Predicting Color Blindness, ADD, or Learning Disorders From Game Data

An anonymous reader tips a story at VentureBeat about a company that helps game developers analyze data gathered from their games to detect cheaters. But now, the company says this data can also be used to determine other traits of the players, like whether they're minors, or whether they like to gamble. Their CEO, Lukasz Twardowski, expects such analysis will soon be able to reveal even more traits, like whether a player is color blind, has a developmental disorder, or has Alzheimer's disease. "'Games are the richest and the most meaningful form of human-computer interaction. ...By tracking how they play games, we can learn a lot about people,' Twardowski explained. Hesitatingly, he added: 'That will be a huge responsibility for us later on.' ... Academics have begun to take games more seriously, as a window into the human psyche. Games are addictive and immersive and are built to command hours of our time and attention. What better testbed for myriad psychological and medical conditions? A good game pushes us to our limits, challenging us to use both the analytical and intuitive sides of our brain.

Comments

Ender's Game

[dracocat]

Am I the only one whose first thought was of Ender's Game? In reality, I think the idea has been around for a while, and seems quite practical AND useful. To me the only surprising thing is that it hasn't been implemented yet. It seems like we should have had the technology to do something like this for a long time.

Detecting some of the problems early on can significantly help the child.

Re:most I get but ADD?

[Sir_Sri]

With a camera you can track peoples vision. You can correlate reaction time to what's going on in game, all sorts of stuff. Games actually work very well for people with ADD because they have a constant stream of rewards keeping you focused on the task. One of the things we worry about when talking about game addiction is that it's not so much addiction as it is one of the few problems people will naturally pay attention to if they have ADD. The logical follow on to that comes from training people at various stages of brain development to behave that way (by giving them rewards), and then having games be a causation problem. Not that we know if that's actually happening yet, but that's certainly something people who do research in this area are worried about.

There are a few other tangential symptoms how quickly you get frustrated that sort of thing. Those can actually be tracked, the more sensitive the controller (if it has a gyroscope in it) the more easily you can figure out if the player is mashing buttons particularly hard, that sort of thing.

Disturbing

[girlintraining]

The problem isn't that this personal information can be sniffed out... it's that there are no laws preventing its misuse...

Dear Customer,
We regret to inform you that your medical insurance rates will be increasing by 7.35% effective immediately due to a undiagnosed, but now pre-existing condition. Also, your car insurance will be going up by 3%, and your doctor wants to schedule a psychiatric evaluation.

Sincerely,
Your Gaming Company
P.S. We detected that you have an addictive personality and tend to be forgetful. Your monthly renewal fee has been adjusted upwards accordingly. You won't remember this.