Thursday, March 07, 2013

Not Us, But Us (update)

Jon Hui reminded me that there's a long article in the New York Times about the book titled The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, and it's an excellent read.

Several of you let me know that Gabe Newell may already be planning to do some of the things I mentioned yesterday:
"If you think of a game like Left For Dead - which was trying to put you into a sort of horror movie - if you don't change the experience of what the player is actually feeling then it stops being a horror game," Mr Newell explained.

"So you need to actually be able to directly measure how aroused the player is - what their heart rate is, things like that - in order to offer them a new experience each time they play."

It's not connected to an F2P game (yes, I used "FTP" about ten times yesterday, because "to" starts with a "T", but I'm stupid)--yet--but it's definitely the future. I do wonder if Valve might be a few years early with this kind of interaction, though. It's definitely happening, but I don't think it's going to happen now. Soon, though.

JF Boismenu also sent in a link to a story about "mirror neurons" and how they contribute to empathy (which is tied in to manipulating our emotions, although in this case it's in reference to The Walking Dead).

I think this is going to all move very, very quickly. Gabe may be early, but he's not way early.

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