In a recent piece published here on GameSpy, writer Evan Hoovler — who has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder — discussed how video games taught him skills that improved his life. At the end of the piece, our own resident commenter, Spy Guy, asked, “What do you think about scientific studies linking ADHD to video games? Are these brainiacs on the right track, or do they really have it all backwards?” Well, when Spy Guy asks a question about psychology, I feel that it’s my job to give him an answer.

ADHD is characterized by inattention and impulsiveness. Although people with ADHD are sometimes stereotyped as hyper or bouncing off the walls, modern theories suggest their symptoms are actually caused by brainwave activity that is too low. When I talk about “brainwaves,” I’m referring to the amount of electrical activity going on in your brain when you do different things. For example, when you’re working or taking a test or even playing a video game, a lot of electrical activity can be measured in your brain. In contrast, when you get bored or start to fall asleep, the amount of electrical activity in your brain goes way down. The brains of people with ADHD often dip down into the sleepy range of brainwave activity or fail to become as active as they should be when they’re trying to pay attention. This causes them to lose focus, and makes it difficult for them to stay on task.

Video games pop up in ADHD discussions for several reasons. Most importantly: the correlation between ADHD and playing lots of video games. Several scientific studies show that people who play two or more hours of video games per day find it harder to pay attention, and are much more likely to have an ADHD diagnosis than people who play an average of one hour of video games (or less) per day. Also, studies suggest that playing video games temporarily increases the attention problems experienced by people with ADHD, in some situations.

Now, this evidence seems pretty convincing. People who play video games are more likely to have ADHD — so video games must cause ADHD, right? Well, not exactly; you see, a correlation occurs when two things are detected together, but a correlation does not necessarily mean that one of those two things causes the other. For example, if we open up all of the lunchboxes in the world right now, it’s likely that lots of sandwiches with peanut butter on them will also have jelly on them. The peanut butter doesn’t actually cause the jelly to appear on the sandwich, but they show up together all the time. 

What’s true to PB&J sandwiches is also true for video games: ADHD and video games show up together, with several reasonable explanations as to why they might co-occur. First, it could be true that playing video games causes people to develop ADHD. Second, it could be true that people with ADHD are really attracted to video games; video games are designed to grab and hold your attention, so they might be even more attractive to people with attention problems. Third, both of these explanations could be true: Video games cause ADHD, and having ADHD makes video games more attractive. Finally, it is possible that an additional unknown cause leads people to both develop ADHD and love video games.

It’s obvious that simply playing video games isn’t giving everyone ADHD. I’ve invested tens of thousands of hours into playing video games since I was a preteen, and I don’t have ADHD — and some young kids develop have ADHD without ever touching a controller or keyboard. If a simple cause-and-effect relationship existed between gaming and ADHD, the pattern would be obvious and widespread. Instead, we have a correlation between gaming and ADHD. One last bit of science: Recent research suggests that ADHD, like other mental disorders such as schizophrenia and autism, may have a strong genetic component. If so, then we may have to change the way we think about the relationship between ADHD and video games. Instead of being the root cause of ADHD, excessive gaming may simply trigger a preexisting problem with attention, or cause preexisting ADHD symptoms to become worse. 

It’s tempting for researchers and news outlets to interpret research like this in the most exciting way possible. “Video games cause ADHD” is a big headline, but the complex reality of the relationship between gaming and ADHD is more difficult to explain. For now, we can only guess at the true relationship between video games and ADHD.

Concept poster for Shayd (not final). Currently this is a little too dark...

For starters, Shayd is an alien world that suffers from a unique dual-dimensional condition.  Upon arrival on the planet, participants find themselves wandering into a lifeless cave, surrounded by ancient drawings depicting an extraterrestrial history.  A red glowing artifact resides in the center of the cave (its actually the VR head mounted display), and this “alien technology” provides access to the planet’s other dimension.   After putting on the head mounted display, participants are instantly immersed in a vibrant world, and through a series of scenes they can interact with aliens, explore the foreign environment, and even fly over the surface of the planet.  Project Lead Juli Griffo has written a complete narrative for the experience, and plans on self-publishing a Shayd children’s book concurrently with the opening of the virtual installation in May.

As the level designer for Shayd, I have been responsible for creating the virtual environment, including any custom modeling, texturing, and scripting necessary to achieve the perfect visual aesthetic.  I’ve learned to integrate the project with the immersive VR technologies available at ICT’s MxR Lab, including the Wide-5 HMD, PhaseSpace Motion Capture System, the PR4 wireless HMD, and most recently the iPhone for a mobile version.  Shayd for the iPhone is compatible with the Hasbro My3D device, which can simulate a VR experience with the iPhone’s built-in gyroscope.  We’re showcasing “Shayd Mobile” at the IEEE VR Conference in March, thanks the awesome folks at the MxR Lab who are using our project as part of their showcase.  I’m super excited to see what people think of it.

Below is one of the first builds of Shayd, developed entirely in the free version of the Unity engine.  Later on we began using Unity Pro, which allowed for more enhanced post-processing effects such as anti-aliasing and dynamic sun shafts.

This particular area later become known as Shayd Hollow, the third of four scenes that occur throughout the larger environment of Shayd.  In Hollow, the participant first encounters the Life Force, which seeps calmly and incessantly through openings in the planet’s surface.

The temp score for this scene was the soundtrack from Edward Scissorhands.  It’s a little darker than what we plan for the final aesthetic, and it totally influenced me to sculpt a bit of a Tim Burton-esque landscape! Our real score is being developed by Jeremy Tisser, of USC’s Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program. He’s insanely talented, and I’ve been inspired by every piece he’s written for the project.  Jeremy has pulled together an amazing orchestra for Shayd, and we start live recording in March!   (I have to add that I’m also secretly jealous that he’s studying under Garry Schyman, composer for Bioshock.)  Music immerses the player as much as the visuals do, if not more so.  With the addition of an HMD, we hope to completely blow the player’s mind.  Which brings us to an important question – how does Shayd work as a VR experience?

The current builds of Shayd that I use for every day development has a basic first-person controller, but in the VR installation the movement will be much different.  Rather than walking through Shayd with a keyboard, mouse, and computer screen, the head-mounted display (Palmer Luckey’s PR4) allows you to move about the world independently with only your body.  Whereas a computer monitor only allows for about 30 degrees field-of-view, the HMD opens up the FOV closer to 130 degrees, simulating a real sense of presence.  For those who have never put on an HMD before, here’s my sloppy diagram of how it compares to a normal screen:

But how do you traverse across Shayd?  Our VR installation is limited to a 20′ by 20′ space, surrounded by ten PhaseSpace motion capture cameras responsible for the head tracking.  While this might seem small, it allows for a certain theatrical limitation to the experience that promotes careful observation and increased interaction with the non-player characters of Shayd.  If we installed an omni-directional treadmill, a hamster ball, or some other such device, players might feel obligated to traverse the vast distances of Shayd as opposed to interacting locally in a contained environment.

There’s another more important purpose for limiting the moveable space – tactile immersion.  By limiting the area a participant can traverse, we can build a physical environment that can be interacted with as well.  For instance, when the player first dons the head-mounted display, she will find herself inside a luminous cave with small glimpses of the outside world of Shayd.  At the same time, she is standing in a physical cave (albeit one made of wood and plaster).  Theoretically, if the physical set and the virtual map are spatially identical, participants will be able to touch the walls of the cave in the virtual environment, and actually feel something there!

The motion capture system is capable of tracking the person’s body in real time, and can use that data to animate a digital avatar of the player’s own self.  When they reach out to touch a wall, they will feel the wall, and see their hand feeling the wall, all within the virtual environment.  This added layer of tactile immersion and avatar embodiment is the next step in true virtual presence, and I’m very excited to be testing this method with Shayd.

In the same way, actors can embody the aliens!  Instead of relying on an AI system to control NPCs, real actors can guide participants from scene to scene, and keep them physically safe as well (no tripping over wires, bashing into stands, etc).

Our Animator, Logan Ver Hoef, has lovingly crafted the two alien protagonists – Syrrette and Maubwe – who will be guiding the player throughout the experience:

Despite the obvious language barrier, the two characters will introduce themselves and reveal the planet’s storied past.  I hope you come out to the Spring Thesis Showcase to meet them! I mean, look how cute they are – how could you say no?

Here’s a little taste of our latest version of Shayd. Compared to the earlier prototypes, the landscapes are heavily detailed, with normal & specular mapped terrains, dynamic clouds with UniSky, and some fancy post-processing!

If you are interested in learning more about the technical side of the Shayd VR project, check out my previous post Graduate Thesis Project “Shayd” and Virtual Reality with Phasespace.

Today’s biggest concerns are upcoming elections and the possibility of a large “Studio Day” event for this semester.

Food will be served. All are welcome.

Not too long ago, a rumor hit Kotaku that the next Xbox may block the use of used games, and the internet immediately went into an uproar. While many screamed it protest, many others claimed that such a thing was inevitable due to digital distribution’s creeping domination of game sales. I’m not so convinced of this latter point, because, if the rumor is true, Microsoft would be wandering into the dangerous territory of property restriction of our physical items.

I think the outrage stems more from an anger toward how companies deal with our ownership of physical items when they blend with intellectual property. This came up when I was brainstorming for a new form of currency: it seemed that we were headed more toward an economic system that, as far as produced entertainment is concerned, is much more subscription-centric. It used to be that one could buy a game, play it, share/give it to a friend—in a way, as long as the original wasn’t duplicated and distributed for profit, we could do anything we wanted with the product we had purchased. The downsides, however, were apparent: I could only play the game if I had a physical copy of it. And we accept this tradeoff.

Digital distribution is changing this well-established paradigm. Unlike its physical counterpart, there is no way for me to both play a game and gift it later on Steam or XBLA. Symbolically speaking, I don’t own anything. Instead, I have given a one-time payment for a subscription to a specific license. But, again, we accept this tradeoff because of the convenience of [almost] anywhere-access and instant gratification digital distribution provides.

If the rumors are true, Microsoft is trying to impose the limitations of digital distribution on physical products. By doing so, they’d strip it of its benefits without giving it any more, all in the name of generating lost revenue due to used game sales. While Microsoft’s intention may have been profit-focused, they are unearthing a beast that maybe, just maybe, they should let lie.

[ cross post from my personal blog ]

I had the idea to split social capital into two different metrics: one that measured the breadth and one that measured the depth. This idea is generally supported by sociologists (see here), and their theory led to their respective names: Bridge and Bond.

The idea for my rethink of currency was simple. The world would be free of money, but people would still rely on each other for goods and services, and they would need a metric to evaluate the amount of trust and risk they would place by performing these acts for each other. Bridge would evaluate this breadth of the network, and is automatically assigned each time new people come into contact. Bond, however, is a limited resource that each person has to give. The amount of bond signifies many things in a relationship: 10,000 Bond could be love, 2,000 Bond could be friendship, and 5 Bond could be, “I appreciate the cat video you just uploaded to YouTube.” Bond could be positive or negative, and can be given and taken in any quantity at any point. Additionally, Bond would slowly return to the person who gave it over time, meaning that Bond would have to be maintained between persons. All of this information would be publicly viewable.

All implications aside, I was curious to see how, given Bond as a limited resource, people would react in this situation. I was slightly concerned about the societal implications, as it would require people to be completely forthcoming about their opinions of one another, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions before it happened.

And this came my experiment. With the exception of one person, who was asked to step outside, everyone in Thesis Prep was given a stack of eight “Bond” cards. They were given a brief about what Bond meant in this new culture, and were instructed to hand out as many cards as they wanted to whomever. It should be noted that each person had 8 cards, but there were 13 people participating.

The person who was outside was given the brief, and then asked to choose 3 with whom they would do a favor or collaborate.

The results of the experiment were mixed. Predictably, a large number of Bond cards went to the professors in attendance, and they were a scattering of cards amongst the students of varying levels. The person who was absent for the exchange chose people with lots of cards and with few cards, the idea being that the person with fewer cards lacked meaningful connections and would be easier to gain favor with, whereby the people with lots of cards had much more power and would better serve their own want to gain status.

What was more interesting were the reactions of those participating: Mark Bolas exclaimed it was “dirty money”—by creating a token to represent what in this case was assumed to be respect, it became tainted. There was much talk about the idea that our public opinions with others being something that is played down in modern society, and by bringing it to the forefront, I was exposing feelings with which people weren’t ready to deal. In essence, it seemed that dramatically shifting things like respect and trust, which are normally very personal ideas, into the public light made people extremely uncomfortable.

There are some things I would change if I were to run the experiment again. I’d have everyone do the experiment twice: the first where they had more Bond than people, the second where they were limited. I’d also run it where giving is far more anonymous, so I could compare and contrast the emotions with public and private giving. Lastly, I’d try to do a better job at separating the ideas of money and Bond.

I do think currency in this form is a viable notion, but it would require a dramatic rethink of how culture and society is structured, especially in the west.

Speaker: Howard Marks
Time:      Wednesday, February 1 , 6-8pm
Location: USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122

Howard Marks is Co-Chair of Start Engine and CEO of Gamzee.  Howard is an incredibly successful technology entrepreneur that has worked with a number of companies specializing in the video game, online gaming, social gaming and internet education industry. He is also working as the CEO of Gamzee, a company he founded in April 2011 with the stated goal of disrupting the gaming industry by making games that anyone can play anywhere, anytime, and on any device.

In 2005, Howard founded Acclaim Games. After its acquisition by Playdom, he became head of the Acclaim studio and Sr. VP, Strategic Planning at Disney Interactive Media Group.

Howard got his start in 1983 while a student at the University of Michigan.  In 1991 as a co-founder, member of the board of directors and Executive Vice-President of Activision, Howard helped turn a brand that was largely viewed as dead into the leading powerhouse of the video game industry.

Speaker:       Munehiko Sato
Time:              Wednesday, January 25 , 6-8pm
Location:       USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122

Munehiko Sato is a Lab Associate at the Interaction Group of Disney Research Pittsburgh where he works on sensor related projects with Dr. Ivan Poupyrev. He is also a PhD candidate at the  Hirose-Tanikawa Laboratory (Cyber Interface Lab) in the Department of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS), Graduate School of Engineering, University of Tokyo.   His research interests include:  Human Computer Interaction, Embodied Interface, Real World Interaction, Multi-modal Interaction/Interface, Augmented Human, Ubiquitous Computing, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Entertainment Computing, and Wearable Computing.

Munehiko will discuss his  ‘Constellation of Departure’ installation at Haneda Airport in Tokyo ( recently  posted on the IMD blog ) and also present some of the projects from the Disney Research Lab.

Agenda can be found here.

We’ll be talking about our election plans for next year and a potential Studio Day event modeled after the Animation department’s hugely successful “Studio Day” from last year.

There will be food served, so feel free to stop by before seminar and have some dinner!

For week two please prepare the following excerpt of the first chapter of Mary Ann Doane: The Emergence of Cinematic Time.

You can download the reading materials here: The Representability of Time

Reading Assignment Week 3:

For the third week please prepare the following essay by Henry Jenkins: Game Design as Narrative Architecture.

You can download the reading materials here: Game Design as Narrative Architecture

Reading Assignment Week 4:

For week four please prepare an excerpt from Gene Youngblood: Expanded Cinema.

You can download the reading materials here: The Aesthetic Machine, Computer Films

Reading Assignment Week 5:

For week five please prepare the following essay by Gonzalo Frasca: Simulation versus Narrative.

You can download the reading materials here: Simulation versus Narrative