Making a game of research

Net Results:Do you ever get the feeling that computer games and virtual reality seem to be accorded far too much importance in real life? I am just as fascinated as the next person by the fact that nine million people, or rather, their "avatars", are roaming around the online virtual world of Second Life - or, in the majority of cases, are abandoned here and there across the virtual landscape, writes Karlin Lillington.

I can easily get addicted, in the short term, to driving an on-screen racing car around a track and yelling at those animated pixels in a way that is unbecoming for a rational being. And I used to waste quarters galore on endless games of Centipede and Galaga at the arcade in the small California town where I lived in the 1980s.

But I draw the line at using Pacman to understand the brain's fight or flight responses.

Yes, I realise this is a risky topic to address in a column because of its dangerously high mirth factor. But trust me. The study is absolutely serious.

Let's first address the most pressing question: what kind of scientific mind could think up a version of Pacman that delivers electric shocks? That alone makes me want to meet these researchers immediately. How diabolical. And all in the name of research.

For those who did not come of age within a certain important period of game development, Pacman is the beloved 1980s maze game in which you control a little chomping yellow head that eats dots, while pursued by creatures that look like overturned mopheads.

Many of us can still recall in our heads, note perfect, the opening Pacman tune (it sounded like a fairground organ gone mad). And I can confirm that the horrible musical melting sound that occurred when one of the mopheads caught up with and "killed" your yellow chomping head remains seared into the hearts of millions of 1980s adolescents, and is still capable of evoking grief.

So in some ways, I guess I can see how researchers might feel that upping the gaming ante by actually shocking players' hands when their little chomping head gets zapped by a mophead is, shall we say, a logical development of the original idea.

And just such a "hack" on Pacman was used for a study at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London.

The study showed that players mainly used the brain's prefrontal cortex region - used for planning tasks - when the mopheads were off in some distant part of the maze.

But as they closed in, activity shifted swiftly to a primitive part of the brain called the periaqueductal grey - aka "the lizard brain" - which controls basic responses such as the good old fight-or-flight caveman instinct.

As much as I adore Pacman (and even better: Ms Pacman, where the chomping head wore a little bow, and little Pacman family dramas, complete with Pacman children, entertained players between gaming levels), I really find it hard to take this research seriously.

Imean, the basics of millions of years of evolution are finally revealed by an animated two-dimensional smiley face? And, come on, what is it with those shocks? Aren't they a little excessively sadistic?

Any Pacman aficionado can confirm that nothing could match the pure, terrifying panic experienced as the mopheads closed in. You'd nearly pee yourself with fear as they bore down upon your yellow head.

It took many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours of gameplay to gain the steely nerves that would enable you to avoid panicking and reversing straight into one of the mopheads or fleeing into the path of another one.

Adding an electrical shock is, as they say, overegging the pudding. Or something. Actually, given the age of the average researcher (likely to have played Pacman) and the average research volunteer (undergraduate students who came of age with Lara Croft), I am led to believe that, on balance, this whole experiment smacks of revenge.

One too many students arriving tardy to lectures, perhaps? Handing in yet another late assignment with no excuse and an annoying nonchalance? All this tiresome rudeness just daring the researcher/ lecturer to devise a very special research experiment?

I love it. If I'd had any idea that research could be this rewarding, I'd have remained in academia.

All I want to know now is, when are they going to release this version of the game? I know who I'd like to invite over for some Pacman 2.0 gameplay.

blog: www.techno-culture.com