New Biometric Headset Punishes Gamer Rage

[Jaximus Decimus]

As a raging gamer myself, I can say with absolute certainty that this would only make things worse. This is like cornering an angry badger. Someone is going to get hurt.

I also don't believe the tech is sophisticated enough to tell the difference between "anger" and stress or excitement. Just because my pulse goes up and I get animated and loud doesn't mean I'm angry.

 

[Simple Bluff]

Being frustrated or annoyed when playing a game is a perfectly normal response to... er, frustrating and annoying things. Outright raging is bad but you can suppress it, whilst you can't not feel annoyance. It's really silly to punish people for that. Really, a good game should have its own ways of dealing with ragers. Or at least have a mute button.

And besides, who would willingly buy this?

 

[Rednog]

Uhhh what?
I'm really surprised that no one else has mentioned this...but your pulse/heart rate/etc isn't exclusive to rage.
This seems like a really dumb idea considering a lot of factors could kick up your heart rate. Hell enjoying a game and getting super excited or pumped would be pretty difficult to distinguish from rage in a bio-metric sense. And there's other emotions like fear, or surprise that would have the same effect.

So basically you have to be an emotionless robot or the game gets harder...so why would anyone use this?

Maybe I'm giving it more benefit than it deserves but I'm assuming that the news article and "how it works" is dumbed down for us filthy masses

As in, it takes more than just the pulse and has ways to tell the difference between "Holy shit! Did you guys just see that? That was so cool I feel like my heart is going to give out" and "RAAAAAAGGGH!! TIPPY2K2 SMASH!!!!"

Or at least I'd like to think it would since if you're correct, the thing is virtually useless.

Looked it up on the actual site, nope. Looks like it is as dumb as we thought, it literally is just a sensor in the ear that measures one's pulse. The site seems to very much be what is basically a digital version of a an inventor's sketch pad/drawing board.

 

[JoshuaMadoc]

What kind of insane troll logic is this supposed to run on?

 

[zerragonoss]

I not sure it actually changes the difficulty of the game the way most people seem to think, the bit about AI is from the article writer not the source. I would think what it would do in an fps is make you aim less steady mabey narrow your field of vision like having a rapid pulse can. This is mostly just a guess from it being called immersion.

 

[Barbas]

Make it impossible to remove from the victim's[/s] player's head and I reckon you've got yourself a winner.

 

[Souplex]

sounds like it wouldn't have any impact on multiplayer, which is probably the venue that stands to benefit the most from forcing certain gamers to check their rage. XD

still, probably could have used a device like this in my teenage years.

It could theoretically be wired to emit a painful noise whenever someone gets too angry, thereby conditioning them against anger.

 

[ryo02]

I think whats supposed to happen is that when you get angry at the game the game will go "NOPE here's some nasty stuff for you to deal with".
and instead of letting it make it worse and worse in a downward spiral your meant to get up walk away and come back later when you've calmed down.

in other words good luck beating the game if you don't know when to walk away.

lucky for me I don't rage at games.

 

[RJ 17]

Tell me again how playing a game likely designed to make you angry and when it succeeds it starts cheating to make it even more stressful is supposed to help people keep calm? It's a perfect circle...a self-perpetuating cycle! Do you realize the applications for this kind of technology? Why, we could hook it up to a bunch of angry games and use the raw power of their infinite rage to fuel entire countries!

That or it's going to lead to a lot of broken controllers, Immersion headsets, and possibly a couple tvs.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Douse the fire with petrol, that will surely put it out...
So what they are selling is a peripheral that will poke and angry dog with a stick, I can't possibly see how anyone can resist a purchase.

 

[Vigormortis]

So basically....a simpler, narrower, and likely far less robust version of the biometric feedback tech engineers at Valve and other studios were working on roughly two years ago?

That's interesting, I guess....

 

[Erttheking]

So it reacts to stress? This sounds like a bad idea, if anyone gets a little stressed at a difficult challenge, it's going to get harder, making them even more stressed, and it'll all just go downhill from there.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

So apparently Dr. Evil went into the video game industry? Because this sounds almost cartoonishly diabolical. Who would buy this?

 

[DestinyCall]

I realize this is still in the early stages of development so the final concept may need more tweaking, but I don't understand the logic behind increasing the game challenge when the player becomes stressed as a way of DECREASING gamer rage.

This sounds more like a system designed to channel rage into its purest form.

[EDIT]
I did a little more digging, because this didn't make sense to me and from looking at the linked sources, I got the wrong idea from reading the article. Still not sure if it would actually work to "solve" gamer rage, but it sounds a little less crazy now.

The developer designed a simple FPS for use with his prototype which responds to the player's biometrics by increasing the threat level. From the sound of it, in order to successfully play the game, the gamer needs to maintain control of his stress levels, as measured by heart rate. If his heart rate gets too high, the game becomes very hard to "punish" his response. Theoretically, repeated sessions with this simple game could train you to stay in better control of your heart rate under stress. I'm not convinced it would actually reduce your frustration levels, but you could learn to control your body's response to frustration using the biofeedback provided by the device and in-game experience.

The basic idea of using bio-feedback to help control physiological response is pretty sound and it might work as a form of therapy for gamers looking for a way to reduce their rage in a controlled environment. On the other hand, adding this as a game feature in an actual video game (i.e. "a game that can smell your fear"), especially a multi-player game, and you would be creating the opposite experience - Dark Souls on steroids. Without the over-arching therapeutic goal, it would be an exercise in frustration for its own sake. Some gamers would love it for the extreme challenge, others would hate it for making a difficult experience even harder. And knowing the game was picking on you personally because of your stress level would make it that much worse.

Not my cup of tea, frankly.

 

[The Hungry Samurai]

I can see applications for this when it comes to helping people manage stress and anger, but in the entertainment market I seriously doubt anyone would want to wear a device that tells them how to play essentially.

You need positive reinforcement to get people to chill out. Otherwise I doubt this would work for anything but maybe single player Horror games.

 

[lostlambda]

Here I was hoping it would violently Tazer the fourteen year olds who shout racist slurs in my ear.