Designing Biofeedback Games for Emotion Regulation, Behavioral Change, and Maximum Engagement: The Case of Nevermind
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The document discusses designing biofeedback games. It proposes three key elements: 1) ensuring thematic congruence between the game's themes/art and its biofeedback system. 2) Using environmental storytelling so gameplay and narrative are informed by the player's physiological responses. 3) Creating a symbiotic relationship between gameplay and biofeedback where they mutually influence each other. The goal is to build games that provide personalized experiences for players through interoceptive awareness, which is conscious awareness of one's physiological states.
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Designing Biofeedback Games for Emotion Regulation, Behavioral Change, and Maximum Engagement: The Case of Nevermind
- 1. DesigningBiofeedback Games Adam Lobel BSI / RU Nijmegen in collaboration with @GrowingUpGaming LessonsfromNevermind
- 3. Premise
- 4. Biofeedback
- 5. Biofeedback
- 37. Biofeedback
- 51. DesigningBiofeedback Games Adam Lobel BSI / RU Nijmegen in collaboration with @GrowingUpGaming LessonsfromNevermind
- 53. Them es Art
- 80. Interoceptive Awareness -Mehling, et al. (2012) The conscious perception of one’s physiological state
- 86. 80 90 100 110 120 5 10 15 20 25
- 89. EXTRAS…
- 108. Biofeedback Aim
Editor's Notes
- Good morning, and thanks for being here. My name is Adam Lobel, and I’m a PhD Candidate at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, and I’m going to talk with you today about the biofeedback game Nevermind. My hope is to impart good design techniques for making games which try to engross players and for games which want to use biofeedback.
- Now. Disclaimer. I am not a designer. I did not design or develop Nevermind. I am just a scientist with a critical eye for design, and someone who very fortunately got to intimately work with Nevermind and its designers. That aside, I’m going to spend the next 10 minutes telling you the story of just one of Nevermind’s levels.
- Nevermind casts the player as a Neuroprober – a therapist of the future. As a Neuroprober it’s your job to enter the minds of Clients suffering from severe, life hindering psychological distress. The challenge is that your Clients can’t remember the root cause of their anxiety; they have a traumatic memory locked up somewhere in their subconscious, and it’s your job to unravel that memory.
- This brings us to the biofeedback mechanic in the game which in the case of Nevermind, relies on the player’s heart rate.
- Biofeedback refers to a system whereby the player’s physiology provides the game world with input. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<animation>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The game world then reacts to this input, which provides feedback to the player. In the case of Nevermind, your Client’s subconscious is not happy that another person is lurking about, digging for clues. So the more stress the player feels – and the higher their heart rate – the more hostile the game world becomes. I’ll offer concrete examples shortly.
- But right now, I want to dive into one of Nevermind’s levels. So: SPOILER ALERT – I am going to walk through one level of Nevermind - the story of Client #251. I am going to totally spoil the mystery for you. Also, this case deals with mature themes such as alcoholism, firearms, domestic unrest, suicide, and car crashes. If anyone here is not comfortable with having this part of the game spoiled for them, or with these themes, now is a good chance to take a bathroom break.
- So let’s enter the mind of Client #251. The game opens with a monologue from a young-middle-aged woman.
- She was the “perfect little girl” she says… she remembers a happy childhood,
- playing jigsaw puzzles with her father. Her father passed away when she was young, she says.
- She can’t remember it well, but her mother says there was a car accident.
- The Client’s mother also passed away recently, and that’s when some problems started to emerge. She often becomes paranoid around people,
- it seems like people are looking at her, judging her – this makes her feel guilty and angry, she says.
- But everything used to be so normal, she remembers with a sigh…
- And with that, we’ve entered the mind of Client #251, and we found ourselves in a bright, if somewhat warped garden.
- A child’s teddy bear and tea-set and lies innocently beside the tree
- And this is where we collect our first of ten photographs. Each photograph represents a memory, and it will be our job to solve puzzles in order to unlock all the memories. Once they have all been unlocked, we must place the memories in the correct order; this way we will unlock the traumatic memory that is the root cause of Client #251’s anxiety.
- As we pick up the photograph, we hear a door creak open. We proceed forward.
- The house is a bit bare and a bit dark…
- but otherwise, nothing seems out of the ordinary. … At least until the player goes upstairs
- [VIDEO]
- The player is now engulfed in a nightmare; the world has fundamentally changed. Light…
- …is replaced with darkness.
- Bloodstains appear on the…
- …walls and floor.
- If we investigate the rest of the house we see how unsettling the world has become.
- The player is literally in a broken home.
- If we go to the kitchen…
- … a spilled milk carton appears to have leaked blood.
- And the living room which was once bright…
- … is now shrouded in darkness and filled with ominous faces.
- Even the paintings on the walls have changed…
- Faces are blotched out
- And ominous messages are scrawled on them…
- It is in this environment that the player has to continuously master their anxiety level in order to solve the game’s puzzles. In each room, the more stress the player experiences, the more difficult it becomes to progress. Let’s go back to the kitchen for an example.
- <Talk over about rising and subsiding milk>
- So as the player overcomes these challenges by remaining calm in the face of truly creepy scenarios, the player will collect more photographs which help tell the story of Client #251… For instance that her mother was a heavy drinker…
- … and that her father may have been facing a debt crisis. “Daddy and his letters” - the photo reads - “he never wanted to play after the mailman brought new ones.”
- And the player is also reminded that Client #251’s father was said to die in a car accident – “He died in a car accident, Mommy said… She hated questions about it.”
- And it would seem that Client #251’s childhood was not as perfect as she seems to recall – “It was pretty lonely”
- We also learn the possible source for the spilled milk carton.
- Some of the later photographs become more gruesome…
- And the final photograph is highly suggestive – This one says: “What is Daddy eating?”
- But eventually, the player will have collected all 10 photographs, and he/she must return to the open garden to decipher what really happened to Client #251.
- The player looks up to 10 photographs, and must choose 5 photographs and put them in the correct order that tell Client #251’s true story.
- … and as the player pieces it all together, the game triggers a final cutscene.
- VIDEO – Final cutscene
- [Exhale] OK. So that was Client #251. If you’re all still with me,
- I want to focus on three aspects of Nevermind’s design that help maximize player’s involvement. OK – so three design characteristics…
- First design characteristic – Thematic congruence.
- Thematic congruence means that there is an overlap between the themes of the game and the player’s visual experience. So themes like social anxiety, domestic unrest, guilt, and separating fact from fiction are all reflected by the game’s art and colors, and in the objects that appear in the game. So for example,
- The idea that Client #251’s family unit corroded is depicted by a literally broken home.
- Also, Client #251 spoke about this intense guilt she feels when she is being looked at.
- Also, Client #251 talks about this intense guilt she feels when she is being looked at. So not only do all the portraits have blank faces, but in the nightmare version of the home, these faces are blotched out aggressively. And not only do these images recur throughout the game…
- …but in certain portions, faces follow your player, staring in judgment.
- And as a final example: At the heart of it, Client #251 feels personally responsible for her father’s suicide. The crux of the trauma is that she associates ‘spilling the milk’ with her father’s death. And what do we see when we encounter spilled milk?
- Spilled blood.
- Second design characteristic – Environmental storytelling. When your game has such consistent thematic congruence, as a designer, you can convey your story via the game world. So if all the art in the game has a purpose that matches the themes in your game, then exploring the world comes to have meaning for the player.
- The more they explore, the more they are rewarded with details that help tell a story. Moreover, because exploration is voluntary, the things that players discover feel special. They experience a sense of ownership. “Oh wow – I found this!” These sorts of details are sometimes called “Easter Eggs”, special treats which the designer tucks away for the player to find. And Nevermind has these in spades.
- From the onset, there are signs in the environment that Client #251’s family was facing a debt problem. Did you notice the letter in the mailbox upon entering?
- And did you notice what was scrawled on this painting?
- Here it is again in the bedroom.
- Here’s one that’s a bit more subtle. This is a jigsaw puzzle box before the player turns the lights off.
- And here it is after. “Fractured Family, Inc.”
- Now this one is really messed up. For players who dare to investigate the spilled over milk carton, they get treated to these super dark messages:
- “Happy home milk” this is obvious sarcasm
- But in extreme attention to detail… <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<Animation>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
- The nutrition facts read “Total fault. They know. Your Fault.”
- I could go on and on with more examples, but let me just drive my point home here. These instances of environmental story-telling not only compel players to explore, but with each discovery, the player feels more and more like they are cultivating their own personalized experience. And that brings us to the third design characteristic…
- Symbiotic biofeedback. So while environmental storytelling is one great way of making each player feel like their experience in Nevermind is unique to them…
- what makes Nevermind feel especially personalized is its use of biofeedback. So in the first place… … the biofeedback mechanic in Nevermind is consistent with the game’s aims and design. This is a really important point, because it’s very easy for biofeedback games to get this wrong. So you could imagine a game where an increased heart rate leads to the player being faster in the game, for example. So the more active you feel, the more active you are. But in Nevermind, this would oppose the core design of the game. Instead, elevated heart rate indicates and stimulates adversity, forcing the player to recognize their change in physiology and then resolve it healthily. In this sense, Nevermind’s biofeedback mechanic is deeply embedded in the design.
- Second, different players will experience different levels of stress in different places. <<<<<<<<<<<<animation>>>>>>>>>>>> For some players, the atmosphere in the kitchen might be particularly unnerving, whereas for others the car maze or the funeral sequence may be when the stress especially kicks in. And for each of these areas, stress has a unique effect, leading to unique experiences for players depending on their sensitivity. PAUSE Finally, biofeedback in Nevermind lets players self-monitor. So if we think of Nevermind as a game which affords players a potential place for them to work through their anxiety and to regulate their physiology in the face of stress, then repeated plays Nevermind can help players track their progress. “Oh – this time, I was more quickly able to get the milk down”
- So the hope is that on repeated plays, players should notice themselves getting better adept at dealing with stress.
- I want to close by talking about the science of why Nevermind has so much promise as a tool for helping people.
- What Nevermind gets at with its biofeedback mechanic, is something called Interoceptive Awareness. <<<<<<<<<<<animation>>>>>>>>>>>> Interoceptive Awareness refers to the ability to consciously perceive one’s physiological states. So are my muscles calm or relaxed, is that pain coming from here or here, how is my breathing?
- And there is good reason to expect that Interoceptive Awareness is a valuable skill for dealing with our emotions in the face of stress. First, <<<<<<<<<<animation>>>>>>>>>> our emotions seem to be intrinsically linked to our physiological states. Physiological states can trigger emotional states and vice versa. For this reason, emotion theorists have argued that better internal awareness equips individuals for healthy emotion regulation.
- A number of recent studies support these notions: <<<<<<<<<<<animation>>>>>>>>>>> -IA has also been negatively associated with Alexithymia, the inability to recognize one’s emotions <<<<<<<<<<<animation>>>>>>>>>>> -IA has been positively associated with the ability to down-regulate negative affect. <<<<<<<<<<<animation>>>>>>>>>>> -And people with a greater IA experience less negative affect when being socially excluded. Taken together, Interoceptive Awareness, or the ability to recognize changes in your own physiology can be an important skill for managing stress and anxiety. This gives great promise to Nevermind as a potential tool for training people how to better recognize the physiological changes which underpin our emotions.
- So last Fall, I conducted a study at USC in Los Angeles to see whether Nevermind is a feasible context for people to train their emotion regulation skills. The idea of the study was simple: We asked people to answer questions about how they deal with negative emotions in their everyday life and then we observed how they dealt with stress in Nevermind. To answer our question, we are now looking at their heart rate data to identify different patterns of emotion regulation. The hope is that we can draw clear parallels between how well people were able to regulate their physiology in Nevermind and how well they regulate their emotions in their everyday life. I want to quickly show you some of our data to give a quick idea of the types of questions we look to answer:
- pp26
- pp25
- pp42
- To close: Nevermind shows promise as a tool for training emotion regulation skills, in my opinion, <animation> because it is designed to cultivate a personalized experience for it users. How does it do this? <animation> Through Thematic Congruence and with Environmental Storytelling; and finally <animation> By having a biofeedback mechanic that not only works technically, but which is relevant and logical for its aims.
- Thank you
- I can’t help but remark how this talk brings things full circle for me. 3 years ago, at the beginning of my PhD, I came to this very conference to deliver my first public presentation as a PhD. I presented data from a study that was all about looking at the physiological experience of stress during video game playing. And at the end of my talk,
- I mentioned this video game which I had chanced across via the internet – a game called Nevermind. At the time, Nevermind was just some far off thing; a game being designed halfway around the world… But interestingly enough, a game where the more stress the player would experience, the more difficult it would became to play.
- And today, full circle, here I am to talk to you about the intricacies of Nevermind’s design. Specifically, I will talk about the design features of Nevermind that make it so promising as game to help teach people how to resolve anxiety in their everyday lives.
- <animation> Nevermind is a bio-feedback horror game developed by Flying Mollusk. That’s Erin Reynolds on the left, the game’s creator and lead designer, and to the right is Michael Annetta, the game’s creative producer.
- We also learn that her father would drive to work everyday
- <animation> Nevermind began as a Master’s project at the University of Southern California’s IMGD program for game designers. <animation> It went on to garner the attention of Intel in large part because the game’s biofeedback mechanic – which I’ll get to – maps so well to Intel’s recently developed RealSense technology. <animation> And on the tails of that partnership, Nevermind also received funding via Kickstarter about one year ago.
- “They know… What have you done? “
- Thank you