Biometric Controllers

Let's talk about Dr. Lennart Nacke's most favorite thing, as stated by him in class: biometric controllers. A biometric controller would be a controller that reads impulses sent by your brain, or more familiar things such as your heartbeat rate, your facial expressions, and eye-tracking or head tracking. These controllers can allow for more intuitive inputs to be sent into the game, and also some inputs you were not even aware of. This can change the game play in ways that were never imagined before. A horror game that can measure your heartbeat would know what things scare you the most, when to give you a break, and when to throw in the monsters. Facial expression technology may be seen in MMORPGs, allowing for games like Second Life to be even more realistic, as players can communicate with more than just text, but their real life facial expressions. You may have to fake a laugh in the real world if you typed "lol" even though the joke you just heard was stale. Dating deception on all levels of reality! Eye tracking and head tracking can make first person shooters so much more easy to control. There won't be a need for that really awkward second analog stick used to turn the camera in-game, just turn your head, or focus your eyes on the thing you want to see. As Gabe Newell put it, biometric inputs allows for more bandwidth between the player and the game, as doing these things comes naturally and does not interrupt your game (Sottek & Warren, 2013).

I was actually allowed to try NeuroSky's MindBand (pictured below) during the summer, when the development team for AntiMatter was integrating it with their game. The readings were a bit unusual to understand, they connected the "concentration" reading to the max number of bullets the player could shoot per second. I'm not sure what constitutes concentration, but thinking about nothing seemed to ramp it up all the way to 100 for me.

Picture of the MindBand (NeuroSky, 2011)

Judging from the experience I had with the MindBand, biometric controllers still seem a long ways off before they will be able to reliably give you good readings. However, VentureBeat believes that 2013 will be the year when all these technologies will coalesce and build the foundation of "NeuroGaming" as they call it (Lynch, 2013). The success of these technologies will be up to game designers, as they will be the ones to tweak the parameters, allowing for the technology to be actually usable. I for one am probably most excited for head tracking, a controller that probably can't go wrong.

Lynch, Z. (2013, January 17). Let the neurogames begin. Retrieved from http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/17/let-the-neurogames-begin/

NeuroSky. (2011). Neurosky mindband europe. Retrieved from http://www.home-of-attention.com/en/shop/1/flypagetpl/shopproduct_details/4/itemid-12

Sottek, T. C., & Warren, T. (2013, January 8). Exclusive interview: Valve's gabe newell on steam box, biometrics, and the future of gaming. Retrieved from http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/8/3852144/gabe-newell-interview-steam-box-future-of-gaming