biofeedback

ok, i stayed up past midnight tonight because a present arrived early for me in the mail. the biofeedback game I ordered some weeks ago arrived today!

it’s amazing. you rest three fingers in these little blue rings which measure electrical connectivity and heart rate. but what they can do in the game is so beautiful.

the game is like myst but done with shockwave and quicktime instead of hypercard. you click to navigate around and it feels like you’re walking here and there. the aesthetic is a little bright and cluttered, the language and story line is super foofoo and new agey (you’ve been warned), but playing the little biofeedback games is addictive in how they make me feel and just how connected my inner world can be to what’s occurring on the screen.

the first game was a little pinwheel on the screen. you had to take deep breaths and blow air at your computer screen to get the pinwheel to spin. and it spun! and that was the *only* way i could get it to spin. i felt like a fool blowing air at my computer screen but there it was, the pinwheel was spinning. i tried different things, but clearly the little sensors on my finger tips could tell when i was actually blowing air. i tried playing with my heart rate, hyperventilating, lots of small breaths, and yet i failed to confuse it. i had to actually blow at the screen to get the pinwheel to turn.

other games involved raising and lowering balloons and balls, controlling birds in flight, and opening doors by reaching a meditative calm that would take a few minutes of real focus and relaxation. having a little figure on the computer screen that moved or changed in direct relationship to my inner meditative state felt *encouraging*. it made it more fun to meditate. it was visually rewarding. i found myself wanting to play the games multiple times and not stopping even when completing the task because the games were so fun and the states i was get to felt so joyful.

so if you can get past the new agey-ness of the story line, or you’re curious about biofeedback or meditation, i really recommend this game. runs on mac and windows too.

what they really should do for a future game is try a more masculine story line and drop the hippy crap. something about warrior training, even with a david carradine ethic of non-violence, would be easier for me to stomach than all the earth mother characters in multicolored mumus.

i should look into other types of biofeedback that you could use. this is fun as a high end game but it seems like it would be really useful for the general population if you could mass market it to the same people who do crossword puzzles every day.

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