I've been reading self-help and spirituality books by Eckhart Tolle and Gary Zukav. They talk about ego and identity and how to lose it. I also like playing video games and I hate getting killed. It really hurts inside me when I get killed. I've been thinking about where my ego is and how they say it is a false sense of identity, an illusion meme that is self interested, and it occurrs to me that the best place to get a sense of identity is in a video game where you create and lose your identity every time you get a new guy.

So the proposal is to play around with this. I have been playing Adrenaline Challenge at CrazyMonkey Games obsessively and trying to lose my sense of identity so that I dont care when I get killed. it is really hard to not care but I feel the door opening a little bit each time it happens.

This game would be a similar game to adrenaline challenge but where things just randomly came in and killed you every once in a while. So you couldn't blame yourself for dieing. It occurs to me that the reason why you feel bad when you die is that you have spent some time building up an identity, according to some rules, and you feel like you get the game and the strategy you have been using is that you pay attention to the rules and try to push the limits and when you screw up you look back to assess how you could have done better. And you try to change yourself to do better the next time. But the strategy you use to change yourself is you threaten yourself with the bad feeling if you screw up. So in this more random video game that could hopefully integrate as much control over parameters as possible so that players could play around with the rules in real time, the designer would include a certain bit of randomness so that the players sense of identity and strategy for maintaining that would be opened up or maybe eventually broken down.

The way military training games work, I bet there are already games like this. It would probably be an effective way making someone fearless.

(Added December 24th) Looking back, the idea of random killings probably would not work. It would probably be better to experiment with the game and whenever the subject felt like they were losing their sense of identity, the game could be redesigned, or adjusted so that the sense of identity changed. So give the player the chance to adaptively play with the boundaries around the sense of identity created by association with a "guy" in a video game.
-- JesusHChrist, Dec 23 2006

Adrenaline-Challenge http://www.crazymon...line-Challenge.html
[JesusHChrist, Dec 23 2006]

have you tried Christian video games? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8869881/
[xandram, Dec 25 2006]

Flappy Bird http://venturebeat....app-stores-but-why/
I told you so [JesusHChrist, Feb 01 2014]

Jesus, you should get out more.
-- po, Dec 23 2006


Damn [21], you gotta relax a bit more. He's not suggesting you shoot your dog to gain transcendence, just a new game that could help you along. Perhaps you could play more meditative bio-feedback games that help deal with potential pent up rage. Not that I'm saying you have pent-up rage or nothing. Please don't hurt me.
-- NotTheSharpestSpoon, Dec 23 2006


Bad, bad, bad. Bad idea. Bad thinking errors. As the father of a suicide victim, I can give you a fairly extensive listing of reasons why damaging your self-value is not something to indulge in - even if it makes you a much better video-game player. E-mail me if you like. I'm not voting this one.
-- lurch, Dec 24 2006


Back in the days before animals had rights, there were some experiments on dogs whose results were characterized by the phrase 'learned helplessness'. If you electroshock a dog when it does x, then it learns not to do x. If you just electroshock a dog intermittently, at random, then it 'learns' to be helpless, and stops looking after itself (feeding itself, defending itself, etc.) Basically, it was a way of making a dog clinically depressed.

I think it's a bit like what sometimes happens to human victims of torture.

Anyway, this game seems too close to that kind of 'learned helplessness' for my liking.
-- pertinax, Dec 24 2006


Hug a donkey.
-- Chefboyrbored, Dec 24 2006


Oh man,[lurch] you touched me right there in my hart.

[JezusHChrist] I vote for your idea here. Anything to help you break free. Why not break free in real life? I wish you luck. No not luck, persaverence(sp?).
-- zeno, Dec 25 2006


I've only ever won the "game with the hook and the stuffed animals" when I've brought the trusty ol' well-aimed half-brick into play.

The "idea"? Meh...

Oh, and [xandram]: Christian video games? Destruction of towers, great floods, turning people into pillars of salt, incest, rape, murder, great struggles between the small and the great? Plagues of... well, pretty much everything?

I'd play it.
-- m_Al_com, Dec 25 2006


It strikes me we've all lost soul this holiday.

Peace be with the family of James Brown.
-- david_scothern, Dec 26 2006


I'm boning this, not because I don't like the idea, but for the good of your soul. Please play again.
-- BunsenHoneydew, Dec 30 2006



random, halfbakery