Assignment - Week 6 "Presentation"

This week after receiving our assignment mark, this being an A we as a group have been working on the presentation each doing their own slides. I did the slide about communication as this is one of the topics mentioned in the design document, pitch and plan that I did. Edward McGurran and Lewis Drinnan were the ones chosen to present this week, but it will be a different set of presenters next so everybody gets a chance to present.

Assignment - Week 4-5 "Design Document, Pitch and Plan"

These two weeks as a group it’s all been about the design document, pitch and plan. The first part me and two other members of the team worked on was the layout of the document, we spent a good few hours discussing the layout with relevance to the assignment sheet and came up with a reasonable layout that covers all the points that needed to be addressed. From this we distributed the work between the team members, below is a list of all the work we did.

Edward McGurran – Worked on the Design Ideas, Different Equipment we might need, Literature Review and Document Layout

Lewis Drinnan – Level Design, Narrative, Time and Work Management

Seb McBride – High Key/Low Key/Normal Lighting, Sound, Adding Pictures and Document Layout

Robert Lambert (Myself) – Testing/Evaluation, Communication/Team Management, Bibliography, Literature Review and Document Layout

Tim Leigh – Game Mechanics and Colour

Group – Thesis, Academic Pitch, Academic Argument, Milestones and General Formatting.

Everybody (including myself) had a good amount of work to keep them busy; the way it was distributed was decided by who researched what areas before this assignment, meaning it was easier for them to write about it. Everything turned out well on the design document and was handed in on time.

Research - Week 3 "Understanding Emotions"

This week I’ve been researching the book entitled “Understanding Emotions” by Keith Oatley and Jennifer M.Jenkins. After the meeting with our two lecturers Phil and Brian it came to our attention that we should also be researching emotions in general and how they are recognized and defined.

Chapter 4 (Page 95-133) – “What is an Emotion”

This chapter initially defined a breakdown of what emotions are. Accordingly it refers to something that is caused by a person consciously or unconsciously evaluating an event as relevant to a concern. This emotion can be felt in a positive or negative way. This emotion is usually experienced as a distinctive type of mental state which can sometimes we followed by bodily chances, expressions, actions (more onto this later). Below is a breakdown based on this definition (Frijda, 1986) defining an emotion by a set of stage.

Appraisal -> Context Evaluation -> Action Readiness -> Physiological Change, Expression, Action

Appraisal - Research into this area has implied that they are typically caused by events and are intentional. They all have an object of some sort for example one is not afraid but afraid of something.

Context Evaluation – This is dependent on the person’s thoughts at the current time. They‘re salient in somebody’s experience of emotions.

Action Readiness – This is where a person will do a particular action dependent on their emotion at the time.

Physiological Change, Expression and Actions – This is quite important in Team Mercury’s research since this allows the group to determine through somebody’s actions how they are feeling. Examples of these are nonverbal expressions, voice, facial expressions and others. In terms of non verbal expression, according to Ekman and Friesan (1969) nonverbal expressions can be identified in five different categories.

- Emblems – Commonly known as gestures.
- Illustrators – Usually accompany speech and vary with the degree of excitement, such as arm waving or clenching of the fist.
- Regulators – Such as nods or changing the flow of conversations.
- Affect Displays – Expressions such as smiling or frowning
- Adaptors – Self-grooming, Self-touching and so forth, often occur because of signs of anxiety or inner conflict (Maestripieri, 1992)
These are good for the group at they’re easily identifiable ways of noticing emotions by their bodily responses.

Other changes can be things such as vocal expressions, heart rate changes (low rate suggests happiness, disgust and surprise. High rate suggests fear, sadness and anger) and also skin temperatures (low temperature suggests fear and sadness, high temperature suggests anger)

Conclusion

Reading this book has brought some new information to the team, not only does it clearly define what an emotion is but also the process of an emotion and how to indentify it. There are more chapters in this book which may be researched later since so far it’s been quite useful and a good recommendation from the lecturers.

References

- Oatley, K. Jenkins, J., 1996. Understanding Emotions. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc.

Research – Week 2 “Cognitive Therapy for Delusions, Voices and Paranoia”

It’s the end of the week, this week I’ve been researching a particular book with my teammate Edward McGurran. The book is entitled “Cognitive Therapy for Delusions, Voices and Paranoia” by Paul Chadwick, Max Birchwood and Peter Trower. Whilst Edward concentrated on the largest and most informative chapter in the book (chapter 1) I did chapters 2, 4, 5 & 7 which also had a great deal of informative information. For the process of this report I will discuss this report by chapter to highlight important parts of information, with my own opinions on the topics.

Chapter 2 – “The Problem of Therapy and The Problem of Engagement”

In this chapter it expressed how difficult it can be for somebody to express their own emotions to a clinical expert or to others. The book mentioned however that even though people may have trouble expressing themselves verbally, they also subconsciously express themselves in nonverbal behaviour (such as body language etc) this is known as emotional leakage. But using body language in order to properly identify someone’s state of mind isn’t a perfect solution; however there’re other ways to find out what somebody’s feeling and that is called gestalt awareness exercises. This is a series of tests that helps identify what people feel by usage of pictures. How does this aid Team Mercury however? Since we’re doing paranoia the methods of testing have to be ethical, and if people are not able to express their emotions through words this might be a good way of finding out their inner emotions at the time. However we’re are still in the early stages of research and testing has yet to truly be explored but it’s a good bit of information to have on hand in the future.

That was the most important bit of information that we got from this chapter but there was also other information that might be useful. It revealed a bit more about anxiety (a common emotion associated with paranoia) and how it’s accompanied by defensive and avoidance behaviour and how to tell someone is anxious from them avoiding/leaving situations to other forms such as averting somebody’s gaze and subtle non-verbal responses. Also mentioned is that people are reacting to what are called biologically prepared stimuli where people’s instincts have a powerful reaction to what people do in different situations. These points are all important for our research because not only do we know how to tell if somebody is anxious but can also look into material based on people’s instincts and ways to measure it, which will also widen our academic scope on our project area.

Chapter 4 – “Challenging Delusions”

Delusions are a figment of paranoia and this book offered a good definition on delusions. Here is the definition: “Historically it has been argued that individuals form delusions because they are faced with what seems an insufferable threat, and that the delusion is a form of psychological defence without which the person would inwardly collapse” (Jaspers, 1962). Therefore from this it means that delusions itself it trying to protect yourself from some threat (that isn’t actually there). This is a very important element of paranoia, because paranoia itself is based around persecution of the self from others. This will aid Team Mercury as we have a clearer understanding on delusions; however it might be worthwhile to look a little bit more into the main causes of someone becoming delusional.

Chapter 5 – “Voice: Engagement and Assessment”

The next chapter that I researched into was about voices. Even though it’s not always completely associated with paranoia, it still a figment of paranoia in some people, probably not so much as delusions but it still an important area to look into. First of all the book breaks down three types of voices that users experience, these are the following.

- Omnipotence – A belief in a powerful voice that is inescapable, leaving individuals to feel constricted by the voices power. Making them at times depressed and helpless. Most individuals feel anxious with omnipotent voices.

- Omniscience – A voice which possesses an individual’s thoughts, behaviours, fears, experience and self-evaluation. This can leave the user exposed and vulnerable.

- Compliance – Voices which are benevolent and makes individuals comply with its commands.

The problem with researching into voices and associating them with paranoia is the fact that voices are usual associated with a severe mental state, however the actual concept of voice can possibly be implemented into a video game world (if that’s what we’re doing) The book even gives a good explanation on the description of voices (i.e. their attributes). Below is a list of what makes up a voice:

- They usually speak with clarity and at normal volume

- They’re repetitive and their words have emotional force.

- Sometimes there is more than one voice.

- Most voices are male.

- Most voice hearers listen to voices that are usually of a superior social class of their own.

With this list it will be easy to create voices in a game that contain those following attributes. However, whether or not this will induce and increase the chances of making somebody paranoid, is something that I can only hold an opinion on at the moment. Perhaps further reading or testing is the only method to find this out.

Chapter 7 – “Cognitive Therapy for Paranoia”

Out of all the chapters I’ve researched this one if probably the most informative and helpful of them all. It mentions that there’re two types of paranoia. The first one is known as persecution (poor me) paranoia; where the person tends to blame others and to see themselves as victims. They have a tendency to interpret threats (voices etc) as persecutory because they blame others. These types of paranoid people come into fray usually from being ignored, rejected or not being appreciated. This type of paranoia is also associated with beliefs such as self-righteousness and self-pity.

The second type of paranoia is punishment (bad me) paranoia; where individuals tend to blame themselves and also see themselves as bad allowing a justification for people punishing them. Unlike persecution paranoids they interpret threats differently, they interpret them as punishing because of the fact they feel guilty and blame themselves. The reason people are paranoid this way is usually from a disturbance in their ego or because they received criticisms/disapproval. These types of paranoid people are usually anxious, avoidant and depressed. Below is a table (taken from the book) which shows the two different types of paranoia and their differences.

Delusion Theme	Punishment	Persecution
Focus of paranoia	Very wide (e.g. general public, people on the bus)	A few named and known individuals or organisations
Delusional conviction	Unstable	Stable and total
Susceptibility to change	Open to hypothetical challenge	Resistant to hypothetical challenge
Grandiose element	Absent	Strong
Affect	Anxiety and guilt	Anger
Behaviour	Avoidance/escape	Confrontational
Motivation	Hide own badness from others	Have persecutors revealed as bad

Because of the information in this chapter, Team Mercury now knows that we have two types of paranoia which we might meet during our testing and research, this is helpful because not only does it tell us what to look for when somebody’s paranoid but to also distinguish what sort of paranoid person they’re at the time, in order to make a more detailed conclusion on our project.

Conclusion

This book has been a mighty help in our research. Not only have I been able to find out key points about delusions and voices but also been able to find a strong clear definition of paranoia and that is has two major sub-categories, which can only help our team widen our knowledge and search into the subject area. Not only have I found research in this area but also possible testing procedures (gestalt) which may indeed be helpful because of the ethical policies associated with paranoia. Most of the information in this report has been condensed down for easier reading and highlights the most important parts of my research, however, I have the full research documents up on our forums (click for link) that has quotes and pages which I have noted down.

This week I’ll be looking into a book entitled “Understanding Emotions” by Keith Oatley and Jennifer M.Jenkins. Hopefully this book will give a clear description of emotions that will aid my group in the project.

References

- Chadwick, P. Birchwood, M. & Trower, P., 1996. Cognitive Therapy for Delusions, Voices and Paranoia. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Research - Week 1 "The Journey To Uncover The Secrets Of Paranoia..."

Today marks the third day of the new university semester and the first posting in my blog, this blog will follow my own personal contributions to Team Mercury’s design project.

So what is Team Mercury? Team Mercury is a games design team formed to undertake the project of paranoia in video games, from this week onwards we shall we researching, designing, testing and presenting the inclusion of paranoia in video games. Paranoia is defined as a “Mental disorder in which a person has delusions of grandeur or persecution.” It’s not surprising then that this feeling is prevalent in many of today’s video games (especially those relating to horror) such as the Silent Hill series or most recently Condemned 1 & 2.

This Friday the team will be meeting up to discuss and set milestones for our team project. However, we’ve begun researching already into books and e-journals and not to mention video games. So with it being a dark and silent night yesterday, I booted up my Playstation 2 to play one of the most frightening games of the century; Silent Hill 2, for some research into paranoia. Developed and published by Konami a well-known Japanese company, Silent Hill 2 is one of the most influential and talked about games around today and is often compared to Capcoms Resident Evil series. However unlike Resident Evil which often depends on cheap “jump out” scares, Silent Hill 2 depends on targeting the player physiologically which can leave the player in fear and emotionally drained. Paranoia is one of the reasons for this.

But how is paranoia one of the reasons for this exactly? It’s a common misconception to those who have no knowledge of video games whatsoever to believe that it’s not possible to become paranoid or frightened because videos games aren’t real. But being immersed in a game is just the same as when reading a book or a film; it’s your imaginary world that you are participating in and it can affect the reader/viewer/player just as much as real life can. Silent Hill 2 is no different as last night’s run through on the game left me feeling paranoid even after playing. Some of the primary reasons for this, that I jotted down was elements such as the level design, which was at times claustrophobic. Usage of ambient sounds which emit creeping and growling noises in the background even when I couldn’t see anything in my immediate vision. Not to mention the usage of silence in areas, making me paranoid that something was building up and that something could happen at any time. My final point was the fixed player cameras, which even though gets negative criticism adds to the paranoia affect, since I couldn’t see what was creeping up on me making me very careful on how I progressed through the game. These are some of the elements in Silent Hill 2 which made me paranoid and I’ve played it before. With that in mind how would it affect someone who has never played it? Or never played a game which uses the player’s paranoia to affect them? These are questions that can only be answered by testing, so watch out or you may have to spend a night in Silent Hill…..

Definition of Paranoia – Oxford Dictionary
Silent Hill Corridor Image - http://uk.ign.com/