Klik hier om de MindWave te bestellen voor €99,-

Klik hier om het spel Mindout te bestellen voor €12,-

Na bestellen ontvang je de headset binnen een paar dagen bij je thuis. Klik hier voor meer informatie van de producent over de MindWave headset (engelstalig). De MindWave software is eenvoudig te installeren op een PC of Mac, en met de bijgeleverde USB dongle maakt de headset draadloos verbinding met je computer.

De MindWave meet je concentratie en ontspanning, en met de gebundelde applicaties krijg je al snel inzicht in hoe je brein werkt.

Het spel Mindout is apart te koop in de Europe NeuroSky Store. Na betaling ontvang je direct een download-link waarmee je het spel kunt downloaden. Klik hier om de Mindout mini-site te bezoeken voor meer informatie over het spel (engelstalig).

Wil je graag meer weten over Mindout, stel je vraag dan hier in de comments of kom in contact met ons via support@mindoutgame.com

Het wordt gehouden in de Dutch Game Garden in Utrecht, op donderdag 26 januari tussen 16:00 en 19:00.

Mindout is een spel voor PC en Mac. Naast de muis gebruik je de MindWave controller om te spelen, dat is een headset die je hersengolven meet. Tijdens het spelen train je je concentratie om steeds grotere explosies te maken. Op de bijeenkomst kun je volop kijken, spelen, elkaar uitdagen en filmen. De developers zijn aanwezig en beantwoorden met liefde al je vragen over het spel, en over spelen met je hersengolven. Er zijn brein stimulerende hapjes en drankjes, en natuurlijk de nieuwste technologische snufjes op het gebied van brein lezen!

Om een pers kit te downloaden klik je hier.
Om de trailer te bekijken kun je hier klikken.

Mindout is eerder te zien en te spelen geweest op verschillende events in Nederland, waaronder:
 
NLGD Festival of Games, INDIGO Showcase 2011, Cinekid Festival: Medialab 2011, DiGRA think design play conference, Game City: B-There festival, DGG netwerklunch, Continium Brain Party, Games for Health conference.

 

 
Het adres van de Dutch Game Garden:
Neude 5
3512 AD Utrecht

Met de auto:
Je kunt het beste parkeren onder de Bijenkorf, in de parkeergarage La Vie. Sint Jacobsstraat 1, 3511 BR Utrecht. Vanaf hier is het 5 minuten lopen om bij het Neude te komen. De Dutch Game Garden zit in het oude ABN AMRO gebouw, waarvan de naam nog steeds in grote letters op het dak prijkt.

Openbaar vervoer:
Neem de trein naar Utrecht Centraal. Vanaf hier is het 10 minuten lopen door het centrum om bij het Neude te komen.

Mocht je donderdag niet in de gelegenheid zijn om langs te komen of wil je er op een ander moment goed de tijd voor nemen, dan kunnen we ook individueel met je afspreken. Neem daarvoor aub contact op met jan@dreamsofdanu.com.

Ik hoop je te zien op 26 januari!

Biofeedback helps us to understand players and enables us to find fitting solutions to our design challenges. We use realtime emotional and cognitive feedback to refine a game towards our goals.

Through your thoughts and emotions, we let your play bring games to a new level.

The following is the transcript of a talk Jan gave as speaker at the Games for Health Europe 2011 Conference.

Biofeedback Games

“Design Insights & Game Benefits”

For the past 8 months we’ve been developing the game Mindout and I’d like to share with you some things that we’ve learned during this process. Mindout is a biofeedback game that works with the NeuroSky MindWave. A biofeedback game means that we use feedback we get from the body to play with in the game. In this case we use brainwaves read with a brain-computer-interface or BCI. These devices have been commercially available for a while now, so basically everyone can buy one and learn how to use it. It’s not just a research tool anymore.

With a BCI we read the frequencies that naturally occur in the brain, such as Alpha and Beta waves. Apha waves occur when you’re feeling especially relaxed, while beta waves tell us how concentrated or focussed you are. So if you’re alpha wave has a lot of energy we can safely say you’re feeling relaxed. Using this device we can measure someone’s concentration and relaxation while he or she is playing a game. This feedback can help people suffering from concentration disorders or help people cope with feelings of stress. It’s wonderful that we can help people with this technology, and provide for them a way to improve their focus.

Playing with a biofeedback interface challenges and changes the perception you have of yourself, and can bring insight into your personal processes. I’ll get back to this in a little bit. I’m not going to go in-depth in the technical side of how this works because although we do some research at Dreams of Danu were not researchers ourselves but designers and developers. And the health and gaming part is a lot more interesting than the cold math of data filtering algorithms.

What we we’re curious about when we started the development of BCI games is what happens to players when they’re using this technology. How can we integrate the biofeedback in the most succesful way, and how do they cope with the information that is fed back to them? So for it was really a question of “What is the optimal user experience?” when people are using their brainwaves as a control method.

I’ll talk a bit about the game now. So, in Mindout we measure the players’ concentration. When the concentration of the player is high the orb of energy around the ball grows bigger, and it shrinks when his or her concentration goes down. The game is inspired by the classic game Breakout, where you have to bounce a ball around to destroy bricks. But in Mindout you can destroy a lot of bricks in a single explosion depending on how high your concentration is. If the orb is big the explosion is big, but if your concentration is low you will only destroy a few bricks. All the bricks that are destroyed come back from the top and you play untill the time runs out. There are also a lot of bricks that can either help you or make it more difficult to get a high score. We haven’t replaced the normal control method, so you still play with a mouse to move your character around. We chose this kind of game because it is recognizable to people, which makes it easy to understand and start playing. Even for people that normally don’t play games.

The premise for Mindout may seem simple, but making a brainpowered game is a bit more complicated than you would think. It’s not just about adding another parameter to an existing game concept. The most important aspect about a game like this is of course the input. In traditional games you can press a button and something will happen. But your brain doesn’t work like a button. You can’t press anything to expect an instant reaction. Instead of direct input we have to take into account dynamic input. The frequencies in the brain never turn off, instead there is a constant stream of information that we get from the brain interface.

We started working on this version of Mindout about 8 months ago and a lot has changed about the gamedesign during that time. This involved A LOT of playtesting by ourselves and several hundred others. The demo for Mindout has been playable on a number of events and during these events we’ve been very keen on user perception and interaction. This means observing and asking a lot of questions to gain an understanding of what works best for a large amount of people.

Even though we know a lot about the brain, it’s still pretty mysterious. Something like concentration, although people understand what it means, when it is put into numbers it’s an abstract concept to people. When someone first puts on a headset, the player desperately wants to find out how to make it work because he has a preconception about how his own mind should work. Because of this, the BCI game people start out with should be easy to understand and effortless to play. This is also why we chose to make a game that is recognizable to people and that they can easily start playing.

These kinds of devices have been around for decades and a lot of research has been put into it. Mostly in medical fields where they have had great succes in improving the life quality of physically disabled people. For example brain-controlled wheelchairs, or spelling programs that enable patients suffering from cerebral palsy to communicate. This is a beautiful thing.

But what we feel has been lacking in the field of Brain-Computer Interfaces is looking at it from a user-centered point of view. The research and the medical fields are looking with interest towards BCI and Games for healthy people, because the innovations that will occur when this technology is adopted by the mainstream will have a very positive effect on the medical brances of BCI use. For years it has been difficult for people to understand how to use this technology and it has not been adopted by a large number of people, while the potential for these new interaction methods is very promising. And gamers are a very good target audience to see what long term use of this technology can bring. So what we as designers set out to do was bridge the gap between the research and the user experience. So it becomes easy for people to understand and use their brain as an advanced input device, instead of just a processing unit.

The problem with some of the earlier brain interface games was the way the biofeedback was used. Instead of an integrated mechanic that the gameplay is dependent on, often very simple feedback was used. Where the brainwave input is being used as a simple button press, such as jumping to avoid an obstacle. This doesn’t work well because the use of a button press is often based on your reaction speed. And you can’t fully turn your concentration or relaxation on or off. For example when you want to navigate in a virtual world you’re using a lot of buttons. And it feels unnatural to have to concentrate fully in the blink of an eye to go left or right, because this can take some time and get frustrating if you don’t get results fast. Although the idea of navigating with your mind seems alluring, this works better when using a familiar interaction method, like a gamepad, mouse or keyboard. Biofeedback input is something that you have to train yourself to use and get better at.

So using a game mechanic that is dependent on a biofeedback-button-press translates badly in the game, even when the response time is taken into account. Imagine a bar in the interface that goes up and down to show the strength of the brain frequency being measured. This doesn’t invoke a playful session, because people start focussing on the bar and the game just becomes a quest to get the bar up. The rest of the game is then merely a visualisation of what happens when the bar is empty or full. And the gameplay is only challenging in how hard you can push yourself to fill up the bar.

With Mindout we wanted to use the biofeedback as a dynamic input for the core mechanic, so it supports the gameplay and challenges players to perform better all the time. Instead of a button press, the dynamic stream of data from the biofeedback interface translates into the strength of the main mechanic that the gameplay depends on. When your concentration is low the amount of points you score will not be much, but by pushing yourself you can gain higher scores and beat the level. But even if your concentration is not that high you can still get enough points to win because the challenge starts out small and increases ever so slightly so you can get used to playing with you concentration as input.

One of our important goals was to give players an understanding of what it means to interact with their brainwaves and give some insight into this very personal process. And what better way than to let people have fun and play? The kind of play we were looking for should be intrinsically motivating, which means that the motivation must come through the goals and rewards you set for yourself in the game, so learning how to control a BCI becomes effortless. What we soon found out was that this learning process had some very interesting and important benefits.

We were approached by people suffering from ADHD for example. These were people who, while playing Mindout, were confronted by their own concentration and for the first time this thing they’ve had a problem with for all of their lives, their concentration, became something tangible. These people were very excited to play and use this technology to train themselves to improve their focus. Some exclaimed they’ve never had such a strong focus while playing a game, blocking out surroundings and being fully engaged in the game. This was in a large part because the game gave them an understanding of something they were motivated to tackle, and they kept motivated because the gameplay stayed challenging. Something that has such a strong impact on people, and on the perception they have of themselves is an incredible benefit. Because learning to understand what goes on in the vague cloud of thoughts in the back of your mind is something you can’t unlearn.

And the same thing goes for relaxation. A person that had previously undergone professional therapy for her ADD started doing breathing and relaxation excercises, while playing an earlier version of Mindout that also worked with relaxation. She found out that some of the exercises worked very well for her. And she was able to get a higher score by doing them. While previously she didn’t know if those exercises really did anything at all, now she got specific feedback that explicitly showed her the benefit of these exercises.

So using this kind of technology in a game environment can bring lasting personal insight. But before that happens, there are a lot of stages the player goes through. The learning process is such that the knowledge must become a sort of bodily understanding. It’s not an intellectual challenge or a question of problem solving. Nor is it an information processing task. It has to do with feeling a certain way, getting to know the subtle differences in your mind’s attention and understanding how to nudge that feeling in the direction you want to be in.

Of course there are methods of achieving this, and we provide these plentiful in the game, but a player first has to come to grips with the fact that their attention is measurable. And to do that the player needs to address his or her preconceptions regarding concentration. Because the player knows, or think he knows, what concentration means. But someone doesn’t have a bar in his head that goes up and down to show how concentrated he is. Someone can say that he is very concentrated while in fact the data shows that he is not.

The biofeedback that is constantly presented to a player can help create an awareness of this bodily process, the player starts to adjust and fine-tune his mind to correlate the data he sees on screen with how he feels. But before that happens the player will exclaim that the data is false, that it’s completely random or that the device doesn’t work. The player may even be afraid that he is stupid, or that his mind doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. But after a couple of playsessions the player starts to get more in tune with the presented biofeedback because he wants to perform better and meet the challenge.

So gradually through the next stage the player starts understanding what is required of him, and he starts noticing that some of the strategies he’s working through in his mind have an effect on the biofeedback. A sense of control starts forming and after a while the player has enough confidence in his abilities to let go of pressuring himself and trust on this feeling, or bodily knowledge, so he can focus on the game more because it becomes more challenging. This letting go is when the knowledge of how to concentrate starts transcending the game environment. It becomes a subtle feeling, that in a high pressure environment may be drawn out to improve focus.

So from trying to create an optimal user experience instead we begin to see this kind of play as a tranformative experience. Although this works on subtle levels, there is an important welness aspect that is emergent from the gameplay. Something unintentional that becomes a promise of future potential. What happens when children grow up playing with this technology, especially in this age of short attention spans and transformed information consumption? We’re very curious, and I hope you’ve become a little curious as well.

We’re excited to be part of the Cinekid Festival this year! Our game Mindout will be playable at the Cinekid Medialab during the entire festival, lasting from 12 to 21 Oktober. Cinekid is an annual dutch film festival specializing in film, television and new media for kids.

The Cinekid Medialab features a selection of the most innovative games around right now. If you come over you can check out all sorts of cool animation films, experience interactive installations and play lots of games.

If you’re a young person or have kids yourself this is a great opportunity to check out what playing with your mind means!

During the festival it is also possible to attend Cinekid for Professionals. From the Cinekid site:

Cinekid for Professionals is aimed at (international) industry professionals and brings together broadcasters, networks, entertainment companies, distributors, producers, directors, academics and journalists who maintain a laser focus on quality children’s media.

Cinekid Festival is hosted in Amsterdam at the Westergasfabriek and the Movies. Check out how to get there here, and order tickets here.

For a short impression of the Cinekid Medialab check out this nice little video we found in the tubes of the internet.

See you there!

Dreams of Danu is proud to be part of the Indigo on the Road exhibition at the coming DIGRA conference. The theme of the conference is “Think, Design, Play” and for 3 days there will be a lot of interesting games to play, presentations to follow and workshops to take part in! We’ll be there with our upcoming NeuroSky game Mindout for all to play, and we hope you will pay us a visit to take a few shots and put down a nice highscore!

From the DIGRA website:

After Leveling Up in the Netherlands (2003), Changing Views in Canada (2005), Situated Play in Japan (2007) and Breaking New Ground in England (2009) the 5th DiGRA Conference returns to the Netherlands for THINK DESIGN PLAY. Join us at our serious playground and participate in a meaningful dialogue between all players in the field of games and play. We seek to connect game research to the creative industries and society by fostering an integrated practice of research, design, engineering and entrepreneurship.

This year’s DIGRA conference will be held in Hilversum at the Utrecht School of Fine Arts (HKU) located at de Oude Amersfoortseweg 31.

See you there!

You think, therefore you play.

Visit the Mindout mini-site for more information!

 

Play Mindout with a NeuroSky MindSet or MindWave that translates your brainwaves into action.

Bounce a brain-powered ball to destroy walls of menacing bricks in great explosions.

The orb around your ball shows how high your real-time attention is, and how big the explosion will be when your ball hits a brick!

 

Play your Mindout!

The focus masters will teach you their mind-control in a journey that will be long and challenging, and full of adventure!

• Journey through 3 different worlds in over 30 levels of brain-flavoured fun!
• Achieve Silver and Gold Medals in every level to show off your brawny brainpower!
• Compete in specially balanced online highscore levels and challenge everyone!
• Play with 3 Focus Masters that each have their own unique explosions!
• Set for release early October 2011 in the NeuroSky Store!

In-Game Features

Build Your Focus
Adventure mode features 30 levels of exciting and addictive gameplay, spread out over 3 worlds that each hold a unique collection of bonus and sabotage bricks! Unlock levels, playable characters, achievements, medals and additional game modes!


Expand Your Mind
Choose from 3 playable characters that each react differently to your mindpower! Use their unique explosion types and try out various strategies to get at those hard to reach places so you can boost your score!


Challenge Your Brain
Play in the Online Challenge mode that features 3 specially balanced levels to set your own online highscore! Challenge your family, friends and the internet to see who has the highest focus and the quickest reflexes!

 

DyzloFilm shot a nice video of the Mindout demo during Indigo 2011, thanks guys!
With dutch commentary.