Weekly Report 2 [13/10/09]

After the conclusions made at the end of week 1, Team Mercury met again on Tuesday October 6th to identify key areas to focus initial research on in order to gain a clearer plan on how our project would be structured. The areas that were agreed upon that needed further study was Paranoia itself, unique mechanics within games that made them scary and/or caused paranoia, and environmental effects such as sound, lighting, visuals, setting, narrative and level design. Each member of the group was assigned an area to investigate which will be completed over the coming weeks.

Another issue that was brought to the table was the need for an efficient means of communication beyond just texts and emails. The team saw eye to eye on creating a forum board, eventually powered by professional boardhosts “phpBB” at http://www.phpbb.com/. Last week we had intended to ask the lecturers if it would be possible to alter the topic to focus on a specific area of the game environment; however Amanda Dewhurst told us not to ignore any aspect of the definition of the game environment just yet as we are still all unsure how much information each area could provide. It might not be enough to focus on for a year, or too much to focus on etc.

Team Mercury met again on Friday October 9th before our scheduled meeting with Brian and Phil to see what had been accomplished so far from the previously set tasks. A fair bit of research had been done into unique game mechanics as well as environmental effects and the book, “Cognitive Therapy for Delusions, Voices and Paranoia” by Chadwick, P. Birchwood, M. & Trower, P had been studied for all its worth and posted on the forums. Another topic discussed was the importance for a research deadline, thus leaving enough time to complete and Design document and Pitch and also to allocate any further research we may receive from Dr. John Charlton, whom we emailed asking for an appointment. It was agreed that the 20th October would be a sufficient date to accommodate this.

In order to use our time with Brian and Phil as resourceful as possible, we wrote down a number of questions and issues to bring up with them on areas such as testing procedures, ethics, further information on what the Design document and Pitch actually entails and their thoughts on changing the topic to focus on a specific area. During our meeting, we conversed about the definition of paranoia, involuntary actions and whether they are linked to what we are doing, ethics, mental health and previous history of it within possible test subjects and whether it is truly possible to describe someone’s reactions from a test as paranoid and not have it mistaken with another emotion such as excitement which is what a previous group concluded. The possibility of “failure” therefore exists in the sense that although we may not prove that game environments can create paranoia, we will inevitably have some kind of conclusion to write as long as we explain what was achieved and why.

Phil also recommended to us some useful books on the subject matter and so after the meeting came to an end, we set off to the University’s library to check if they were in stock. We took out Understanding Emotions by Keith Oatley and Jennifer M. Jenkins, Gestalt Therapy by Frederick Perls, Ralph Hefferline and Paul Goodman, Gestalt Counselling in Action by Petruska Clarkson and Skills in Gestalt Counselling and Psychotherapy by Phil Joyce and Charlotte Sills. Another useful book was Cognitive Therapy Techniques - A Practioneer's Guide by Robert L. Leah which proved to be informative however it was not allowed to be borrowed from the library. On Monday 12th October we checked Bolton’s library, however it was out of stock.