The Metaverse Journal coverage of the GDC conference included a summary of the Emotiv headset.

One of the news pieces focuses on a demonstration of the Emotiv headset, which we’ve written about before. The piece describes a demonstration at the 2008 Game Developers Conference of a future that is now: the helmet uses 16 EEG sensors attached to the head to detect electrical impulses, which trigger different tools that set off applications to control the game and, the makers say, to be able to control games using thoughts.

Over at Gamasutra, no comment is made on the deeper implications of an interface system that reads emotions and thoughts in order to not only let the user interact with virtual environments, but for those environments to adapt based on the level of user engagement, frustration, or satisfaction. From a more positive angle, however, opening up new vehicles for expression within virtual worlds can have all kinds of implications ranging from therapeutic uses to deeper forms of collaboration.

As they report:

Any “Cognitiv” actions should probably be more properly thought of as more sophisticated and unconventional “super moves” rather than mere strings of button presses. That said, there are various ways of interpreting and integrating actions, from direct interaction (think the bat in Wii Sports) to various scripts (specific thoughts triggering abstract sequences of action)….

It is up to developers to choose the depth of integration, from a surface-level key binding, down through some compromises with certain default settings, all the way to a hardcore, full integration, incorporating training into the game design.Any training might be subtly, even subversively, integrated into the tutorial portion of a game. Since people change over time, it might also be wise to allow the player to train again and “refocus” at will.

“We expect to be amazed,” engineer James Wright said, referencing some of the imagination vacuum in Wii and DS software. “I will be very disappointed if the only ideas [developers come up with] are ones we’ve talked about here in this session.”