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At the heart
of Bacchus are the biofeedback monitors that each player uses.
- Heart rate monitor:
To reach certain sets of rewards in the game, the player needs to get
their heart rate up.
- Skin conductance:
You can measure skin conductance (EDA or electrodermal activity) to
track a wide variety of emotional signals. Patterns of electrodermal
activity correspond to identifiable physical states.
- Facial recognition:
When the player experiences certain emotions, the emotions tend to show
on their face. We can make use of our cameras to detect is people
are smiling or grimacing as they play the game. You can see the
basics of this facial recognition technology already in action with
a title like the one shown, Otona no DS Kao Training (Grownup DS Face Training.)
- Voice analysis:
A person’s voice changes depending on the amount of stress they are
feeling. There is interesting research going on right now in detecting
‘phone rage’ and it is possible that this can also be extended to
the detection of joy or sorrow.
 Technology: All of these are additional
control mechanisms for the game that can be used to help facilitate
the feeling of emotions. Instead of pressing a button to advance
the game, the player instead focuses on putting their body in a state
that statistically correlates with happiness. The game recognizes
the hint of a smile, the increased heart rate, the increased pitch of
the repeated phrases and the avatar on the screen responds with grand
flourishes of sparkles and other visible indications of success. We
use biofeedback to create short, tight feedback loops that reward the
activities we, as the designer, desire.
First-time players would simply
be astonished that the game knows that they are feeling bored or irritable.
More advanced players know that the pulsing lights on the big screen
are meters showing them key indicators of their physical state.
They use these as feedback that guide them towards reaching the appropriate
state to enjoy the game.
Limitations: There are
several major limitations of biofeedback as a control mechanism
- Secondary control
mechanisms are difficult to learn: Many users have difficulty
finding a consistent set of behavior that reliably affects the biometrics.
It can be highly frustrating when the player’s actions seem to yield
random results.
- Secondary control
mechanism are ‘loose’: Due to the long chain of events that
occurs between the user’s actions and the result, biometrics can be
difficult to use in a reflex-based action game. There are exceptions
to the rule. One recent study used biometrics to predict when
a player would jump up to two seconds before they jumped. It is
fun to image a game design where the player simply anticipates jumping
in order to move.
- The instruments
for gathering information can be unreliable: Devices based
on skin conductance can be prone to noise due to movement, poor placement
and bad contact with the skin. The current rule of thumb is that
the more subtle the information you gather, the less reliable your
measurement devices. The good news is that heart rate monitors
are generally very reliable and much of the technology in the field
is constantly being pushed forward by the behemoth medical industry.
Technique
4: Setting social norms
“Later, the girl writes
to her online friends that the night she danced was the single most
powerful spiritual and emotional experience in her entire life.
It was the night she was touched by a higher power while playing a video
game.”
Ultimately, the player attempts
to understand the maelstrom of experiences that they’ve undergone
during a night of playing Bacchus. The context of the event matters
immensely. Someone who sees Bacchus as just a game will have very
different memories of the event than someone who goes into the evening
expecting a holy experience.
In order for the designer to
affect the critical step of synthesizing desired emotions, we need systems
that ensure the player has access to the correct cognitive labels.
By influencing the language players use to comprehend an experience,
you can control how they end up remembering the experiences. One
of the more powerful techniques for ensure people use the language you
desire is taken from the propagandist / change agent’s cookbook:
the small group discussion.
 Theory: In the 1940s, Edward Schein, one of the founding fathers of organization psychology, was brought in to help the government market its rationing plans to the public. In particular, they were interested in convincing people to eat ‘sweetmeats’, the indescribable innards of animals that were typically tossed into the rubbish heap.
Schein conducted two experiments.
The first was a traditional lecture that described all the benefits
of sweetmeats in terms of nutrition, patriotism, etc. The audience
listened attentively and then filled out a survey asking if they would
change their consumption habits. Only a small percentage agreed
to try sweetmeats in order to help the war effort.
In the second experiment, the
format changed. Schein gathered together small groups of people
and sat them down with a facilitator to discuss the option of eating
sweetmeats. The facilitator presented the topic and periodically
interjected facts that might help the discussion or clarify misconceptions.
Most of the conversation, however involved people talking about their
fears, their questions and the group weighing together the benefits
of sweetmeats. When this same group filled out the survey, the
vast majority said that they would change their eating habits and start
cooking with sweetmeats.
Schein’s critical observation
of this process is that that new groups go through a process in which
they set group norms, expectations of social behavior and common beliefs.
In the second experiment there was ample time for the group to negotiate
the new set of norms. In the first, due to the one way communication,
there was no opportunity, so the audience left with their existing beliefs
intact.
This process of creating new social
norms happens remarkably quickly and can result in people doing things
at the end of the process that they would never have contemplated before
the process begins. We like to think that our behavior and beliefs are
fixed, immovable and formed by great deliberation and moral character.
In reality, they are heavily influenced by the normative behavior of
the group we participate in. Given the right group circumstances, the behaviorial code of most individuals can be rewritten to an
amazing degree. You can witness this daily in most corporate environments,
but more extreme examples are the tales of brainwashed prisoners of
war or even the brutal behavior of U.S. troops when placed
in an environment like Abu Ghraib.
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