Reynolds wrote in a post on the Nevermind site that “Affectiva’s emotion-sensing software watches the player’s facial expressions for signs of emotional distress. Last month, however, the developers announced that Nevermind can now be played with just a webcam, thanks to Affectiva’s Affdex technology, which monitors emotions through facial expressions. And the game knew it.īack in 2014, when Nevermind was in development and raising money on Kickstarter, the game’s creative director, Erin Reynolds, told me that through biofeedback technology, it was possible to “create a game experience that can know more about its player than the player knows about themselves.” Nevermind was released by Flying Mollusk studio last year on Steam for Mac and PC but required a heart-rate sensor to engage this biofeedback system. Kennedy’s life - my equilibrium was, unsurprisingly, way off. As I was playing it at the Games for Change summit at last month’s Tribeca Film Festival - just after spending four minutes in a mortuary drawer, smelling the last moments of John F. Nevermindis a video game that responds to the emotions of its player, the screen growing staticky and the horror heightening as your anxiety shoots up. “Go to your happy place,” the game attendant told me as the digital kitchen on my screen filled with milk and I was drowning. Scene from the game ‘Nevermind’ (GIF by the author for Hyperallergic, via Vimeo)
