. The program didnt do much it had either numeric or pretty(for 10 years ago) flashing light display that went along with the readings. I may be dating myself but does anyone remember this?
Scientist: OK, please say "Linux is Good"
Geek: Linux is Good!
Bzzztt!!
OWWW What the GPL is
Bzzztt!!
OOWWWW!!
Scientist: Now please say, the "GPL is Good"
Geek: No!
Scientist: Success! Bill have found a way to "Cure" those social deviants that infect the internet!
Bill G: Excellent!
This really has been done already:
http://www.IBVA.com
"Nova" had an episode a couple of Tuesdays ago about a Russian missle-command base. The "Nova" researchers were invited to witness the reëvaluations of several local officers. One of the physicians observing the process spent her interview singing Biofeedback's praises like an '80's health class textbook.
I'm feeling a mite bit uneasy about the people looking over the finger assigned to the big red button.
Oh wow, galvanic skin response technology. What a new concept *NOT*. How about sticking some ohmeter probes to your fingers and watching the needle on the meter? What a fun game. I'm getting so excited.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
I am so impressed you did spell it right....
Wow.... I shall go hide in my corner now....
Imagine setting it to show you more pornographic pictures the more relaxed you got.
Possibility 1:
* You relax
* You get exciting pictures
* You get excited
* Pictures get boring
* Cycle repeats until
* You get so frustrated you get nothing but pictures of fluffy kittens.
Possibility 2:
* You learn to relax to get the hard core images
* You get habituated, so sex sends you to sleep.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I can see it now: My dragon will be the slowest, and I'll start getting upset because I cant get it to move faster, and the more upset I get, the slower the dragon will move, until I just kick the television. Then I have to worry about everyone who was in the room picking on me about how I cant even relax right...
I'm determined to reclaim my karma. Now, if I can only find a groundbreaking article and something witty to say....
frag the dragon with a RPG round
where the interface was electrodes on your head and the more you relaxed the higher a baloon would fly.
I just wrote one... www.cs-club.org/~jeremy01/web.html
I recall that the developers of the Amiga had written a game for it where you would meditate by balancing the character on screen, using a joyboard you controlled with your feet.
Anybody got details?
[leveling double-barreled shotgun at oncoming pinkies] ... I *AM* relaxed!!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Dear god, man!
You've discovered the secret to EVERY NINTENDO GAME EVER!
A few years ago, a research group working on ADD (attention deficit disorder) produced something similar that worked with Playstation games. The setup they constructed included a hacked-up PS controller, and a set of electrodes, all hooked up to a computer. The controller was rigged to respond poorly to user input at first. The computer measured some brain waves as the subject played a concentration-oriented game, and as the subject learned to focus their attention, the controller gradually became more responsive. I thought it very clever at the time. I wish I could provide the URL.