Challenge: Neuropsychology (Arousal)

I said I'd bitten off more than I could chew. I didn't say I'd stop biting.

Basically, this is an attempt to define how games challenge us by looking at the areas of brain function listed on the Wikipedia entry for Neuropsychology and seeing which ones games test. Be warned, you will probably learn things.

Arousal
In science terms, this just means how alert you are. It might be because your sexy sense it tingling, but it could just as easily be your fight or flight response. The latter is the one games most often challenge. The best example genre is probably horror. According to the Yerkes-Dodson law different tasks have different optimal levels of arousal. At very high levels, focus becomes narrow and difficult to control consciously. Memory and problem solving skills go out the window as moment to moment survival takes the fore. Not surprisingly, most horror games also contain puzzles with distributed clues. To be able to focus on and remember clues, the player is constantly fighting back their fear, forcing themselves to remain calm. Basically it's like doing a crossword at gunpoint.

While other examples may not be so dramatic, arousal definitely plays a big part in other games. In so-called rhythm games like Rock Band and Dance Dance Revolution, the player sees "notes" scrolling towards a line. When they cross the line, the player must hit the note. For novice players (like myself) some songs overstimulate my arousal by throwing piles of notes at me. I'm physically capable of hitting all of them, but my brain is overwhelmed and locks up. (Admittedly, this has to do with attention in addition to arousal, but one thing at a time.) I fumble to try and find a few of the notes I can definitely hit in the midst of the chaos. But if I could learn to control myself better, I might be able to complete harder songs more quickly, maybe even the first time through.

This feels to me, like a worthy challenge, like I'm cultivating grace under pressure. I could easily be deluding myself, though. Only an actual crisis would be able to prove this one way or the other, and I'm not interested in that kind of experimentation. Maybe I should be, though. Maybe I could get a grant and think about gaming full time. Maybe I'm double delusional! :P

As we continue down the list, I'll also be calling out the ways some games challenge me that I don't appreciate. I'm not arguing that the mental faculties they tax aren't useful. I'm just expressing preferences. This is a blog, after all. :)