Californian game

Coastal Californians, particularly those from the Bay area, are well known for being keen on new toys, new experiences and mind games. So the wheeze following if offered to them.

We have a game for two players, a game which could quite easily be played remotely, over the Internet.

Each player is sat is his own room and equipped with a good quality PC, including a good size screen and an EEG headset, with this last wired into their PC. Players can neither see each other nor otherwise interact with each other, except within the confines of the game.

Each player sees a screen along the lines of the snap left.

The large portion left is the image that they are supposed to be mainly attending to. With some sort of control at the bottom so that the player can change his image at will. We also allow the player to pan and zoom within image, not shown in this particular snap. Both players have the same repertoire of images and one might elect to follow the viewing of the other, probably lagging by a second or so. Perhaps, with practise, anticipating by a second or so.

It might be helpful for there to be speed limits so that a player cannot change his image, or his view of that image, too fast. Maybe not more than one command every so many seconds. One might devise variants whereby each player could only issue a command during every 5th second (or whatever). Or not, as the case may be. With the supervisor also deciding whether or not the players were to be in phase or out of phase, alternating even.

Bottom right is the image which the other player is attending to, as it happens the one on the far left of the scroll bar.

Top right is the EEG trace from the other player, with now far right, with the trace scrolling from right to left. A bit of work would be needed to get the right channels and to get the right window of time. The idea is that this is providing some privileged insight into what the other player is thinking about, maybe something of his subjective experience.

So each player has some control of the left hand portion of their screen, none at all of the right hand portion, except in so far as they can influence the other player by means of his own image selection.

Let it all roll for hours and hours. Maybe one player will come to feel that they really have a window onto the mind of the other. Maybe have trained observers who can see both sides of the game and write it all up.

PS: I think Amazon sell basic versions of the necessary headset, but one might do better with a specialist, such as that at reference 1. This particular one also dishes out nicely produced educational materials and promotional emails.

Reference 1: https://imotions.com/.