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.

Comments

Has to be done

[BabyDave]

Obligatory MegaTokyo link

Tetris

[Loosewire]

Tetris had this years ago, Tetris plus with and ear tag to measure your heartbeat then speed up the game as it beats more :-)

2 questions

[astrashe]

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.

Look ma, no hands!

[SYFer]

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

Re:Look ma, no hands!

[doublesix]

They are simply the best instruments for studying arterial flow to the penis non-invasively.

I'm not so sure about that ... These may work a little better

Ohh, think of the Social game potential...

[Peterus7]

Mixed with AI, you could have some twisted ass dating sims...

"Why are you breathing so hard? Hey! Stop looking at me like that!"

The New Generation?

[Trent Polack]

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.

Game or Path to Inner Peace?

[Snowpony]

This certainly sounds like interesting technology but I guess I am skeptical until I get to see it first hand. The website itself gave me an impression of one of those 'enlightenment' cults. Is it a game or a stress-relief tool? A way to inner peace and tranquility perhaps? It's hard to say.

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.

Re:Game or Path to Inner Peace?

[Annon Kaies Zi]

Actually, it does give a estimated date: "The Journey to Wild Divine, produced by The Wild Divine Project, based in Boulder, Colorado, and scheduled for release in September 2003, is a ground-breaking interactive computer journey that integrates the power of the spiritual quest with an innovative biofeedback interface and high-end multimedia production."

New age fluff piece of crap:

[tupshin]

"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."
http://www.wilddivine.com/modules.php?nam e=Content &pa=showpage&pid=21

OMG...make it stop

Re:New age fluff piece of crap:

[Selanit]

Yes; there's some hazy new-ageishness about their work. On the other hand, there is also some decent science there. Biofeedback, in this context, is used to measure alterations in your physical state, and that change controls what happens in the game. In essence, in order to control the game world you need to learn to control your own physical state: heartrate, sweat production, brainwave activity.

When I was a kid, I was diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). At one point, my parents signed me up for some biofeedback sessions. I would go to this office in downtown Denver, and they would put one of those electrode nets on my head -- they always used to squirt some cold goop into each electrode to ensure good conductivity between the electrode and my scalp. This was annoying, because the goop got kind of crusty when it dried out -- always had to wash my hair when I got home.

Anyway, once the net was in place they'd hook me up to a computer. The screen displayed information about the state of my brainwaves -- alphas, betas, gammas, deltas -- and my task was to attempt to control the relative levels thereof. The theory was that if I could learn to do that, I could apply the same technique elsewhere (eg in school) to sharpen my concentration.

I never noticed that it worked especially well. I suspect there are two reasons for this: 1) I didn't stick with it for very long; and 2) the information about my brainwaves was displayed as colored graphs -- line graphs, bar graphs, and I seem to recall a pie chart, too. Staring at a line graph scrolling past on a computer screen for an hour is really damn boring. The objective was to heighten my concentration skills. Presenting me with a boring-ass chart was probably not the best way to do that.

If I did well in a session, they would let me use their computer to play Commander Keen for a while before my parents came to pick me up. I was much more interested in playing Commander Keen than in those stupid charts.

For that reason, I think this game may be a huge advance over the stuff they had me do. Having an external objective to focus on (ie manipulating the game environment) is much more interesting than trying to make colored lines stay low. If the price isn't too high, I may just buy a copy of the game and the USB controller and give it a shot.

i wonder...

[bongobongo]

...what kind of in-game effect urination will produce? :D

For Doom-style games as well

[product byproduct]

- 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.

Re:does anybody remember...

[WiggyWack]

the PowerPad and PowerGlove Nintendo put several years ago? this seems like the next step in that direction ("physical gaming")

Yeah, look how well those caught on...

An interesting project.....

[Daffy]

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 /.)

Re:An interesting project.....

[JaredOfEuropa]

"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...."

Just what I need... the likes of me will probably end up downing three double espresso's before visiting the waterfall just so I can see that god-damned dolphin.

Duck Hunt?

[teklob]

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...

Nice Ad

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Still, good job of slipping it past the /. "editors"

Neurofeedback is coming too

[FrankoBoy]

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 ;)

Interesting...

[Annon Kaies Zi]

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...

how about a sniper game?

[circletimessquare]

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

Breath

[limekiller4]

From the blurb:
"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!? ...oh, wait...

The Matrix game

[MacFury]

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.

Re:Its not teh controller that matters.

[pixelgeek]

Making an AI smell the average gamer?

Isn't there a law of robotics that deals with this sort of thing?

Re:does anybody remember...

[mesach]

Tell that to the DDR crowd...

Isn't Dance Dance Revolution one of the highest selling arcade games?

I know it spawned a bunch of PC Rip offs

Played it at Entros

[steveha]

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