Spoiler Alert!
I have many fond memories of the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books. I whittled away many hours of post-recess silent reading wandering through myriad outcomes in my imagination. I always wondered why that experience had to be limited to the world of books, and I thought it would be so cool if that sensibility could be woven into movies. Well, as it turns out it’s happening . . . . sort of.
When I was looking for apps to purchase for my NeuroSky MindWave EEG headset, I couldn’t resist Paranormal Mynd: Exorcism from MyndPlay. Before I go any further, if you aren’t familiar with what’s currently happening with consumer-grade EEG technology, a brief background will be helpful. Electroencephalography (EEG) is the detection and recording of the electrical activity generated by the brain. For this information to be useful in a medical context, it is not uncommon for a recording device, typically worn as some form of headgear, to have anywhere from 16 to 256 electrodes. This grade of equipment can be expensive as well as generally impractical for casual/recreational use.
Medical grade data and great for metal night at the karaoke bar
In the past few years, NeuroSky and other companies, including Emotiv and InteraXon, have developed consumer-grade devices that have 1-4 electrodes and range in price from $80 – $300. The tradeoff pertains to the quantity and quality of the data collected. NeuroSky’s MindWave headset uses a single dry electrode, but can be worn and activated in less than one minute. Their proprietary algorithms currently interpret one’s brain activity as variable levels of FOCUS and RELAXATION. From an application development standpoint, this allows for the conditional execution of routines based on either or both of those levels as needed.
Possession or just caffeine withdrawal?
Paranormal Mynd: Exorcism is essentially a movie that contains “decision points” which launch different scenes based on the outcome of some period of EEG analysis. The story is told primarily from a first person point of view. As the viewer, you are an exorcist, and the decision points require you to maintain a threshold level of focus for a period of time in order to successfully exercise your powers. In this title, there are only two decision points, and the entire experience takes less than ten minutes.
On one hand, It’s easy to dismiss this as something that I paid a buck for that entertained me for fifteen minutes. However, I found it unique enough to also see it as a proof-of-concept that raises some interesting questions about the potential for this style of storytelling.
The plot goes something like this . . .
Even more than the old Choose Your Own Adventure books, there is a game aspect to it that makes it more than just a story. While some of those books had multiple satisfying outcomes, others seemed designed to encourage you to exercise your judgment to find a single outcome that felt like “winning.” The MyndPlay title adds a new dimension by requiring some level of “skill” to trigger a desired outcome. In other words, your decision to access a certain outcome is separate and different from your ability to access it, which certainly amplifies the game quality of the experience. While a good game often has a great story component to it, I still make a distinction between when I’m in the mood to “play a game” vs. “enjoy a story.” This experience essentially combines the two, and it’s still an open question as to whether it works for me.
Other questions that I had:
Do I want to see all the outcomes? Even the ones where I don’t win? Do I want to try harder to see a different outcome? How does this meta-level of engagement change my emotional relationship to the story? Does it matter?
This title employed classic horror tropes with very little subtlety. Girl is possessed. Bad things happen if she stays that way. You need to save the day. Could this format be effective in the telling of more sophisticated stories?
Co-author of this post
Do the nuances of the decision mechanism enhance or detract from the experience of the story? For instance, I actually found it very easy to achieve threshold levels of focus, because my attention was riveted on the possessed character on the screen. In fact, I found I had to try harder to trigger a threshold of non-focus just to explore the alternate outcome. What if the threshold tests were structured in counterpoint to the content, e.g., what if I had to trigger a threshold of relaxation while watching the same intense scene? Would that make it too much of a game?
Basically, if this is an intermediate step in the exploration of a new style of storytelling, where do we go from here?
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Reblogged this on you find yourself in a room and commented:
Fascinating.