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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."
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"
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?
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
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....
^_^
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
Or at least masturbation.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
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.
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
WaveRider
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
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"
"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.
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
...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
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
Jesus Christ, relax, dude!
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 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.
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
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.
You obviously haven't been enjoying Friday Night Treks on the NEW TNN. I'm sure others will back me up that that particular episode has been on at least 9 times in the past 4 weeks.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
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"
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"
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.
Microsoft Pub Simulator.
As Real as it Gets.
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?
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.
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 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.
But playing the game encourages you to relax. And if you get a lot of practice relaxing, you can apply that to real world situations where you need to relax.
It's almost like training yourself to build up your relaxation "muscle"...
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."
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.
[leveling double-barreled shotgun at oncoming pinkies] ... I *AM* relaxed!!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?