

Victory in Vomit: The Sickening Secret of Mirror's Edge - Shamiq
http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/11/gamesfrontiers_1117

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LogicHoleFlaw
I must have played the demo to _Mirror's Edge_ 50 times.

Proprioception (wow, that's actually in the spell checker) has been up and
coming in video games for some time now. One of the first games to really
pursue it was _Thief 3_ , with it's "body awareness" system. When playing in
the first-person perspective your 3d avatar is still being rendered, and you
see your body in motion as you try to stealth your way through dimly lit
alleys and try to get the drop on guards. _Assassin's Creed_ also had a
fantastic sense of "realness" to your body motion. It was played in the 3rd-
person, but the rock-solid interaction between your very acrobatic character
and the environment was the major selling point of the game to me.

A good friend of mine has a very difficult time with first-person games. I
remember that he would have to _not_ watch when others were playing them. The
feeling of lack of control led to him becoming very nauseous. When he was
playing though he had no trouble as long as he disabled the popular "head
bobbing camera" features. I personally never had any problem with either
situation - but I also can read in a moving vehicle and never get motion-sick,
so maybe I'm an aberration.

What blows me away about _Mirror's Edge_ is how effective it is at simulating
this sense of self. When I'm running along and leap across a 20-foot void
between buildings and tuck into a roll when I land, I see my arms and legs
curl up and see the perspective do a slightly off-kilter 360 as I pull my neck
in. Amazingly, this is entirely non-disorienting. I know exactly where the
terrain lies when I get up and keep running along at top speed. It's
exhilarating. Doing a wall run into a jump kicking off vertically to land on
the roof a floor up involves two 180-degree snap turns and yet I feel in
control of myself the entire way up. Fantastic. Jumping off of a building into
a rolling landing and then doing a flying kick to disarm a guard is an
absolutely fluid motion. And my arms and legs are all in their proper place.
The game developers nailed the sense of place and person in this game.

In real life I'm pretty awkward. Just... ungainly. In role-playing terms I'd
have high dexterity but low agility - fine motor coordination comes much more
naturally to me. I think that this imbalance is part of why _Mirror's Edge_
appeals to me so much. It allows me to take part in actions that are otherwise
unavailable to me. That's part of the allure of video games, and even all
fiction. It's the opportunity to step into someone else's split-toed running
shoes.

If you get the chance, try playing _Mirror's Edge_. I know that I will be
buying a copy when it comes out on Tuesday.

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hugh
Who wrote this title? Is there some guide out there to getting attention on
social news sites which states that every submission needs to contain the word
"amazing" or "secret"?

What's the "secret"? That Mirror's Edge will make you vomit? That's no secret
-- in fact, the first line of the article is:

 _By now you have probably heard the warning: Playing Mirror's Edge will make
you vomit_

~~~
DougBTX
The "secret" is a bit further down:

 _it's because Mirror's Edge is the first game to hack your proprioception._

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gaius
Heh, this is nothing new. I remember playing _Descent_ 15 years ago, standing
up from the PC and promptly falling over. Never actually threw up tho'!

~~~
Prrometheus
Descent used to scare me, like no scary game ever did. I guess it was the
sense of 360-degree immersion.

My sister tapped me on the shoulder once when I was playing and I literally
jumped out of the chair (with the headphones still on, which wasn't
comfortable).

~~~
DaniFong
The same sense was there in Alien vs. Predator (1 & 2), only worse. I only
played it once. Never again!

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robg
Seeing your body parts coming into and out of view is critical. That's subtle
but necessary to really fool your brain. I've always been amazed how much
first-person games are more like a camera moving through space than a body.

That said, you can do a decent job hacking the brain without body parts, but
they're really powerful. I remember testing a VR elevator that lifted me 100
feet into the air. I felt like I was off the ground but when looking down I
didn't see my feet. That lack of reality ruined the illusion. It created a
representational void where there shouldn't have been one.

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kirse
Is anyone aware of research done into how mentally stimulating various video
games are? Maybe someone with one of those open-source EEGs could hook
themselves up and do us a favor?

This article comes at an interesting time because I noticed recently that
playing games like Rockband leave me much more mentally fired up - and tougher
to calm down afterwards (oh, the irony...) - versus playing games like Team
Fortress 2.

My guess is that it'd be correlated to how much direct focus the game
requires. Obviously one can't do much else when they're concentrated on
getting thousands of colored dots played perfectly.

~~~
jrockway
_I noticed recently that playing games like Rockband leave me much more
mentally fired up_

I think it could have something to do with the music. I've been playing
Geometry Wars 2 a lot recently simply because I enjoy the music so much. After
I finish the "Sequence" mode, it is very hard to come down from the "high" --
the combination of exciting music and intense concentration is something I
really enjoy. Compare this to games like Mass Effect that are fun, but I don't
really feel _stimulated_... it's more like watching TV.

Anyway, it's too bad that many people dismiss video games as toys for kids and
never get to experience this.

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kqr2
I wonder if watching someone else play makes you feel queasy too, ala
Cloverfield:

[http://www.webmd.com/news/20080122/whats-behind-
cloverfield-...](http://www.webmd.com/news/20080122/whats-behind-cloverfield-
illness)

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radley
The game has several deliberate, well-designed vertigo and fatigue-based
visual effects including blurriness, shakiness, whiteouts, blackouts, etc. The
game is brilliant and easily on par with Portal.

FWIW: I think the article is a continuation of this joke:

<http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/11/3/>

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
Do you have a good reference on the design and implementation of these
effects? I'm fascinated by this game.

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Hexstream
If an acrobat that does real flips all day long plays this I'm guessing he
won't feel sick at all?

~~~
cstejerean
generally motion sickness comes from conflicting messages to the brain from
various senses (typically eyes vs inner ear). Just like feeling motion that
you don't see (ie. reading while riding in a car) can cause motion sickness,
so can the opposite: seeing motion that is not happening. Not sure how doing
flips all day would make one less prone to motion sickness from this game.

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mattmaroon
Sounds like a very novel and intricate way to make a game that sucks.
Fascinating technology, perhaps, but who wants digital ipecac?

This is what happens when people think "I wonder if we can do this?" without
thinking "I wonder if we should do this?". Or so I would glean from this
article. Haven't actually played it.

~~~
ivank
I'm guessing it'll be much more tolerable on the PC, once you crank up the FOV
and sit close enough to your monitor. The console is just a bad setup for this
sort of thing.

~~~
jrockway
Why? My console is attached to a much bigger screen than my PC.

(FWIW, I usually sit in a desk chair close to my TV when playing console
games. If you think your monitor fills your field of view...)

~~~
jmatt
You just need the right setup.

[http://www.matrox.com/graphics/surroundgaming/en/games/zone/...](http://www.matrox.com/graphics/surroundgaming/en/games/zone/rpg/)

3x24 inch monitors with monitor bezeling properly set up and it's quite
immersive. Better than any console game on my 52" TV downstairs.

