Body Swapping and Empathy

There was an intriguing article in the New York Times today about a Swedish research team that has been doing experiments with giving people the illusion of swapping bodies with someone else:

"The technique is simple. A subject stands or sits opposite the scientist, as if engaged in an interview. Both are wearing headsets, with special goggles, the scientist’s containing small film cameras. The goggles are rigged so the subject sees what the scientist sees: to the right and left are the scientist’s arms, and below is the scientist’s body.

To add a physical element, the researchers have each person squeeze the other’s hand, as if in a handshake. Now the subject can see and “feel” the new body. In a matter of seconds, the illusion is complete. In a series of studies, using mannequins and stroking both bodies’ bellies simultaneously, the Karolinska researchers have found that men and women say they not only feel they have taken on the new body, but also unconsciously cringe when it is poked or threatened."

While they caution that people who are already mentally disturbed might be harmed by trying this out, they also point out that this is a very powerful way for someone to take another's perspective, and perhaps gain some insight.

It's a fascinating validation of what we already see happening in video games. Players project themselves into their avatars, seeing through their eyes in the game world and taking actions within the physical constraints of this 'borrowed' body, reacting intuitively to what happens to their character as gameplay unfolds. It suggests that, once games have more powerful and nuanced social interactions built into them, we have an extremely powerful empathy generating medium on our hands.

Montreal International Game Summit 2008

Just got back from this year's Game Summit in Montreal. I gave a talk there based upon my recent edited book: Game Usability: Advice from the Experts for Advancing the Player Experience, and also hosted a roundtable on the theme of usability and games. The conference was well attended and there were some terrific talks--Jason Della Rocca has photos and a bit of a summary up on his website.

During some downtime in the speakers lounge, I ended up talking with a fellow speaker, a notable game developer who I guess I'll protect by not naming, and we were discussing how fun it would be to play a game in which you could pit sumo wrestlers against one another who had the personalities and fighting styles of large corporations. You know, a head-to-head of say, Disney versus Verizon? Or maybe Microsoft versus Google? Where each is a personified, bouncing, ducking and weaving, maybe even 'diaper' wearing character. It could be cathartic to win an epic battle against a company who has frustrated you day in and day out. And fun to see the qualities that you've experienced in the corporate atmosphere of a place where you work, wrought into human form. 

Maybe I should try to convince Ian Bogost to mock such a thing up. Who knows, maybe he already has?

I guess this is the opposite of empathy, in a way, but it certainly speaks to strong emotional experience through characters.

Videogames and your soul

Now that I'm settled in at NYU-Poly, I'm going to renew my efforts to post regularly on this blog. At the moment I've been doing a lot of reading about games and learning, because I'm part of the newly formed NYU Games for Learning Institute (visit here for a description by the Institute's funders, Microsoft).

So far my favorite book about the topic, is James Gee's book Why Video Games are Good for your Soul. It came out in 2005. In it he really is able to put his finger on what makes gaming such a compelling experience for the player. I particularly like how he brings empathy into the picture. He talks about how physicists and other specialists learn to project themselves bodily into a complex model or system, in order to really get a feel for it and make progress in their ideas. He calls this 'embodied empathy for a complex system'. He feels that fusing with a game character through playing that character, is the same kind of process. He points out that good games always do this for players, and often end up teaching them complex things as a result (e.g. he has a rant on Deus Ex: Invisible War and how it allows the player to explore what it might mean to have a world in which abilities can be purchased systemically--e.g. parents buying smarts for their kids).

Gee does a great job expressing the general feel of this kind of empathy, and its power, through tracking on several particular games and examples from them.

I'm excited to use this book to ground some of my own design-based explorations of how specific choices impact player experience and empathy!

The Real Story on Characters and Emotion: Taking it 'to the Streets'!

Our presentation at GDC 08 went well! I know a lot of people were interested in seeing the slides and poster again or even peeking at the data themselves, so I've put everything live.

• Slides
• Poster
• Data

We got some interesting feedback as well! I'll just summarize some of the top responses:

- Culture plays a big role in feedback. What makes the King of All Cosmos (Katamari Damacy) an amusing character here isn't the same in Japan, where he's funny for other reasons. The culture in our survey was mostly American/Canadian/European, which means of course that we are overlooking a big part of the market.

- Almost all named responses were humans or humanoid characters. There were very few animals or pets, except in the favorite allies question where characters like pokemon and pikmin came up a few times. Expected, but an interesting analysis nonetheless.

- Someone during the session asked about heroes vs. antiheroes, and which players felt more of a relation to. Looking back through the data, it actually seems the ratio was about even. My speculation here is some liked heroes for their positive, idealistic qualities, while others found the antiheroes more complex and real. I didn't check to see if this correlated with any demographics (age, genre, etc)... but the good news is, the data will be live as soon as I make this post =)

Our next big topic of research is player-created avatars and player-generated stories. Check back with us soon for an overview and a survey link! =)

This is Corey, signing off.