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Biofeedback Gaming
runningwater writes "A new kind of game was debuted at the E3 expo. It is called Journey to Wild Divine. The game features a biofeedback USB interface designed to allow a player (or players) to navigate through the game using their mind power, breath, and heart rate. This is a wild and visionary concept which works so fluidly you can blow on the screen and objects move as if propelled by your breath. The game features an awesome soundtrack, including Grammy-nominated artists and spanning many genres. This is the new generation of gaming, and you have never seen anything like this before." Their site has a page with more information about the biofeedback aspect.
Obligatory MegaTokyo link
Tetris had this years ago, Tetris plus with and ear tag to measure your heartbeat then speed up the game as it beats more :-)
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
Ah well.
the PowerPad and PowerGlove Nintendo put several years ago? this seems like the next step in that direction ("physical gaming")
well, it's nothing one behind the ear wouldn't cure
1. Will the game be fun to play?
2. Will playing a biofeedback game teach you how to do things with your state of mind that are difficult to learn in other ways?
It's an intresting idea... the devil (or God) will be in the details, though.
I see a huge synergistic opportunity for the good people at Parks Medical Electronics, manufacturers of Penile Plethysmographs (be sure and scroll down to see a photo of your future "interface"):
Plethysmographs
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
"Why are you breathing so hard? Hey! Stop looking at me like that!"
So, the new generation of gaming involves blowing on a screen while listening to grammy-award winning music? ... Right. If you'll excuse me, I hear my Super Nintendo calling my name.
Trent Polack
www.polycat.net
The testimonials are what you would expect from a new product but with no mention of an estimated release date or where to purchase it makes me wonder if this could just end up being a marketing tool without an actual release.
I guess I'm going to have to wait until I see something more tangible.
Snowy Angelique Maslov - http://www.snowy.org/
"We envision a world where vibrant wellness is the norm, consciousness transforms beyond fear, and people live in creative abundance in harmony with the earth."m e=Content &pa=showpage&pid=21
http://www.wilddivine.com/modules.php?na
OMG...make it stop
Personally, I'm excited about this simply for the opportunity to have an emperical means for assisting people in meditation, in their own homes. This could open up whole groups of individuals for meditation and the related philosophy or theology with which they want to associate it.
That said, I'd be particularly excited if the system could somehow be made extensible, i.e. that using a front-end software they provide you associate certain activities with normal system commands. In such a system, for example, you could perhaps script an interface to react to your GSR to control any game.
Alternately, I'd hope that they have a simple front end so that an end-user could write a program to read the same information from the sensors. This would allow us to basically create parallel games or simply meditative tools without the "storyline" or particular format of their game.
"Stumble before you crawl"
...what kind of in-game effect urination will produce? :D
I sure hope this isn't a FPS.......
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
I'm confused. How does this relate to SCO? Please let's stick to the topic!
- Put a big monster just behind a corner in an attempt to scare the hell out of you.
- Wait for you to turn the corner.
- Check heart rate.
- If heart rate > 150 write "gotcha!!" on screen.
Ignoring the fact that this is being proposed as a game, its environment appears to be one that allows the mind to manipulate an environment.
/.)
The environment itself is rendered (hopefully in real time!) with apparent triggers throughout the game. For example wondering up to a waterfall where your heartrate increases by a small factor could trigger a dolphin jumping in the water....
This type of biofeedback is definately useful! If any folk have ever attempted meditation and reaching towards understanding of self, the lack of instant-feedback makes this process extremely difficult for the uninitiated.
Overall I see this project as a very good idea that is hopefully implemented well. Ultimately, however, I don't see this catching on as society isn't designed around relaxation and exploring ones own self.
And a shame....
-Just some crazy duck.
(wow, userid 1599 and i think this is my first post ever to
I think 'physical gaming' is much more fun to play and also more rewarding. Anyone remember Duck Hunt for NES? That game would've been pretty bad if it weren't for the fact that you could actually aim at the ducks with a gun and hit them. That totally redeemed the boring gameplay and ancient graphics. Actually I'm gonna go play now...
We think you'll agree, there have never been computer images as beautiful and as meaningful as you'll see in The Journey to Wild Divine.
I don't know, I've seen screenshots of me attacking innocent bystanders with a chainsaw in Vice City. One could derive all too much meaning from that kind of computer imagery...
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
"Hey kids! You can exercise while you play video games!"
Brilliant.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
I give the authors of this game +5 for creative advertising. That last sentence "is the new generation of gaming, and you have never seen anything like this before" gave it away as an advertisement though.
/. "editors"
Still, good job of slipping it past the
That's what it looks like. No thanks.
I've been working in some psychology research labs for some time now. One the professors I've worked with studies neurofeedback, i.e. monitoring the electrical activity of the brain with electrodes attached on the head. I've actually helped training a bunch of kids to move a cursor on a screen simply by getting them to be concentrated on moving it wherever it had to be at that moment. ( some info here and here. It's not excluded at all that in the near future, we'll be able to gain control of computer interfaces with a little help from such devices. It's my first post on /. , nice ;)
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
Well, I must say this seems very interesting. I am hoping this will be as good as it sounds. Hell, this might start a whole new genre in gaming. Can you imagine this technology being placed in a First-Person Shooter? Where your calmness actually affects your accuracy in using a sniper rifle. Or where being able to move faster depends on how your heart-rate is reacting. I think this could be the next step in a new generation of gaming. Where how you act effects your game play, and how focused you are. Imagine being in Unreal and being able to "know" if someone is near you, and (because of the senses) being able to react so fast you can aim at them and head shot before they can notice...
-Annon Kaies Zi
this would work great in a sniper-type fps
being a real sniper requires control of your pulse and breathing... try a look at a biathlon event? you ski like crazy... then with your heart and breath racing, you're supposed to find the calm to shoot targets... training your control over your pulse and breath seems like a natural plug-in for a video game with biofeedback
or maybe some deer hunter type game too
totally turns the new age message behind this idea on it's head, but i think the grand theft auto crowd would get behind this sooner than the new age crap
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
From the blurb:
...oh, wait...
"This is a wild and visionary concept which works so fluidly you can blow on the screen and objects move as if propelled by your breath."
My gosh, that's amazing! All I had to do was click on "Hi-Bandwidth QuickTime Movie" and their server got blown away too!
How do they do that!?
My
Limekiller
The Matrix Reloaded game has a "Focus" bar which allows your character to do matrix like moves, slow down time and such. It would be cool if you really had to calm yourself down and focus with the bio feedback device.
Making an AI smell the average gamer?
Isn't there a law of robotics that deals with this sort of thing?
One side effect of biofeedback gaming is that the player will have to learn to control their physiology to play the game. In other words, games like this (while overly sedate to some) will train people to be healthier. So first, we have video gaming to improve memory retention, visual response rate and eye hand coordination, but now they'll be reducing stress and blood pressure by practice.
I think this can be a good thing.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Used to be, there was this cool place in Seattle called Entros. For a while there was one in San Francisco, too. Now they are gone, with no trace save a "demo" web site.
It was a restaurant/bar that had about five entertainment areas around it. The entertainment areas were always cool and different.
The most famous was "Interface", where one person wears a blindfold and a camera, and the other person sits in front of a screen watching what the camera sees; using two-way radio, the second guy tells the first guy where to go and what to do. "Go left, step forward, reach down, no, left, no, LEFT, feel for the ball, YOU TOUCHED IT! GO BACK!" Within a set period of time you had to accomplish certain tasks. If you got them all done, you were allowed to enter the victory lounge. I never got to see that lounge...
Anyway, they had a sort of game show where you had to compete to see who was the calmest. They would hook up the players to biofeedback, and then they would do various things to try to shake the players' calm. For the winner, it played a recorded voice saying something like "YOU ARE THE BUDDHA".
I miss Entros.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely