Meaningful Media Demonstration Project Proposal

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Meaningful Media Demonstration Project Proposal Psychecology Games (PEGs): Reframing the Cognitive Infrastructure of a Media Age ©Stephen B. Schafer (2007) Contact information: [email protected] TABLE OF CONTENTS Page 2 INTRODUCTION Page 3 CONCEPT IN BRIEF Page 5 STEPS IN DBG MODELING OF CONCEPTUAL PSYCHE Page 7 GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT FOR MEANINGFUL MEDIA Page 9 Marketing & Competition Page 10 Why simulate dreams? The reality of illusion Page 16 Functional Specifications: The structure of cognitive research Page 16 The Theatre Model Page 17 Narrative-metaphorical framing of the cognitive unconscious Page 18 Language of cognitive framing full of parallels to Jungian language Page 20 Carl Jung’s Amplification Method of dream analysis Page 21 The simulation of dreams with DBGs Page 21 Exploring the psychological dimensions of Meaningful Media Page 23 Binary-metaphorical correspondences in the DBG analog Page 24 Characters based on Personality Types & Metaphorical Frames Page 27 The Strict Father Metaphor (SFM) Page 28 The Nurturant Parent Metaphor (NPM) Page 29 Framing premise according to the Work Ethic Metaphor Page 31 Premise: balancing the moral books with metaphor Page 32 Conclusions relative to Functional Specifications Page 33 Footnotes Page 35 THE GAME TREATMENT Page 35 Game Mechanics Page 35 Core Game Play Page 38 Game Flow in Sojourner Page 38 Characters Page 39 Game Play Elements Page 40 Game Physics & Statistics Page 43 Measures of proof & experimental controls Page 47 Interactive navigation of symbolic domains in the cognitive unconscious Page 45 User Interface Overview Page 50 Art & Video, Sound & Music Page 51 Sources Page 54 Index

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The Dream Analog: Psychecology Video Games (PEG)

Stephen Brock Schafer Pacific Rim Enterprises

ABSTRACT This chapter offers a prospective for neurobiological research in the emergent age of illusion and psychological mediation. Throughout the world, the digital dreamscape is being intensively explored with sophisticated algorithms. In most cases, this exploration has a primary purpose to refine digital marketing processes including management, crowd-sourcing, and regulation of financial ecosystems. Our hypothesis is that in the emergent Age of Illusion, using the dream analog of drama-based Psychecology video games (PEG), it is possible to go beyond manipulation for purposes of marketing and politics in order to access coherent meaning in dimensions of the collective unconscious. According to principles and procedures of Jungian dream analysis, the technological “media dream” can be correlated with neurobiological dimensions in order to explore the cognitive dynamics of illusion and to foster coherent cognitive states in contextual collectives. Using Fourier transforms and their offspring, the dynamics of mediated illusion could be researched and correlated with energy dynamics in the dimensions of physics and neurobiology. Study of the functional dynamics of the media-sphere as dreamscape could provide critical understanding relative to achieving healing insight on the part of contextual collectives. Applying principles of dream analysis to digital dimensions of the cognitive unconscious could lead to authentic reform of both education and media policy.

INTRODUCTION Harmonization of the collective human psyche is the human mandate if the planet is to survive. Because Psychecology Games can simulate the structure of a universe of psychephysics, PEGs may be designed as research instruments to access the dynamics of this universe. PEGs may provide a key for access—a map for navigation of the paradigm shift into a media age. Using the digital images of the media age, PEGs may provide answers to some of the many psychologically-based problems presently facing humanity and the planet—especially in areas of education reform and healing of what Jung called the Spirit of the Age. This project will demonstrate how, in order to heal individual and collective psychosis, PEGs can employ Jungian principles to achieve individual and collective insight as to the meaning of media dreams. This

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might lead to a spontaneous psychic harmonization or healing of human collectives: ethnic, racial, and national. Presently, the most advanced psychological-media science is being used to understand and manipulate the cognitive unconscious of consumers and voters, thereby altering cultural values, personal choices, collective perspectives and policies. In an emergent media age, it is time to begin applying the same science to education, media policy, and cultural healing. Our premise is that due to structural synchronicities among cognitive models and drama-based games, PEGs can be used as research instruments in the development of software and technology that can probe the cognitive unconscious proactively for veridical data relative to the structure of the individual and cultural psyche. Ensuing knowledge will contribute to analysis of a culture’s media dream, define any neurotic or psychotic symptoms, and enable a therapeutic re-design of media content. “He who controls the content of the airways controls the future.” State-of-the-art cognitive research models employ a narrative-metaphorical common denominator to provide structure to their research. (Lakoff, 2002, 2008) Because of their narrative-metaphorical structure and interactive-immersive dramatic potential, the medium of drama-based video games can simulate the fundamental dynamics of psyche according to the psychic functions (thinking, feeling, sensing, intuiting) and the amplification method of dream analysis defined by Carl Jung. Formerly known as Role Playing Games (RPGs), Psychecology games can be used to simulate the dramatic dimensions of the Theatre Model of Global Workspace, and the narrative-metaphorical structural context of Jungian amplification, contrastive analysis (Baars), and cognitive framing (Lakoff). Programmed as an analog to simulate cognitive structure according to these existing research parameters, PEGs could be employed as a research instrument for exploration of embodied (neurobiological) criteria related to normative-conceptual (value formation) levels of cognition at both personal and cultural levels. Our hypothesis is based on an assumption that parallel dynamics of cognition are operative in the conscious-unconscious interpretation of projected images in dreams, games, and the media-at-large. Such projected images take the form of narrative architecture that is symbolically meaningful and computationally recursive with cognitive structures at the projective source. Research using the PEG instrument would provide robust data relative to the recursive content of the unconscious with which to frame sustainable education and media policy in an incipient age of Meaningful Media.

BACKGROUND

Binary-metaphorical correspondences in the Drama Based Game analog

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Due to the formulaic nature of metaphorical structure, the scope of binary-metaphorical correspondences is virtually infinite. Narrative Architecture This is important because within a cognitive framework articulated with the semantics of narrative-metaphorical frames, stories may be told with infinite variation among elements of narrative structure (character, plot, exposition) without the need to write an infinite number of discreet stories. Instead, stories can be communicated through personal (contextual) perceptions imbedded in the symbolism of images. Interactive stories The Luddite view that storytelling is inconsistent with interactive media such as storybased games is completely unfounded. According to cognitive science, literary art, and the parameters of modern storytelling, interactivity could enhance the quality and immersive scope of drama-based stories. Digital programming of the immersive dynamic depends on the existence of correlations between unconscious “plot sequence” that adheres to classical narrative structure and conscious “view sequence” that adds interactive segues—as defined by Andrew Glassner (2004) and discussed by Stephen Schafer (2007)—to the basic story. The narrative-metaphorical common denominator All cognitive models [the theatre model of global workspace (Baars), cognitive framing (Lakoff), and Jungian dream analysis (Jacoby; Schafer)] are structurally consistent with the Aristotelian definition of good Greek drama. Even myth is studied in terms of its dramatic structure nin the form of The Journey of the Hero (Campbell). For the purposes of this proposal, as to the psychological potentials of their dramatic structure, drama, dreams, PEGs and real-life are essentially synonymous.

Images tell stories It is well known that an image tells a story and that multiple “personal” stories can be nested within an image. This assumption is the basis upon which patterns of pixels can be articulated to generate illusory percepts on a digital screen. It is also the basis for the subliminal messages projected in advertising. A great deal of scientific research verifies this phenomenon. In linguistics and psychology from Gestalt to perceptual psychology and behaviorism, the principle has been well-established. Though there is disagreement and speculation as to why “images tell stories,” it is self-evident that they do. Jungian dream analysis explains how images tell stories

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Jung’s empirical research confirms the rules of dream analysis in terms of a comprehensive theory of dream structure and an array of psychic principles such as: the functions of psyche, archetypes and symbols, context (individuality), dream types, personality types, and physics such that the dynamics of dream analysis can be translated into computational systems and dream-like images in digital formats. The interactive nature of dreams allows for contextual access to subliminal meaning in symbolic dream images An important discovery in Jungian dream analysis is that dreams have a mind of their own. That is to say, they arise from dimensions of the personal and collective unconscious that is part of the unified Self and communicate affordances of meaning in the symbolic language of images. Jung established the fact that as a dreamer (with the help of a psychiatrist) begins to understand the imbedded meaning of dreams, the dreams adjust (interactively) to this insight and provide additional information that leads, ultimately, to psychic harmonization and “healing” or “learning.” The interactive nature of PEGs allows for contextual access to subliminal meaning in digital images Because of the narrative structural common denominator, PEGs may be programmed to simulate the theatre model of Global Workspace, cognitive framing, psyche, and the medium of dreams as researched by Jung. Accordingly, game players (with the help of feedback with the computational software of the game) should be able to understand the personal (contextual) psychological meaning imbedded in the game. As the player of interactive PEGs achieves degrees of insight as to winning the game, the unconscious computational levels of the dreamgame will adjust to player insights and provide additional information that leads, ultimately, to psychic harmonization, “healing,” or “learning.” Though all digital images have narrative-symbolic affordances, only PEGs have the comprehensive potential to heal Like DNA, dramatic structure is holistic. Jung was able to analyze dreams because of their narrative-dramatic structure which allows access to the holistic Jungian potentials of psyche. Only such comprehensive access allows for psychic healing at the most profound levels. Another way to say it is that—potentially—drama has all the dimensions of “real life.” Like dreams, human life itself may easily be understood as an interactive process and medium by which meaning is accessed. Since the beginnings of modern physics, there has been a crescendo of scientific interest in the apparent relationships among the mythic metaphors of psychic reality and the neurobiological-physics of reality (Jung; Eddington; Jeans; Capra; Foster; Lakoff; Hammeroff & Penrose; McCraty & Childre). So, in this incipient media age, we are already beginning to hear that video games are a lot like life—even better than life. Our most current science is beginning to address the game medium from the standpoint of the ways in which projection of life’s perceived images equates to the projection of game images. Contemplation

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of this phenomenon will alter epistemology forever and prepare humanity to address the real moral-ethical issues inherent to the ontology of the Media Dream. The role of Meaningful Media in the paradigm shift All the psychological and computational components necessary for navigating the psyche—the new ontology of the paradigm shift—appear to be available. PEGs constitute the medium of dreams that can provide veridical access to all the mysteries of psyche and restore the mythic dimensions of alchemy to our human Dreamtime. By understanding the dynamics of the media dream within which the human condition is articulated, drama-based interactive experiences can be designed to teach and heal at personal and collective levels. Such understanding will initiate a paradigm shift in scientific ontology. In order to accomplish this objective, research is necessary in order to study and verify the hypothesis that an analog exists between cognitive structure and PEG structure. Once the hypothesis has been verified, a demonstration must be completed in order to: 1. Affirm the learning-healing process in individuals playing the Psychecology Game 2. Establish the analog between personal and collective levels of the “media dream” 3. Define experimental parameters relative to semantic frameworks in an individual PEG

and apply findings to the same semantic frame at cultural levels of the media dream; for example, George Lakoff (2008) has discussed differences in conservative and progressive perceptions of the “work ethic” that he defines as the Reward vs. Exchange Metaphor. Research on this difference of perception could be applied to advertising for the Right to Work Bill. Change of public opinion (assessed by polls or passage of the bill) would be a veridical indicator.

STEPS IN THE PEG MODELING OF CONTEXTUAL PSYCHE 1. Using Big 5 and Myers-Briggs personality profiles, a computational analog to dynamics of the “cognitive unconscious” could first be programmed to the individuality of the game player. 2. Based on this clinically accurate personality profile, the “premise”—the statement that will define “meaning” from the personal perspective of the game player and will be psychologically associated with the game win—will be computationally adjusted according to the psychological profile of the player. Because of the cognitive association between the game win and the contextual structure of the player’s cognitive unconscious,

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a game win will approximate one stage of development in an evolutionary trajectory of the player. 3. The trajectory will be authentic, because the game will be programmed to respond interactively with the player in the same way dreams provide an interactive medium for balancing the psyche. Both mythically and clinically, balancing the psyche translates into a degree of progress or “evolution” in a player-dreamer’s insight as to meaning. Establishing this psychological connection between the player’s contextual psyche and game play will increase immersion and the potential for significant choices and interactivity. 4. Once the psychological “territory” is defined, a progression of contextual “quandaries” (very difficult choices) can be programmed to occur at the end of each game level. This would function like a “boss battle” in the leveling process of the story. This dynamic is essentially the same as addressing advertisements to target groups, but it is more comprehensive and the motivation is healing rather than profiting. The leveling process would be keyed to an ultimate insight as to psychological meaning for the player. Meaning will be contextually imbedded in the dramatic sequence of scenes, and insight will ensue as the player gradually manipulates his/her plot by making choices that lead to the realization of the premise. Computational dynamics such as the recursive mathematics of Fourier Transforms will be applied to Finite Element Analysis Packages. Something like Kohonen Networks will be used to recognize similarities in choice patterns. Connectionism, the Correspondence Model of Memory, and the Correspondence Model of Truth will be addressed and integrated into the game engine. Current research on robotics and machine intelligence algorithms have rapidly advanced since this paper was originally completed. 5. Meaningful choices will also be keyed to the prototypical evolutionary process called the Hero’s Journey which incorporates all the dynamics and modalities of dream analysis. In a “dream,” insight as to the meaning of archetypal symbols in the dream leads to healing. In a game, insight as to the archetypal meaning of the symbols on the screen leads to winning the game. By the process of association, winning becomes healing; and, in this way, meaning can be contextual as well as universal—both personal and collective. The succession of insights will gradually lead the player-protagonist to a dénouement in which s/he understands the personalized premise of the story and, thereby, achieves meaningful insight and a degree of self-realization within a particular cognitive domain defined by semantic fields that invite insight that have both contextual and universal meaning. 6. Dramatically modeled on probable synchronicities with a player’s personality profile, meaningful choices could be associated with the game win. As part of the interactive

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game play, this associative process will be repetitive and holographic. Trial-and-error choices will be clustered around probabilities within a particular metaphorical framework or semantic field, so repetitive game interactivity will serve to reframe neurobiological synapses and overall cognitive structure. 7. Playing the game successfully will provide insight to the player in the same way that dream analysis sessions with a psychiatrist provide insight to the patient, or that playing out life-experiences leads to problem solving and epistemological re-framing. As collateral learning plays an important part in real life, the player will not need to win the game to experience benefit. In this sense, the demonstration game will be open-ended. However, winning will result in a significant degree of self-realization. It is postulated that playing such a meaningful game will result in a player’s experience of meaningful insight based on collateral learning. The existence of such collateral learning and insight will be indicated by a game-win. The virtues of winning the game will be multidimensional; the player will achieve insightful learning, a degree of cognitive harmonization, and even psychic healing (akin to Jungian synchronicity or, perhaps, peak experience). However, other indicators include neurobiological correlates with the experience of the “Flow” phenomenon and measurements of coherence base on heart rate variability as researched extensively at the Institute of Heartmath. 8. Based on the accumulation of robust data relative to the dynamics of psyche as portrayed in the PEG “dream analog,” knowledge could be applied to the reform of global media policy such that content would approximate a more Meaningful Media based on principles of psychic harmonization and evolutionary framing of the collective unconscious. Such major research as The Global Coherence Monitoring System (GCMS) for the measurement of human emotional impacts on the global ionosphere (HeartMath) would benefit from the Meaningful Media demonstration project.

GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT For the Meaningful Media Demonstration project Introduction This proposal and design document will explain how a new genre of Psychecology video games, Meaningful Media Games, will be used to research the neurobiology and molecular biology—the psyche-physics of player experience. Based on robust data accumulated with such research, it will be possible to reframe and design the cognitive infrastructure of culture in an

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emergent media age. Such reframing of cultural values will be implemented using Psychecology video games to entertain, to educate, and to help design a global media policy structured to enhance the principles of sanity and a sustainable global ecology. • • •

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Soon brain waves will control video games. In 2004, MIT Media Lab Europe, demonstrated “Mind Balance” headset technology. “A video game in which the avatar is controlled directly from a player’s brain without the need for wires.” (2004) Several companies including Emotiv, NeuroSky, Microsoft, and Emsense have been researching sensing technologies (EEGs, Gaze tracking) for use in games Emsense developed “Mindball,” a game that uses the power of thought to move objects. Mindball incorporates biofeedback techniques. EmSense has developed proprietary technology that records brainwaves to build profiles of a player’s emotional engagement and state of arousal during play. The educational infrastructure for an incipient media age is already available. Lately, at the Digital Media Summit sponsored by the Grid Institute, Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College, and Federation of American Scientists, the “Immersive Education Initiative announced the Education Grid and corresponding Platform Ecosystem. Based upon open source technologies and open standards, the Education Grid and Platform Ecosystem will provide educators with a comprehensive end-to-end infrastructure for a new generation of virtual world learning environments, interactive learning games, and simulations.” (Media Grid) Coherent heart rhythms (HRV) have a profound affect on brain and hormonal function and most of the body’s major organs. Coherence affects cognition, perception, stress , and the ability to deal with complex situations. (HeartMath, 2009) People’s brain waves appear to synchronize with the rhythm of the electromagnetic waves generated in the earth’s ionosphere. (Rauscher, HeartMath) “HeartMath researchers theorize that when a large number of humans respond to a global event with a common emotional feeling it can affect activity in the earth’s magnetic field.”

State-of-the-art models in cognitive science employ a narrative-metaphorical common denominator to provide structure to their research. Because of their narrative-metaphorical structure and interactive-immersive dramatic potential, the medium of story-based video games (PEGs) can simulate the fundamental dynamics of psyche according to the psychic functions (thinking, feeling, sensing, intuiting) and the amplification method of dream analysis defined by Carl Jung. Formerly known as Role Playing Games (RPGs), story-based games can be used to simulate the dramatic dimensions of the Theatre Model of Global Workspace, and the narrativemetaphorical structural context of Jungian amplification, contrastive analysis (Baars), and cognitive framing (Lakoff). Programmed as an analog to simulate cognitive structure according to these authentic research parameters, PEGs could be employed as a research instrument for exploration of embodied (neuro-biological) criteria related to normative-conceptual (value formation) levels of cognition at both personal and cultural levels. Our hypothesis is based on an assumption that parallel dynamics of cognition are operative in the conscious-unconscious

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interpretation of projected images in dreams, games, and the media-at-large. Such projected images take the form of spatial (narrative) architecture that is symbolically meaningful and computationally recursive with cognitive structures at the projective source. Such research would provide robust data with which to frame sustainable educational and media policy in an incipient age of Meaningful Media.

Marketing & Competition This is an original concept that has no presently existing competition. Though the concept has been a work in progress for the last thirty years, video game technology has just recently achieved the requisite capabilities. Only within the last two years has there been much interest within the game industry to improve drama-based game writing; however, this flowering interest on the part of the industry has yet to reach full bloom. Neither has the incipient serious games movement begun to assess the efficacy of drama-based games for research, educational reform, or cultural healing. Now is the time for a proactive, appropriate, and realistic research effort to address issues of media content from the perspective of an ecology of psyche—a Psychecology. Though interest in the relationship that exists between physics and psyche is longstanding (Bohm, Jung, Campbell, Eddington, Jeans, Pribram, Whitehead, Capra, et al) there is a rapidly emerging trend in academic fields to study consciousness from the perspective of what could rightly be called the quantum levels of the unified field. However even this trend, exemplified by the pioneering efforts of The Center for Consciousness Research, has not begun to consider the cognitive research potentials of drama-based games. Nevertheless, a powerfully emergent interest and research exists among philosophers in physics, chemistry, neurobiology, cognitive framing, computer science, and electrical engineering throughout the world. This interest remains to be tapped, harmonized, and focused. Academics have begun to collaborate under a variety of banners: pan-psychism, meaningful media, cognitive informatics, machine intelligence, robotics, virtual realities, and artificial intelligence. All of theses disciplines constitute elements of the domain that I have designated with a term that the author coined over thirty years ago--Psychecology. A window of opportunity exists right now for the development of this ground-breaking game genre. It is cliché that modern technological advances move much faster than the scientific sense of responsibility and ethical use of technological power. Since early in the twentieth century, psychologists have tapped the collective unconscious in order to manipulate collective choices and shape culture, yet people are not yet prepared for twenty-first century consequences of the

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paradigm shift to a media age that has already begun. This proposal suggests an entirely innovative approach to the potentials of psychological technology in a media age. The use of PEGs for purposes of cognitive reframing is neither the final solution to our ephemeral crisis nor a self-realization of our collective dharma. Krishnamurti has said: “Technical knowledge, however necessary, will in no way resolve our inner, psychological pressures and conflict; and it is because we have acquired technical knowledge without understanding the total process of life that technology has become a means of destroying ourselves. The man who knows how to split the atom but has no love in his heart becomes a monster.”

There is no contradiction. Our hypothesis is that PEGs structured according to Jungian principles of psyche may become a significant tool in the ongoing process of self-realization. PEG technology may help resolve our inner psychological pressures and conflict by simulation of a more Heart inclusive “Flow” process than technology has ever attempted before. Selfrealization is more a product of the heart than of the mind, and that is precisely why immersive PEGs have so much potential. They are not an end in themselves, but a significant means to an end. The fearful and cynical influence of Freudian psychology on twentieth century culture has, indeed, been destructive—even psychopathic. (Curtis, Adam) Our hope is that a better, more humane understanding and awe of the vast scope of psyche may have an even more profound constructive effect on culture. However sophisticated our technology may be, we are not aware of any that addresses design issues of a meaningful media in an emergent media age. Few are addressing issues of morality and ethics based on psychological scope of perspective or integration of the most current scientific research on cognition, psychology, ethics, and law. Policy makers have been critically negligent in dealing with the scope of problems, much less the paradigm shift in ontology that has precipitated the problems. Though the serious games movement is growing, its efforts are incipient and almost entirely susceptible to the profit motive. Even if serious games research continues to evolve at its present rapid rate, it will still be far too little and far too late. Our proposal is a practical recommendation for a multidimensional approach to major global cultural-psychological problems both in the short term and the unforeseeable long term. Based on ethical motivation, state-of-the-art research, and the support of an academiccommercial-educational consortium, the proposed demonstration project has the potential to initiate unprecedented social models, economic models, and markets for the twenty-first century. As such, it should be of interest to entrepreneurs, educators, policy-makers, professionals, government, industry, and the general public. No one can doubt the economic potential of investment in this infrastructure of the future. If the investment in research, education, and application cannot be made under the present circumstances, it will never be made and its potential never realized.

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Why Simulate Dreams? The Reality of Illusion As a culture, we have not even begun to take a hard look at the psychological, normative, and distributive responsibilities of creating and inhabiting a media age. To this point, issues of the media have been ignored with the same careless abandon that environmental science has been ignored. In these times of crisis, it is well understood that issues of infrastructure need to be addressed, but few are talking about the ultimate infrastructure—the media-sphere of energy and information that is emerging as the preeminent human reality. Addressing issues of the media-sphere will require a better understanding of the most fundamental infrastructure—the human nervous system and its function. That such critically important issues could have been ignored to the point of near insurmountable planetary crisis is a clear indication that the rational faculties of modern culture are, at best, dysfunctional. Moreover, there is ample evidence to support a hypothesis that technological culture has become psychotic. But how does a culture approach such a daunting epistemology and deal with it in effective ways? Part of the problem is that Western culture considers itself rational and enlightened. Another part of the problem is the cultural tendency to repress the truth, and its corollary—the creation of a culture of lies and covert operations. In his prize winning documentary, “The Secret Government,” Bill Moyers addresses this psychosis that has undermined cultural sanity since the end of World War II. I will address this subject only briefly, but the sad fact is that no one is addressing these political issues from the perspective of their psychological imperative. Even more important than the political imperative is the psychological imperative that dates back to the “rational enlightenment.” George Lakoff has argued that a “rational enlightenment” faith in the human capacity for reason is faulty. In fact, Lakoff observes that 98% of human function is based in dimensions of the cognitive unconscious. My feeling is that the views of Jung, Lakoff, and others in the field of cognitive research have not received adequate attention. These views would contribute to the understanding of why, for at least two hundred years, rational materialism has ruled scientific inquiry and why that inquiry has resulted in so much irrational behavior. Re-framing our approach to global crisis from a perspective on cognitive science and the media would prove practical and cost-effective in every way. In view of current events, the cognitive view of reality is far more comprehensive and scientifically based than views conditioned by so-called reason and materialism. Jung says, “Nothing influences our conduct less than do intellectual ideas…for such ideas represent forces that are beyond logical justification and moral sanction…man believes indeed that he moulds these ideas, but in reality they mould him and make him their unwitting mouthpiece.” (Jung, 1933, p. 42) He observes that, “Under the influence of scientific materialism (What he calls The

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Spirit of the Age), everything that could not be seen with the eyes or touched with the hands was held in doubt,” (Jung, p. 173) Based on discoveries in quantum physics, researchers in an array of cognitive sciences have been exploring dimension of the cognitive unconscious—dimensions that, due to apparent compatibilities of physics and cognitive science, (Capra, Feldman, Foster, et al.) qualify as psyche-physics. If Jungian thought did not generate much of the thinking in current cognitive research, Jungian principles are certainly compatible with this it. Jung understood and articulated what is now emerging as scientific fact in many fields: that the “materialistic” Spirit of the Age was not rational. He said, “It is a religion, or—even more—a creed which has absolutely no connection with reason, but whose significance lies in the implicit fact that it is taken as the absolute measure of all truth and is supposed always to have common-sense upon its side.” (Jung, p. 175) George Lakoff argues that the basic assumptions of rational materialism are faulty. (Lakoff) Bernard Baars notes that all cognitive models are based on the theatre metaphor (Baars) that assumes a dynamic relationship between vast unconscious dimensions (of psyche) and a much more limited “lighted stage” of consciousness. Due to discoveries in Physics,, modern science has gone well beyond the tenets of rational materialism. Every day, we experience the scientific fact expressed by Shakespeare that, “There are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in (human) philosophy.” The commonplaces of our media age are ideas that were given no credence in the recent past: thoughts are things, time and space are relative, day exists simultaneously with night, time is a psychological phenomenon, politics is religion, two plus two equals five, the past can be changed, space can bend, and dreams are real. Meanwhile, two of the most rational facts of our time are ignored: (1) The consequences of ignoring the “natural” environment are catastrophic, and (2) The consequences of ignoring the psychological-somatic media environment are suicidal. Perhaps it is time to review Jungian principles of the cognitive unconscious from the perspective of an emergent media age. Jung was the quintessential media expert, and he researched the quintessential medium— the medium of dreams. By discovering how dreams function in an environment of psyche, Jung discovered the fundamental parameters of a media age. But so far, the benign meaning of mediation has not been addressed, so most of the indications are that the media can have an overwhelmingly negative impact on all aspects of culture. This subject has been addressed by Neil Postman who argued that the structure of our media influences the structure of our culture and of our cognitive processes. (Postman) Observers of the syndicated nightly news for the past several decades or of the 2008 elections understand that the so-called reality we experience in the media is too often delusional. Jonathan Schell recently addressed the problem in The Nation (Schell) where he details the political dangers of unprincipled political campaigning. In 2008, the power of the media was so transparent and its negative aspects so compelling that the serious

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need to address issues of the media became crystal clear. The campaign provided meaningful insight as to a future in which humans intentionally recreate reality with the technology and dynamics of illusion. Human collectives create the Media Dream. In Jungian terms, The Media Dream is the symbolic, semiotic, metaphorical map projected from a culture’s collective unconscious in the form of its media content and images—particularly the images in film, television, the Internet, and video games. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson (Bateson) pointed out that understanding the “territory” depends on some representation, and that no matter how carefully it is measured, a map is ultimately a retinal representation—not the territory itself.1 However, in the same volume, Bateson observes that the usefulness of a map is not necessarily a matter of its literal truthfulness. Rather the usefulness of a map depends on its having a structure analogous (for the purpose at hand) to the “territory.” SBGs have the structural-representational capability to simulate the territory of a culture’s cognitive unconscious. Our hypothesis is that, just as the narrative-metaphorical patterns in a dream can be analyzed to afford insight as to the psychic condition of a patient, the narrative-metaphorical patterns in a culture’s media dream can be analyzed to afford insight as to the psychic condition of a culture. Moreover, DBGs can be used to reframe the cognitive unconscious of a culture’s people. For the purposes at hand, the media dream—like Jungian dreams—is subject to analysis by virtue of the analogous narrative-metaphorical structure shared by images in the collective media and images in dreams. In a classical sense (The whole exists within the part; As it is above, so it is below.) Jung understood that the collective psyche (both conscious and unconscious) has recursive relationship with the individual psyche. “Every Collective, every nation, reflects in magnified form the psychic state of its individual components.” (Jung, 1934) Jolande Jacoby, the student and colleague of Jung, asks rhetorically, “May one speak of a structure or morphology of the unconscious, and if so, how much do we know about it? Is it possible to obtain definite information about what is ‘unknown’ to consciousness? The answer is yes.” Jacoby answers her own question saying, “Not directly…but only through such effects and indirect manifestations as the symptoms and complexes, images and symbols that we encounter in dreams, fantasies, and visions.” (Jacoby, 1973) We now know that such symbols and complexes, dreams, fantasies, and visions can also be discerned in a culture’s media dream, and they are all processed by the same part of the brain. (Lakoff) As we address our current complex of crises, the media-sphere must be our first priority. It is upon the media that all else depends. The old infrastructure—the flow of goods and services—must certainly be addressed. However, the new cultural infrastructure is much more than the network of roads, bridges, and vehicles of physical transportation. The new infrastructure is a unified field, a matrix, of energy and information and the array of media that services it. This array of media software and hardware is directly connected to the media of wetware—the nervous system and its cognitive structures.

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See also, Correspondence model of memory, p 41.

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The salient feature of an incipient media age is the fact that illusions have real consequences, and the cost of delusion is catastrophic (another subject so vast it cannot be dealt with here). Another way to put it is that humans apply collateral learning based on the interpretations of their illusions to interactive choices in their real-life, and their choices change their illusion of reality. We are presently witnessing the scope of economic costs that can be attributed to wrong choices. Happily, it is in the nature of illusions and choices that they can be altered and corrected. In conjunction with recent advances in neurobiological research on the metaphorical framing of the cognitive unconscious, the sophisticated affective-psychological immersion induced with drama-based games could produce veridical data as to the direction in which the re-framing of our illusions should travel. Such knowledge could have normative, timely, and economically efficient impact on education, media policy, and the psychological condition of the collective unconscious. This could lead to sane political and cultural planning and the solution of seemingly impossible problems. It is only a matter of time before we begin to pay appropriate attention to the power of the media—especially the interactivity of games—as a palpable psychic phenomenon. Such focus of attention will mark a breakthrough in our sense of responsibility for the direct power humans wield with the causal energy of their thoughts and desires and the motive power of their collective unconscious. Presently, we have a window of opportunity with which to address the psychological crisis of the media age while there may still be time to study its parameters. If we neglect the opportunity, we may lose track of reality entirely and surrender the planetary psyche to a terminal psychotic episode. Our technological media is our opportunity. Collectively, our media provide insight and access to the collective unconscious, and video games have the potential to provide insight and veridical access into both the personal and collective unconscious. It will take years to develop experimental procedure and to research this premise. Meanwhile, video games—particularly drama-based games—qualify as a research instrument with which to begin gathering veridical data relative to subliminal states of being. PEGs are the medium of dreams. The mediating function provided by video games is much like the mediating function provided by dreams. Like the images in dreams, it is the images in games that provoke physical and psychological interactivity between dimensions of the personal conscious and the personal unconscious of the player. Like the brain itself (wetware), the computer is a medium that translates unconscious computational levels (software and hardware) into conscious levels of imagery and perceptual affordances. The interactive nature of games allows players to make choices that complete a feedback loop into the unconscious. We can think of this process metaphorically or literally as a synchronicity—a recursion of an isometric-holographic pattern. Humans focus their attention not on the computer’s circuitry or the physics behind it, but on the images on the screen that are informed with what we call a game. As an ontological metaphor, a computer contains both unconscious and conscious levels of interactive processes

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and psychic feedback loops. We employ the same dynamic to real life as we focus our attention not on the unconscious neural circuitry and physics of psyche, but on their imagery, symbolic content, and affordances. We might ask ourselves, “How real is the metaphor?” Are such mediated processes recursive within the actual frequencies of psyche; and, if they are, what constitutes a point of synchronicity among recursions? What constitutes meaningful insight? We are beginning to understand that media has an infinite variety of forms and exists at every conceivable level. As we explore, we address the epistemology of mediation in neural synapses, Fourier transforms, the structures of languages, the frames of cognition, the bitmaps projected as images, and the archetypes projected as dreams. Increasingly, we understand that mediation has a fundamental structure based on metaphorical narrative enacted on a stage of spotlighted action we call “conscious” within a psychic reality defined by Jungian functions. The words of the bard may be literal: “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” (Shakespeare) The question asked by the poet is timely: “Is all our life, then, but a dream? (Lewis Carroll) The pronouncement of the scientist is accurate: “The stuff of the world is mind-stuff.” (Sir Arthur Eddington) Apparently, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” (Shakespeare, Tempest IV, I, 148) It is imperative that we begin to consciously assess and apply unified field principles of psyche-physics to the practical realities of human life and culture. The Kuhnian paradigm shift introduced as the nuclear age has morphed into an age of the media, and human civilization is beginning to experience the profound epistemological amplifications resulting from the proliferation of media technology. One of the most precocious media-age innovations is video games—especially drama-based games. Increasingly, an emphasis on the importance of the affective-psychological experience of game players is becoming a hot topic for research. Because, like advertising, the video game medium will shape human values and culture for generations to come, now is the time to think about the direction that this creative-economic effort should take. Will that influence take the form of a panacea or a pandemic? The potentials for scientific research, educational reform, and the development of new profitable markets suggest that a thoroughgoing cooperation between the academic and industrial communities is imminent. This paper argues that PEGs are the game medium that will reap the potentials of both serious games and games for entertainment. Because of their interactive nature, PEGs can be highly immersive. They provide a self-reinforcing context that increases motivation and amplifies educational potentials (Schafer, 2006; Schafer, 2008), so PEGs represent the quintessential “serious” games. On the other hand, their greatest immersive capability resides in their entertainment value. Research on “Media-based” and “Problem-based” pedagogies (Bawden, Boud, et al.) addresses some of these issues in an incipient way, but the psychological potentials of games that are both serious and entertaining has yet to be comprehensibly studied. It is because of their narrative-metaphorical structure and interactive-immersive potential,

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that the drama-based video game medium constitutes the quintessential instrument for research on the cognitive unconscious, for exploration of the normative-conceptual levels of culture reflected in the media dream, and for the recovery of human sanity within the Psychecology

Functional Specifications: Psychological Infrastructure of Cognitive Research The Theatre Model: “All of our unified models of mental functioning today are theatre metaphors; it is essentially all we have. Cognitive architecture developed by Alan Newell, Herbert A. Simon, John R. Anderson and others resemble theatres.” (Baars, p 301) Dr. Bernard J. Baars and others such as Franklin, Shanahan, Edelman, and Dehaene are developing a cognitive theory of consciousness that Baars calls Global Workspace Theory (GWT) as a model for conscious and unconscious processes in the human brain. (Baars, Wikipedia) Briefly, according to the theatre metaphor, conscious dimensions can be compared to a lighted stage in the theatre and unconscious dimensions comport with backstage and audience aspects of the cognitive architecture. “Information from the bright spot is globally distributed through the theatre to two classes of complex unconscious processors: those in the darkened theatre ‘audience’ mainly receive information from the bright spot; while ‘behind the scenes’, unconscious contextual systems shape events in the bright spot.” (Baars, p. 292) The method and principles applied by Baars are very similar to the methods and principles applied by Carl Jung. Baars employs “contrastive analysis,” in close experimental comparisons between similar conscious and unconscious brain processes. For example, he observes that, when we use words consciously, it is within a context of grammatical structure that resides in the unconscious, but without which there would be no meaning to the words we use. Jung employs the amplification method to relate conscious dream symbolism to patterns of unconscious archetypal meaning. Interestingly, Baars employs the term “compensation” to address the advantages of consciousness, “Which seems to act as a gateway, creating access to essentially any part of the nervous system. Access can be controlled, and “consciousness of feedback from any neural activity is sufficient to establish control, though the great complexity of those activities is entirely unconscious.” (Baars, p. 296) Jung uses the gateway of relatively conscious dream image symbolism to gain access to unconscious dimensions of psyche and metaphorical extension (the Amplification Method) to “guide” a patient to a conscious awareness of the feedback being offered by the kaleidoscopic articulation of symbols in his/her dreams. In other words, Jungian methodology guides a patient to a conscious understanding of compensational feedback provided in dream images by the unconscious psyche.

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Furthermore, Baars says, “Biofeedback control over single neurons and whole populations of neurons anywhere in the brain is well established.” (Baars, p. 296) “Even single neurons can be controlled by way of conscious feedback. Conscious experience creates access to the mental lexicon, to autobiographical memory, and to voluntary control over automatic action routines.” (Baars, p. 292) Perhaps it is such conscious access to—not only the mental but—the “psychic” lexicon that explains how symbols in dreams can access subconscious mythiccontextual meaning in order to compensate for disharmony in the individual or collective psyche. Additionally, it may be that biofeedback and cybernetic control theory coincide. In his treatise, David Foster (Foster) argues a hypothesis whereby cybernetic (control) feedback might contribute to the expanding consciousness of what he calls the Master Programmer or Logos. Foster explains how the dynamics of biofeedback and cybernetic feedback are recursive and computational by nature. Further research might divulge data to support “energetic” theories in molecular-biology. Data might explain why “working memory” (consciousness) provides such significant access to molecular-linguistic levels of embodied human cognition. The salient feature is that while working memory is very limited, “the capacity of our visual memories is truly staggering.” [Baars, p 297 quoting Standing (1973)] This suggests that “focus of conscious attention,” like the specificity of control theory, may provide veridical access to all the archetypes of Jungian psyche. Such a hypothesis is worthy of research in an incipient media age. Narrative-metaphorical framing of the cognitive unconscious has been researched extensively by Dr. George Lakoff. In his recent publication, The Political Mind, he espouses a specific strategy—emphasis on the Nurturant Parent Metaphor---to restructure neural pathways in the brain in order to foster more humane, progressive, and appropriate modes of human thought and subsequent action. Contrary to what Lakoff calls the “rational enlightenment metaphor” which is based on an assumption of human rationality, he argues that 98% of human mental function resides in the “cognitive unconscious”—that our embodied (neurobiological) minds reside below the level of consciousness and our moral and political thought is patterned as narrative-metaphorical frames that determine how we function in both the physical and social worlds. (Lakoff, p 11) In the language of the brain—its very building blocks—words and thoughts are defined relative to narrative frames and conceptual metaphors. Lakoff cites Roger Shank and Robert Abelson in his paraphrase, “Complex narratives—the kinds we find in everyone’s life story, as well as in fairy tales, novels, and dramas—are made up of smaller narratives with very simple structures.” Lakoff says, “The neural circuitry needed to create frame structures is relatively simple [neural binding circuitry, neural signatures, event structures] and so frames tend to structure a huge amount of our thought. Sounding remarkably like Jung who observed that dreams have dramatic action that can meaningfully be broken down into the elements of a Greek play (Jacoby, p. 83), Lakoff explains that each frame has roles (like a cast of characters), relations between the roles, and scenarios carried out by those playing the roles.” (Lakoff, 2007,

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p. 22; Goffman) “There is a protagonist, the person whose point of view is being taken. The events are good and bad things that happen. And there are appropriate emotions that fit certain kinds of events in the scenarios.” (Lakoff, 2002, p. 23) Citing Goffman, Dr. Lakoff also observes that words are all defined relative to conceptual frames: “Groups of related words, called ‘semantic fields,’ are defined with respect to the same frame. Thus words like ‘cost,’ sell,’ ‘goods,’ price,’ buy,’ and so on are defined with respect to a single frame,” (Lakoff, 2007, p 22; Goffman) and the roles of Buyer, Seller, Goods, and Money, form a narrative field context for the frame. The language of cognitive framing is replete with seeming parallels to Jungian language. In Moral Politics, Lakoff explains in detail how “much of moral reasoning is metaphorical reasoning”—a sort of working memory grounded in the experience of the species—waiting in subconscious dimensions to be accessed by the bright spot of consciousness. This sounds similar to the dynamic by which the relatively bright spots called dreams access the archetypal unconscious. Just as Lakoff describes the process of framing in terms of prototypes and radial categories based on core elements, Jung describes the process of amplification in terms of mythologoi, symbolic dream nuclei, and the analogical associations that circle around the dream nucleus (Jacoby, p 85). What Lakoff describes as prototypes, “All prototypes are cognitive constructions used to perform a certain kind of reasoning; they are not objective features of the world” (Lakoff, 2002, p. 9), Jung might call archetypes of the unconscious. We are aware that Jung’s understanding of archetypes is complex and has changed over time. “Jung first spoke of them as ‘primordial images’ or ‘dominants of the collective unconscious.’” (Jacoby, p. 39) However, it is accurate to say that Jungian archetypes are numinous, not objective features of the world. Like St. Augustine’s ideae principales or the Greek άρχετυπίαι, they are “certain forms, or stable and unchangeable reasons of things, themselves not formed.” (Jacoby, p. 40) According to Jung, archetypes “transcend the personal sphere and involve the contents of the collective unconscious, Mythological themes, symbols rooted in the universal history of mankind.” (Jacoby, p. 39) It has always been difficult for people to understand Jung’s idea of the archetype, but in today’s mediated dreamlike reality, it is easier to understand archetype as energetic metaphorical resonance. “For Jung, the psychic system is engaged in a continuous energetic movement. By psychic energy he means the total force which pulses through all the forms and activities of the psychic system.” (Jacoby, p 52) Jung’s explanation of psyche in terms of physics is detailed and extensive, but for our purposes he talks about value intensity. “The specific form in which energy is manifested in the psyche is the IMAGE, raised up by the formative power of the imaginatio, the creative fantasy, from the material and collective unconscious, the objective psyche.” (Jacoby, p. 58) Jung understood metaphorical amplification, “not as an unbroken chain of causally connected associations leading backward, but a process by which the dream content is broadened and enriched with the help of analogous images.” (Jacoby, p 84)

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Within the discipline of molecular-biology, research on this, “energy of psyche-physics,” advances apace, while in the realm of neurobiological framing research, the understanding of nuances in synaptic processing is central and explicit. It may be hypothesized that both Lakoff and Jung are speaking of energy that is structured in narrative-metaphorical formats—as metaphorical resonance or, perhaps, the electro-magnetic resonance of correspondence. As to how such metaphors were deduced, Lakoff says: “The metaphors have been arrived at independently by looking at two kinds of evidence: (1) how the language of a non-moral domain (e.g., the financial domain) is used to talk about the moral domain, and (2) how the forms of reason used in non-moral domains (e.g., health, strength) are used to reason about the moral domain.” (Lakoff, 2003, p. 63)

An example of how narrative-metaphorical resonance can influence morality is discussed by Lakoff in terms the core metaphor of moral accounting. According to this fundamental metaphor, a syllogism is established: well-being is good; well-being is moral; wealth contributes to well-being; to be wealthy is moral. According to this Moral Accounting metaphor, economic words like owe, debt, and pay are used in a moral context. (Lakoff, 2008, p. 63) The result is a logical framework in which the metaphorical resonance suggests that wealth is better than poverty (good), so being wealthy is moral (good). Lakoff explains: “A conceptual metaphor is a correspondence between concepts across conceptual domains, allowing forms of reasoning and words from one domain (in this case, the economic domain) to be used in the other (in this case, the moral domain)…Thousands of such metaphors contribute to our everyday modes of thought, (and) play an enormous role in characterizing our worldviews. (Lakoff, 2002, p. 63)

Reminiscent of Jungian amplification, Lakoff describes radial conceptual categories as the most common form of metaphorical structure. “The radial categories show how the coherent ideologies in each category fit together and what the relationships among them are.” (Lakoff, 2002, p. 14) Radial categories are structured according to variations on a central model. As an example, he uses the category mother and explains that the term is characterized by four metaphorical sub-models: The birth model, the genetic model, the nurturance model, and the marriage model. (Lakoff, 2002, p. 8) All of the frames in the radial categories are couched in little metaphorical stories within stories. Presumably, if “mother” is the prototype and submodel variants of the “mother metaphor” constitute radial categories or variations on the central model, discovering how the categories fit together and how they are related in a contextual field would result in discovery of meaning. This seems precisely how Jungian amplification works. Jung describes the coherent archetype as an “eternal presence…that may emerge on many psychic levels and in the most diverse constellations; it takes on a form, a ‘habitus’, adapted to the individual situation and yet remains unchanged in fundamental structure and meaning; like a melody, it can be transposed.” (Jacoby, p. 45) Describing the complex archetype of the “feminine”, Jung explains radial structure in terms of correspondences in the patterns of Gestalt theory. “The supposition that

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there may also be in psychology a correspondence between ontogenesis and phylogenesis therefore seems justified.” (Symbols of Transformation, p. 23, quoted in Jacoby, p. 44) In brief, the amplification method is a search for symbolic correspondences that exist like melodies in order to understand how these motifs fit together among the movements and musical scales of a greater ideological symphony within the contextual dreams of a patient. Jungian theory extends the “mother” prototype into mythic dimensions of psyche. Lakoff and Jung would probably be in complete agreement as to the prototypical nature of the concept “mother”. But in terms of archetypal dimension, a more accurate prototypical frame would be the “Great Mother” with all her paradoxical attributes and mythic subcategories and narrative frames. “The differentiation of the ego from the ‘mother’ is at the beginning of every ‘coming to consciousness’. And coming to consciousness (Bewusstwerdung) 2 means building a world by differentiating. To create awareness, to formulate ideas—this is the father principle of the logos, which perpetually struggles to free itself from the primordial darkness of the maternal womb, from the realm of the unconscious. At the beginning both were one, and neither can exist without the other, just as light would be meaningless in a world without darkness.” (Jacoby, fp. 44)

For our present purposes, the salient point about neurobiological framing processes is that they have a compensational potential for individual (contextual) learning and the discovery of meaning that leads to harmonizing (healing) the psyche. Jung and Lakoff would agree on this objective. As to harmonious cultural meaning, Lakoff says: “American values are progressive values,” and it is critically important to verbalize this truth. “Saying it matters. It matters because language works by mental simulation. (Here, Lakoff cites Feldman). Words evoke whole frames—whole mental structures. Those mental structures activate an embodied mental simulation, giving the words meaning.” (Lakoff, 2008, p. 240) In other words, according to Lakoff’s reasoning, progressive thinking is in harmony with the greater symphony of American cultural ideologies. Metaphorically amplified Jungian symbols can also be understood as “whole frames” that divulge meaning through access to archetypal structure. Carl Jung’s Amplification Method of dream analysis is based on the observation that dreams (specifically, a series of dreams) have narrative-symbolic structure with the capacity to probe the diverse dimensions of psyche and to analyze its “dramatic action” in terms of Exposition.

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Bewusstwerdung, as Jung employs the term means more than mere ‘perceiving’, ‘noticing’, or ‘becoming aware of’, something It has no specific object and signifies the unfolding of a deeper, wider, more intensive, and more receptive consciousness with an enhanced power of apprehending and elaborating what comes to it from the outer as well as the inner world. (Jacoby, fp. 46)

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“This rough pattern, on which most dreams are constructed, forms a suitable basis for interpretation.” (Jacoby, p 83) According to Jung, because of their narrative structure dreams are susceptible to analysis (as to meaning) by metaphorical amplification of carefully defined symbols within a carefully observed context. The objective of Jungian amplification is curative—to induce a patient to have “meaningful insight” or to bring the contents of the personal unconscious into consciousness. Accordingly, Jungian amplification seems dynamically similar to contrastive analysis that is based on narrative-metaphorical frames. In the case of dreams, metaphorical amplification of relatively conscious dream material provides access to all the functions of the unconscious psyche; in the case of contrastive analysis, consciousness provides access to any part of the nervous system by comparisons between similar conscious and unconscious brain processes. It appears then, that Jungian amplification, contrastive analysis, and cognitive framing provide both access and a degree of control or insight as to contents of the unconscious—such access and personal control sounds like the phenomenon called “Flow.” In both cases, consciousness provides a portal to unconscious dimensions and a compensatory potential— insight as to the content of the psyche. Psychic insight or compensation serves to harmonize conscious and unconscious states. (Jacoby, p. 70)

The simulation of dreams with PEGs By virtue of their images, Meaningful Media Games could be designed to simulate dreams as well as the dramatic archetypal dynamics of which the images are projections. Such projections can be analyzed in terms of dramatic interactivity (recursion of isometric form), narrative-metaphorical framing, the affect of symbolism, and metaphorical resonance. Because narrative-metaphorical framing appears to be a dynamic shared between DBGs and dreams, DBGs become analogous to dreams as to their percepts, affordances, and potential insights. DBGs also provide analogs to the theatre model. According to this analog:  The computational dimensions of the game = the cognitive unconscious,  The symbolic projections on the lighted stage of the game-screen = consciousness,  The gamer who is interactively immersed in the kaleidoscopic play of symbols on the screen = the dreamer. The kaleidoscopic play of symbols may be understood as narrative architecture. (see Jenkins), and a player’s responses may be understood to be a combination of conscious and unconscious input based on percept and affordance. In a discussion of affordance, Soergaard says, “According to Gibson,” an affordance, “is independent of the actor’s ability to perceive it.”

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(Soergard; Gibson; Norman) Furthermore, in the book, The Media Equation (Reeves & Nass), thirty-five studies demonstrated that—at unconscious levels—all media is perceived by all demographic groups as real. Though their experiments preceded current neuroscience, the finding by Reeves and Nass comport with the discovery that visual-motor processing of all types (seeing, imagining seeing, dreaming seeing, remembering seeing, etc.) occurs in the same area of the brain. (Lakoff, 2007, p. 39)   

Player immersion = the unconscious affective influence of archetypes on the gamerdreamer. Interactivity = conscious-unconscious player response to computationally projected and computationally recursive narrative-metaphorical symbols. Winning insight on the part of the gamer = healing insight (as to premise or meaning) on the part of the dreamer.

Exploring the psychological dimensions of Meaningful Media

DBGs could be employed as a research instrument for exploration of Meaningful Media—embodied (neurobiological) criteria related to normative-conceptual (valueformation) levels of personal and collective cognition. Finally we come to an illustration of how a game story might be programmed according to psychological principles in order to:   

Access data relative to unconscious dimensions Provide a goal-oriented learning tool to reform educational pedagogy And to heal culture by analyzing its Media Dream

The scope of such an effort is vast and its trajectory is open-ended. This is a research initiative that will undoubtedly evolve over a long period of time as data becomes available in such research areas as molecular biology, neurobiology, physics, genetics, virtual reality, psychology of perception, media technology, linguistics, narrative arts, epistemology, ontology, and dimensions as yet undiscovered. A primary use of DBGs as cognitive research instruments would be to study the relationships that exist between Jungian empirical science and corresponding models within the cognitive sciences. As suggested above, the reason for doing this is that the Jungian model of psyche offers an incipient but more functionally comprehensive ontology of psyche that may be applied to that of a mediated age. By functionally comprehensive, we mean the mythic-computational functions defined by Jung as: Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, and Intuiting. The Jungian mandala of functions comports universally with mythic ontological images, while these functions, their correspondences and synchronicities could be programmed according to the complex algorithms of Fourier Transforms used with the Internet and Finite Element Analysis Packages. (Prathap) We will

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leave the technical translations to mathematicians, computer scientists, and physicists. On the assumption that such translations are, indeed, feasible, our illustration will be discussed in terms of dramatic elements and their relationship to the narrative-metaphorical frames of cognitive models.

Binary-metaphorical correspondences in the DBG analog Due to the nature of metaphor, the scope of binary-metaphorical correspondence is infinite. This is important because within a cognitive framework articulated by narrativemetaphorical frames, stories may be told with infinite variations without the need to write an infinite number of stories. However, Meaningful Media Games will not be machine generated in the ordinary sense of the term. Psychologically speaking, a whole array of binary correlates exists as a continuum of potential correspondences: Conscious-unconscious, male-female, left brain-right brain, father-mother. Within this continuum, reside Lakoff’s parameters for political morality, the Strict Father Metaphor-and the Nurturant parent metaphor. Using the DBG analog in which computational levels of a game equate to dimensions of the cognitive unconscious, research could address and quantify the radial correspondences among metaphors, neurobiological parallels, and Jungian amplifications. We will limit our illustration to the specific of interactive player choices as they evolve in the game story and clarify the player’s understanding of the character premise (what the character learns). Realizing the premise and winning such a Meaningful Media Game would result in a meaningful harmonization (in Jungian terms) of the player’s conscious-unconscious psyche. Psychologically, the game avatar is—to various degrees of identification—the game player. In the same way that advertisers discern the cognitive frameworks of target groups, Meaningful Media Games will target demographic groups. However, once a demographic group has been targeted, analysis of the cognitive frames of individuals within the group could proceed as an aspect of game play. Questionnaires could be administered as part of pre-game prep or nuanced into choices related to creating the avatar. It goes without saying, metaphoricalsymbolic significance is figurative in nature. Its meaning resides not only at “substantive” sensory levels of appearance, but at deeper psychic levels of affordance such as the capacity for empathy as researched in Theory of Mind (ToM). Within the general cognitive framing parameters of the target group, personality profiling could pinpoint variations among individuals. These variations could be employed to construct interactive choices within the dramatic context of any given story. Meaningful choices will be defined as those designed to reframe neurobiological synapses; i.e., change the player-contextual frame from one metaphor to another. Choices consistent with the desired metaphor would contribute to and be associated with the game win. Of course, the trial-and-error process will

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increase interactivity. From the computational “unconscious” of the game analog, itself, the choices made by a player will generate computationally related story scenarios that would postulate variants on the choice. Games like Fable 2 already employ a similar strategy. (Fable 2) Fable 2 is an excellent action-adventure story—an RPG based on the format of the Hero’s Journey. The avatar goes on quests and fights adversaries that are designated as “good” or “evil.” In the world of Fable, the Hero’s abilities are based upon three primary attributes. Each of these corresponds to one of the three major play-styles, but the player can spread his/her emphasis across attributes, so it is not necessary to concentrate solely on one kind of style. As the Hero, a graduate of the Hero’s Guild, advances through Fable, s/he will age, grow fatter or slimmer (based on eating choices), and drastically alter his/her appearance through a number of tattoos and hairstyles. Beyond cosmetic changes, the avatar is forced to make moral choices, and the choices that are made influence the way AI characters respond to the avatar. Accordingly, this dynamic could be extended to authentic Jungian personality types. Opportunities for programming authentic psychological dimensions into games of this nature are abundant.     

Play styles could reflect authentic personality profiles based on Myers-Briggs “attributes” (sixteen permutations of thinking, feeling, intuiting, judging) Attributes could be made to correspond to the classical symbolism associated with human structure (physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual) Game computational formats could be adjusted to authentic Jungian principles of psychic functions (thinking, feeling, sensing, intuiting) Game rules could be adjusted to correspond with genuine principles of human development Interactive experience could be formatted to adhere to authentic research on figurative dimensions such as mythic-literary symbolism. For example, in any story, combat may equate symbolically to any challenge—physical, emotional, or mental—approached in a variety of ways: win-lose, cooperation, or a combination of both. (Vygotskian)

Designing character profiles based on personality types & metaphorical frames According to Jungian parameters, a personality conflict described could result from a dichotomy between INTJ (the Scientist) and INFJ (the Protector) Two of the categories of Jungian Functional Preference Orderings among the sixteen Myers-Briggs personality types are INTJ and INFJ. Each type incorporates the basic four Jungian functions of psyche as well as additional domains (radical categories) of personality such as extroversion/introversion and judging/non-judging. Decades of research has already disclosed a great deal of data relative to how the coherent ideologies in each category fit together and what the relationships among them are.

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Abundant scientific data also exists relative to complex character framing, and the frames are conveniently synchronous with the less scientific approach to character design known as the character diamond. (Freeman) Existing character diamonds in game stories are restricted to superficial dimensions and confusing types. However, the computational framing of character diamonds according to Jungian personality types would have the added value of being consistent with universal mythical alchemical symbolic correspondences such as the icon of the human body (flesh, emotion, thought, and spirit) and the elements (earth, water, air, fire). Jungian Functional Preference Orderings, INTJ and INFJ3 are defined as follows: INTJ  Dominant (introverted intuition),  Auxiliary: (extraverted thinking),  Tertiary (introverted feeling),  Inferior (extraverted sensing)

Vs. INFJ Introverted Intuition Extraverted feeling Introverted Thinking Extraverted Sensing

The primary difference between INTJ and INFJ exists in the reversal of auxiliary and tertiary methods used by the personalities to cope with their reality. Simply, in both cases a conflict exists at auxiliary and tertiary levels between “feeling” and “thinking”; the tendency is to feel confusion as to when personal expression in either domain should be outgoing or ingoing. This confusion can be employed as a basis for designing dramatic choices and quandaries on a continuum that includes Feeling valence (comfortable/uncomfortable) and Thinking judgment (good/bad) as well as a degree of value intensity (mild/intense). In this regard, it is important to quote Jung directly: “The libido moves not only forward and backward, progressively and regressively, but also inward and outward in line with extraversion or introversion—the second important characteristic of this process is its value intensity. The specific form in which energy is manifested in the psyche is the IMAGE, raised up by the formative power of the imagination, the creative fantasy, from the material of the collective unconscious, the objective psyche. This creative activity of the psyche transforms 4 the chaos of the unconscious contents into such images as appear in dreams, fantasies, visions, and every variety of creative art. It ultimately determines the meaning charge of the images, which is equivalent to their value intensity, and is measured by the individual constellation or context in which each image appears.5 In a dream, for example, there are always elements whose meaning varies with the context and their position in it. An image or motif may in one case be secondary, while in another it becomes the central figure or vehicle of the complex; the mother symbol, for example, will be charged with more energy and have higher value intensity in a psyche suffering from a mother complex than in one suffering from a father complex.” (Jacoby, pp 58-59)

These Jungian parameters could be combined with Lakoff’s conservative or progressive frameworks (SFM or NPM) and their many subsidiary metaphorical frameworks to create a complex network of interaction among radial symbolic domains. Within this computational network, nodal synchronicities would trigger variations in pixel arrangements to create a stream 3

Detailed INTJ & INFJ personality profiles are included in the index. “The psychological mechanism that transforms energy is the symbol.” (Jung, Energy, p. 45) 5 “Conditionalism” (Jacoby, pp. 83 f) 4

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of interactive images. This would constitute at least an approximate simulation of veridical neurobiological processes. From the perspectives of interactivity and immersion in the game story, the view sequence offered by such a contextualized stream of images would be highly personal. However, the high degree of personalization would be handled computationally within a network of domains that are fundamental and shared by large target groups. In the language of neurobiology, radial symbolic domains are categorized according to neural binding phenomena, convergence zones, neural signatures, and event structures. However, it is the central concept of cognitive framing that neurobiological framing corresponds to the framing of figurative language. In the corresponding language of narrative-metaphor framing, the game-writing challenge is to use symbolic-metaphorical resonances as narrative architecture to tell coherent interactive stories that are consistent with an authentic “psychic” symbolism of neurobiological frameworks. In the nervous system, “Simple narratives have the form of frame-based scenarios…There is a protagonist, the person whose point of view is being taken. The events are good and bad things that happen. And there are appropriate emotions that fit certain kinds of events in the scenarios.” (Lakoff, 2008, p. 23) If a story is well-told, the idiom of neurobiology will synch with the idiom of metaphor to access authentic domains of psyche. Using prototypes, archetypes and narrative architecture, story scenarios could be related to one another with metaphorical resonance (computational physics) according to the same dynamics that maintain within the nervous system. “For example, the experience of a red rose is not just an experience of a rose shape, an experience of redness, and a certain scent. Binding shape, color, and scent together provides a complex experience… and is accomplished just by neurons and connections.” (Lakoff, 2002, p. 26) Libraries of such data already exist. The following illustration is simply a reminder of the intricacies and significance of how Metaphorical Amplification may be used symbolically as Narrative Architecture and the manner in which a variety of metaphorical resonances may overlap in a single symbol. ROSE: feminine, love, relationship, heart Color Symbolic-metaphorical significance  Red Ardor, sexuality, physical  White Purity, calm, virginity, spirituality  Yellow Honor, dependability,  Pink Girlhood, incipient sexuality,  Orange Combine attributes of red and yellow  Bi-colored Combine attributes of both colors into a distinct third color Type  Hybrid tea Hybrid, combination, aristocratic, often fragile  Grandiflora Lush, large, individual  Floribunda Bush, clustered flowers  Climbing Climbing, reaching out, tentacles  Wild (old English) Original, natural, strong, resilient Shape  Ovoid

Symbolism of the oval, female shape, egg, womb

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 

Urn Pointed

Female shape, grace, high art Threat, tongues of fire, suggestive of sharp weapons,

In the example above, the rose is a prototype that represents archetypal resonance related to the feminine, love, and nearly infinite variations within radial framing domains. Programmed as nodal networks (Connectionism) within the diverse constellations of the radial categories, contextual meaning could be accessed within the framework of nested stories told primarily with symbols—as in dreams. As in life or a dream, the player only gradually begins to perceive the underlying meaning (plot sequence) of narrative patterns including significance relative to the personal premise of the player. In the DBG context, to win the game, the player will experiment with the nodal probabilities sufficiently to begin seeing the relevant patterns imbedded in the plot. As the patterns become more coherent, the player will begin to recognize personal psychological comfort zones. Intuitively, comfort zones will share a degree of synchronicity with the player’s personality profile. Making game choices consistent with the narrative patterns and the comfort zone will be reinforced computationally until the player achieves insight as to winning the game. These reinforcements will tend to reframe the player’s cognitive unconscious such that it comports more harmoniously with the true self. By the time the comfort zone of self-realization is associated with winning the game, each player will have discovered his/her own zone and strengthened the cognitive framework associated with that self-realization. Neurobiological patterns may be registered with a various technologies including EEG, ECG, GSR, and biofeedback. Whenever the terms of narrative-metaphorical framing are invoked, they relate to the embodied neurobiological framing processes of the synapses in the nervous system and the brain; i.e., cognitive frames have corresponding structure in dimensions of both wetware and linguistic metaphor. In order to understand this framing process as it may be incorporated into the game story, it is necessary to go into more detail as to how cognitive framing works. As mentioned above, George Lakoff advocates for a progressive model of cognitive framing that adheres to the “Nurturant Parent Metaphor” which is characterized by its synchronicity with America’s normative-conceptual roots. In order to illustrate the dramatic choices that inhere to the dichotomous frames—SFM vs. NPM—and how they can be used to structure character and plot, it is useful to summarize them directly from Lakoff. Each of the two primary family metaphors is characterrized as follows:

The Strict Father Metaphor (SFM) “This model posits a traditional nuclear family, with the father having primary responsibility for supporting and protecting the family as well as the authority to set overall policy, to set strict rules for the behavior of children, and to enforce the rules. The mother has the day-to-day responsibility for the care

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of the house, raising children, and upholding the father’s authority. Children must respect and obey their parents; by doing so they build character, that is, self-discipline and self-reliance. Love and nurturance are, of course, a vital part of family life but can never outweigh parental authority, which is itself an expression of love and nurturance—tough love. Self-discipline, self-reliance, and respect for legitimate authority are the crucial things that children must learn. Once children are mature, they are on their own and must depend on their acquired self-discipline to survive. Their self-reliance gives them authority over their own destinies, and parents are not to meddle in their lives.” (Lakoff, p 33)

The Nurturant Parent Metaphor (NPM) “Love, empathy, and nurturance are primary, and children become responsible, self-disciplined and self-reliant through being cared for, respected, and caring for others, both in their family and in their community. Support and protection are part of nurturance, and they require strength and courage on the part of parents. The obedience of children comes out of their love and respect for their parents and their community, not out of the fear of punishment. Good communication is crucial. If their authority is to be legitimate, parents must explain why their decisions serve the cause of protection and nurturance. Questioning by children is seen as positive, since children need to learn why their parents do what they do and since children often have good ideas that should be taken seriously. Ultimately, of course, responsible parents have to make the decisions, and that must be clear. The principle goal of nurturance is for children to be fulfilled and happy in their lives. A fulfilling life is assumed to be, in significant part, a nurturant life—one committed to family and community responsibility. What children need to learn most is empathy for other, the capacity for nurturance, and the maintenance of social ties, which cannot be done without the strength, respect, self-discipline, and self-reliance that comes through being cared for. Raising a child to be fulfilled also requires helping that child develop his or her potential for achievement and enjoyment. That requires respecting the child’s own values and allowing the child to explore the range of ideas and options that the world offers. When children are respected, nurtured, and communicated with from birth, they gradually enter into a lifetime relationship of mutual respect, communication, and caring with their parents.” (Lakoff, 2002, p 33-34)

As Lakoff points out, reminiscent of Jungian archetypes, the primary metaphors do not exist in their pure form. Instead, due to an individual’s contextual experience and the manner in which that experience has reinforced the synapses in the neural system and the various frames in their cognitive environment, individuals are a composite of overlapping, inter-penetrating metaphorical frameworks. We can be fiscal conservatives and foreign policy liberals at the same time because, “Terms like ‘conservative,’ ‘liberal,’ and ‘progressive’ do not, and cannot, do justice to the complex reality of our politics and our experience as humans.” (Lakoff, 2002, p 69) For each citizen in the culture, individuality exists as a unique admixture of metaphorical frames. As part of the general culture, each person fits into a unique pattern of cognitive-metaphorical frames, and each has his/her own premise—what s/he learns from the experience of life. Each person’s life can be understood in terms of a search for that premise, and discovery of the premise equates to a “problem” solved and realization of self accomplished.

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In order to dramatize the story that leads to realization of the premise, meaningful symbolic variations will be abundant, but only slight variations in the pixel structure of the game image will be necessary to amplify a story while, at the same time, providing contextually significant choice opportunities that create depth of authentic immersion. In the examples below, within a single domain related to the metaphor of Work Ethic, there are many opportunities for binary choices due to the complex of dichotomies that exist within the conflicted cognitive framework of our protagonist. These conflicts are focused in attitudes toward work, what Lakoff describes as a work ethic based on either “reward” or “exchange,” but they are amplified across radial domains. Altering the framework from reward to exchange will have significant impact on two subsidiary categories—empathy and communication—and will tend to alter the character-player’s fundamental view of legitimate authority. In a well developed story, interactive choices related to any one category would impact all radial categories. Within the framework of general family models, each of the following contrasts offers stereoscopic opportunities for making interactive choices leading to the realization of the protagonist’s premise.

Framing premise according to the Work Ethic Metaphor In his explanation of different work ethics associated with the different family metaphors, Lakoff discusses several radial domains. He explains that both ethics fall within the framing categories of the Moral Accounting Metaphor. The Work Reward Metaphor is associated with conservative thinking and SFM, while the Work Exchange Metaphor is associated with progressive thinking and NPM. The two ethics are defined as follows (Lakoff, p. 54-55): Reward

Vs. Exchange

The employer is a legitimate authority Employee is subject to that authority Work is obedience to employer’s demands Pay is the reward the employee receives For obedience to employer

Work is an object of value The worker is the possessor of his work The employer is the possessor of his money. Employment = voluntary exchange of worker’s work for employer’s money

During the course of the game various choice scenarios will be computationally articulated (something like Cohonen Networks) around the metaphorical prototype related to the work ethic. Player choices will be measured against a continuum of “correctness” relative to the standard established by the premise.6 Meaningful choices consistent with the premise will be 6

Glassner; Schafer, 2007

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rewarded. Gradually, in the process of winning the game, the player will adjust to the “Exchange” metaphor until, finally, s/he achieves meaningful insight and adopts the Exchange metaphor of his/her premise. A personal game win need not be dependent on a progressive attitude. However, within the overall context of the game story, premise can be adjusted to the individuality of the player and a game win can be adjusted to player insight as to the personal premise. Without enormous demands on the game engine or the software, these contextual variations would contribute enormously to the meaningful significance of game choices as well as to increased interactivity and immersion. Translating figurative dimensions into the domain of cognitive frames, the protagonist in the game story might be defined as follows according to Lakoff’s explanations:  



General target group = Strict Father Metaphor (generally conservative thinking) Protagonist prototype = Anti-ideal (demon subcategory of the target group) Lakoff defines several categories of prototypes. (Lakoff, 2002, p. 9-10) For illustration purposes, the protagonist will be defined as anti-ideal because of the inherent dramatic potential for conflict. In other words, the anti-ideal protagonist does not fit into the framework that characterizes the worldview of his/her SFM environment. The dramatic challenge is to understand the nature of the conflict in order to understand psychic disharmony and arrive at a degree of self-realization. Protagonist premise = Understand the conflict between conflicting frames of the “Work Ethic Metaphor” that can be stated: ”Work as Reward” vs. “Work as Exchange” so a progressive radial metaphorical category is dominated by a conservative metaphor. An analysis of the game player’s personality profile discloses that s/he would be more comfortable with the “Work as Exchange” metaphor that is consistent with the NPR rather than the SFM. Such a psychic dissonance would demonstrate dramatically as conflict with the authority of the SFM framework of the general story environment. Lakoff explains that, in the Strict Father environment (American version), morality equates to strict, disciplined adherence to legitimate authority according to the following logic: 1. A Community Is a Family 2. Moral Authority Is Parental authority 3. An Authority Figure Is a Parent 4. A Person Subject to Moral Authority Is a Child 5. Moral Behavior by Someone Subject to Authority Is Obedience 6. Moral Behavior by Someone in Authority Is Setting Standards and Enforcing Them (Lakoff, 2002, p 77)

According to this logic, it is immoral for a child to disobey. Therefore, if a child has a cognitive framework based on “Work as Exchange” instead of “Work as Reward” the child will be perceived as immoral and will be punished. But there is an interesting entailment to the American version of SFM. When a child raised in SF environment becomes an adult, s/he has proven her/his morality and is no longer subject to parental authority. A parent that claims

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authority, then becomes illegitimate. Such action by a parent or any authority (Government As Family Metaphor) is met with great resentment. Dramatically, relative to authority, a protagonist can experience serious psychic disharmony in a variety of ways, and the reason residing in the cognitive unconscious may be that either, the authority is illegitimate or the metaphor and prototype are at variance. The challenge of the protagonist is to sort the problem out and come to a conscious understanding of himself relative to his unconscious urges. In the above illustration, the premise of our protagonist is: “The player realizes that his/her personality is consistent with a work ethic based on the Work as Exchange metaphor.” According to the personality conflict in the above illustration, a dichotomy exists within the contextual frames of our protagonist—between conservative and progressive neural frames. According to Jungian parameters, if the protagonist struggling with this conflict happens to have an INTJ personality profile, s/he must harmonize the dichotomy by adjusting to a different personality profile. Maintaining an Exchange work ethic requires empathy, and making an adjustment that involves empathy would be easier for an INFJ than for an INTJ because a strong part of the INTJ personality is thinking, not feeling. Establishing the subconscious dramatic premise and associating it throughout the game with choices that lead to winning, would tend to reframe the player’s cognitive unconscious in a way consistent with both Jungian and Lakoffian parameters.

Premise: Balancing the moral books by making interactive choices relative to the dichotomy between “reward” and “exchange” frames of the work ethic Using the summaries SFM and NPM above, we will illustrate how character can be designed computationally according to variations of frames in different radial metaphorical domains. Two of these primary domains are the fundamental family metaphors defined by Lakoff and the fundamental psychic functions defined by Jung. Articulation of variations in these two domains would result in authentic SBG characterizations and choices, and the authenticity would lead to deeper immersion and greater interactivity. For example: an admixture of cognitive frames with Jungian functions could result in the following computational format for character design and transformation: INTJ (Rose metaphor x physical attributes + prototype: anti-ideal) (SFM) (Moral Accounting Metaphor) (Moral Strength Metaphor) (Reward for Work ethic) = INFJ (Rose metaphor x physical attributes + prototype: central subcategory of a radial category) SFM (Moral Accounting Metaphor) (Moral Strength Metaphor) (Exchange for Work ethic). According to such complex formulations, any aspect of a player’s cognitive/archetypal framework could be calculated according to the “winning” of a character premise consistent with the computationally perceived needs of the contextual personality. Remember, in the analog,

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computation takes the place of the psychiatrist and guides the player-dreamer in the quest for meaning. In the example above, the rose is a prototype that represents archetypal resonance related to the feminine, love, nurturance, and nearly infinite variations within radial framing domains. Programmed as nodal networks (Connectionism) within the diverse constellations of the radial categories, contextual meaning could be accessed within the framework of nested stories told primarily with symbols—as in dreams. The game story will provide the narrative architecture consistent with all the dimensions of drama. Aristotelian dramatic unity—space, time, action—constitutes the first dimension. In brief, the dramatic unities can be defined as unities because they can’t be separated. In the domain of physics there is no particle without the wave—no time without space and what happens there. So, in drama there is no character without plot, no plot without character, and no story without action. This is why the design of character is so important to good story telling. Immersion constitutes the second dimension. A well-designed character-avatar will make authentic, meaningful choices, and such a well-designed story will be more immersive to the degree that a player identifies with the story—particularly the avatar—and makes meaningful choices within the game-story world. Interactivity constitutes the third dimension. Meaningful choices (the action in spacetime) must be consistent with the design of the character. If our character is a female called Rose, in a well-designed game she must have many opportunities to make meaningful choices that will be evoked by her contextual psychological environment. We have defined how such a psychological environment might be formulaically framed in terms of what is contextually meaningful to Rose. Rose’ formulaic personality constitutes the standard against which “correctness” of choices will be measured. Computed according to the character formula, the visible symbols in the narrative architecture proffered by the game-screen will provide possibilities for response by the player. (This process will be explained in more detail in the game mechanics section.) Correctness of responses will be assessed on a continuum that allows for adjustment of choices (±) and provides feedback relative to each choice. In other words, without the need for narrative changes computationally altered symbols will provide numerous opportunities for interactivity.

Illustration of a framed protagonist Rose is a female, so her gender dispositions tend in the direction of nurturance which— like love and relationships of all kinds—is based on empathy. Her personality type is INTJ,

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which places an emphasis on “thinking,” but her problem is that she needs to make an adjustment toward “feeling.” Because people in her (conservative) environment want her to extrovert thinking, she is stereotyped by her Strict Father community (and family) as an antiideal prototype—probably because of her confusion she is vacillating in the direction of a more feeling expression that characterizes the INFJ personality type. She is confused as to her auxiliary and tertiary Functional Preference Orderings. As an INTJ, she vacillates between extroverting her feeling or her thinking. This problem might be resolved if she realized that she is more suited to INFJ where feeling is extroverted and thinking introverted. If everything else in Rose’s character formula remains the same, her premise should be framed in terms of adjusting to the INFJ—more feeling—profile. This could be nicely defined in terms of her learning to support the Work as Exchange vs. Work as Reward value. Because all of these cognitive frames can be related to the structure of the story, whatever story is written will have valid personal, political, and spiritual ramifications that can be computationally articulated. Every memory of her upbringing, her dreams, and her fantasies has provided mediated information from unconscious levels about this need to adjust to her premise in order to evolve. Therefore, memories, dreams, and fantasies can be interactively recalled with variation of representations, cognitive derivatives, and living symbolism imbedded in the images on the game screen. The ability to translate these symbolic messages in order to have insight as to her premise will correlate with winning the game story. There are a number of interesting dramatic quandaries inherent in this dichotomy between thinking vs. feeling, obedience vs. independence, discipline vs. empathy. These are prototypical themes in art and literature. They relate to the human struggle to define legitimate and illegitimate authority as well as personal values on a continuum of submission to authority vs. freedom. The array of metaphors that comprise the architecture of SFM and NPM are very different, and most personae combine these fundamental value structures in unique ways. So, providing computational access to authentic metaphorical frameworks within a game story will translate to interactive opportunities to experiment with contextual particulars.

Conclusions A synchronicity of choice that satisfies the conditions of harmony between a player’s personality profile and learned premise would initiate a progression in the evolution of the story. This approach would accomplish a number of things: 

Choices become contextually meaningful without compromising the narrative dynamics of exposition,

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

Conscious and unconscious levels of the game are synchronized according to the principle of correspondence: i.e., view sequence (seemingly random conscious dimension in present time that may include flashback & flash forward) will be computationally (software) correlated with plot sequence (causal, sequential unconscious dimension of the linear plot that ultimately leads to exposition and the realization of character premise).i



Interactivity is significantly increased because symbols take the place of extensive syntax. Instead, choices and scenarios are keyed to the prototypes of cognitive framing, Gestalten (melodies), and Jungian symbolism. Contextual responses are computationally articulated according to the probabilities inherent in the parameters of a particular player’s personality profile. As in dreams, the player is responding from conscious and unconscious dimensions to symbols that have been computationally pre-written, so each successive screen remains consistent to the plot and view sequence of the story without the need for additional writing.



Continuous play experience will result in unprecedented data capture. Because player responses result from a combination of conscious-unconscious impulses, correlations between perceptual experience and affordance could be studied. Due to the unbroken immersive-interactive process of game play, robust data relative to cognitive patterns will emerge and be susceptible to capture with the use of such instrumentalities as: EEG, ECG, fMRI, GSR, and gaze capture in virtual environments.



The cognitive dynamics of contextual problem solving and psychic healing will emerge. Synchronicities of choice that correlate personality profiles and player premise will become measurable, so they can be patterned and reinforced.



Evolutionary pedagogies can be developed using DBG technology to increase student motivation and the relevance of education.



Data relative to cognitive framing processes of the personal and collective unconscious will help establish parameters of healthy personal and cultural psyche in order to address psychosis as perceived in the media dream of a culture.



Media will become meaningful. New ways for talking about alternative moral systems will develop. Public discourse will be enriched, so that the media can do a better job. The public will become aware that “we think by using conceptual systems that are not immediately accessible to consciousness and that conceptual metaphor is part of our normal thought processes.” (Lakoff, 2002, p 32)

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THE GAME TREATMENT Game Mechanics Core game play in Sojourner Sojourner includes a high degree of interactive verisimilitude: Depending on the choices you make as you play through Sojourner, the protagonist-avatar will age and change in appearance. Appearance will be authentically symbolic and will reflect deeper levels of persona than the merely visible level. Not just tattoos and hairstyles will change. Every aspect of the narrative architecture portrayed on the screen will have symbolic significance and will change according to player progress: clothing, weapons, movements (as expressions of balance and integrity of persona), and changing attitudes (as computed by past choices). Sojourner requires your character to make authentic moral choices that are personally significant—not only between good and evil but between nuanced issues of value. For example, feeding the hungry may not be good according to every system of values. As in a dream, images (AI and story) will change in subtle ways depending on choices you make relative to the value structure you choose to embrace in order to win the game. For example, if your avatar (you) needs to develop empathy instead of dominance, s/he will find that the journey gets physically easier but morally and psychologically more precarious as the quality of empathy is developed. As you begin to understand the different kinds of empathy (egocentric, affordable, absolute) other characters will begin to treat you with the respect and dignity that wisdom deserves. As your dignity improves, your responsibilities will increase, and your associations (allies, enemies, and mates) will become more interesting. Sojourner is an excellent action-adventure RPG, but playing the game results in authentic skill acquisition. The game features a variety of play-styles, a large number of spells that are modeled on current psychological-linguistic research, and an array of antagonists, enemies, companions, and bosses. AI is psychologically multi-dimensional, and you will need to develop experience and social skill in order to maximize your relationships and to be successful in your dealings with them. Interactive choices will be calculated on a continuum that will seem open-ended without compromising the plot sequence and narrative integrity of your personal

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journey. You play as an evolving hero who has incarnated in many guises, planets, and dimensions throughout the universe. In symbolic terms, you are in the process of recapitulating many lifetimes and incarnations, and your game experience represents the final test of your skill and predisposition for planetary service on Earth—one of the Elect of Gaia. You will learn to access past life experiences in order to apply their lessons to the present challenge. Everything you perceive on the screen is a reflection of some aspect of you. As you surf the screen, it will transport you to stories within stories, but all of them will be messages that address the questions you have—consciously or unconsciously—about yourself. If you are not interested in a particular story, simply change the story at your own discretion and at your own pace. If you find yourself in an interesting story about a classroom, you can stay, ask questions, disagree with the teacher, or even vent. If you find the subject or the class boring, simply take your mind to another story: remember, fantasize, or project yourself into the future by clicking on the screen until you discover something of interest and then become the protagonist in that story. You may find yourself on a Viking ship, in the streets of Paris during the French Revolution, in Machu Pichu before it was abandoned by the Incas, or on the planet Pluto or Mars. In each case, it will be your challenge to adjust your skills to the situation—to discover who you are, where you come from, and why you are here. Remember, all you see, think, or feel is you. Somewhere in yourself, you have all the answers to your questions. Play styles will reflect authentic personality profiles based on Myers-Briggs “attributes” (sixteen permutations of thinking, feeling, intuiting, and judging): In the world of Sojourner, your Hero’s abilities will be based upon three primary attributes and one integrated attribute. Thinking, feeling, intuiting, and judging correspond to physical, emotional, kamamanas (emotion-mind), and spirit. Each of these attributes corresponds to a specific play-style. Attributes and play-styles may be integrated at the will of the player. In order to win the game according to your own personal psychological profile, Karma will need to be “burned.” Satisfaction of Karma will be determined by the effect your choices have on your ultimate challenge. The ultimate challenge is to achieve insight as to the meaning and destiny (premise) of your avatar by gradually discovering a protagonist’s premise within each of the nested stories evoked by the player. •

Attributes correspond to classical human structure (physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual): The attributes (bodies) will be perfected in the following sequence: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. However, all four bodies are integrated and you perfect them at your own pace and according to your own interactive choices. You will be able to apply skills you have earned in any “body” according to need or preference. However, you will only be able to apply skills according to the probabilities of achieved experience. This will occur automatically from computational levels without the need to monitor such things as “health” bars. Instead, your challenge will be to

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recognize when you have achieved a new level by the quality and symbolism that appears in the stories on the game screen. •

Game rules correspond to general principles of human development: The Journey of the Hero has the structure of narrative, the character dimensions of drama, and the plot dimensions of real life—beginning, middle, and end—but not necessarily in that order. Each persona is born with particular developmental potentials which are influenced by “nature and nurture.” In other words, experience and skillful learning counts, so the way you interact with your environment determines the arrangement of your life-story. However, no matter who you are, the basic structure of your life-story or plot is predetermined to a degree. It will have a beginning, middle, and end which includes such predictable stages of life-development as those defined by Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Experiencing this hierarchy parallels the experience of the Hero Journey as well as the dramatic plot structure of all stories.

•

Interactive experience has figurative dimension: In order to gain more experience and to harmonize that experience so that all your attributes are in synch, you may need to engage enemies in symbolic combat, complete symbolically significant quests, and strive for the insight offered by any experience in order to become adept. In Sojourner, interactivity is the portal to the multiple dimensions of your psyche which is structured in a way that corresponds to the four attributes. In other words, by having insight and understanding of the symbolic language of the unconscious (spells) you are able to realize that your separated personal self corresponds to your True Self or the Soul that is integrated, harmonious, and whole.

Upgrades result from insight gained by experience in all four attributes or psychic functions. As you find the answers to your questions in any nested story, that knowledge will take you to another place—another story. As you gain knowledge by finding the answers to questions, you will interactively revisit memories and use your new perspective to replay elements of that game until you have gleaned every possible insight from that particular experience. When this happens, you receive a psychological upgrade in terms of increased synchronicity among attributes. Synchronicity is expressed as more fluid and sophisticated 3D imagery. Upgrades are achieved by measuring the emergent degree of synchronization you attain among your attributes. This synchronization can be equated to the development of Intuitive insight. Intuition will be assessed by coordinating manual operation with gaze tracking. Most interesting, in the process of winning your game, you may experience the phenomenon called “Flow”. Flow is related to metaphysical transcendence—going beyond the need to incarnate in physical form. The journey of each hero is the same. It has a beginning, middle, and end, but you make the seemingly open-ended choices that give your story its unique

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flavor and relevance to your True Self. Because of the underlying computational principles, you can play the game repeatedly—becoming increasingly immersed in the interaction without getting exactly the same results twice. The destiny of each hero is greatness, but greatness is tied to humility, service, and empathy. Whether you journey is long or short, slow or fast, the choices and opportunities are yours to learn and apply in the real game called life.

Backstory & Game flow in Sojourner “I know these things because I am the great awakener, Hagalaz, Shepherd’s Soul, the bringer of freedom, invention, and liberation. Shepherd is one of a contingent of commandos mustered from far-and-wide by the Hierarch of Gaia. Anticipating the crisis of Armageddon, the Hierarch has been recruiting for some time, seeking those with specialized skills, talent, and experience. These commandos have not come with destructive arts, but with the skills of the Craft and an array of the degrees of sentience and self-awareness. This group of World Servers has come from virtually everywhere. Some, like him, have gone through the Initiation in due and ancient form. They have planted the spirit seed in the fields of substance, prepared the vehicle of flesh to house it, and then grown with it through the regular degrees and stages—ontogony recapitulates phylogony. They have sacrificed much to take their forms of flesh. Of their own free will they have chosen constraint and limitation. Only thus can the Sojourner truly identify with suffering humanity in order to assist it. Yes, this duty requires considerable sacrifice. It is far too restrictive for most galactic talent and requires those who aren’t too good, but have more experience than most of the Realists. However, if the challenges are great, so, too, are the rewards. Gaia is the most beautiful of seductive women. Enigmatic goddess, capricious, querulous, adamant, yielding, wise and funny, naked but veiled, tempting as a siren, frustrating as time and distance, paradoxical as burning ice. Her lovely voice has sounded the chord and many have responded in spite of the hardship, oblivious to the terror. She needs help and helpers have come. Large numbers of these World Servers are native Vensuians or have come by way of Venus on the fast track from the Pleides. A much smaller contingent has come from Ursa Major, the Great Bear, and transient others from vast unknown galaxies direct, or made connections through the other planets in the solar system by traveling the mighty highways of heaven—those wide-rolling waves of sentience comparable to the circuitry and nervous systems of the vehicle of flesh. Shepherd is a glimmer in the eye of a wild dog—Sirius by way of Pluto—and he arrived with the distinction of being triune-Plutonian. He had nearly mastered the threefold quality of that great Being which marks completion of the First Degree of its development of consciousness on the lowest Plutonian plane. He is Power, Vessel, and Instrument of Pluto— male/female/magician—an adept. He is Initiate, but must remember Self in order to succeed.

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For purposes of the present assignment, this simply means that he is usefully equipped with the right sort of experience and a quality of consciousness with which to address one aspect of Gaia’s need. The quality is intensely attractive in both aesthetic and magnetic terms, and those experiences—the memory of them; the consciousness of them—creates a magnetic field which attracts to itself substance resonating to the quality of their sum-total. The tiny lives informing matter which vibrate to his quality in the Gaian system and are; therefore, available for his use on Earth are fairly rare. All these lives are, of course, peculiar to Gaia—slightly different than pure Plutonian harmonics. Nevertheless, using this basic frequency in conjunction with the particularized thought forms of Gaia (they are considerably different), his soul, Hagalaz, has modeled and formed its earthly vehicle. Hagalaz invested the DNA seedmaterial with the magnetic forms which, eventually, became Shepherd on relevant levels of Gaian being.” Game flow is based on the psychic flow of energy in dreams. In great detail, Jung has explained how electro-magnetic archetypes manifest as symbolic images in dreams. Dreams constitute a symbolic language that mediates information from unconscious to conscious dimensions. Learning this language and becoming conscious (lucid) while dreaming leads the dreamer to insight as to the meaning of the dream. Game flow will be articulated according to these Jungian principles that lead to contextual meaning on the part of the game player. The dream-like environment described above incorporates all the dimensions of psyche as we know it according to cognitive science. With the help of game software, the player will interact with the story-telling symbols portrayed in the images of the game. Like a dreamer, the game-player will gradually learn from his/her adventures and develop authentic insight as to personal meaning and self-awareness. True to the Jungian structure of dreams, the action will entail surfing the game world that is formatted according to the functions and dynamics of psyche, dream types, and meaningful compensation. Characters In the mythic spirit of Sojourner, characters will have all the dimensions of alchemy, magic, and science. The world of Faerie will be peopled by an array of the Elementals of earth, air, water, and fire. Memories will have the symbolic significance of myth and literature. Intra-dimensional travel will adhere to the narrative-symbolic architecture of the “waking dream,” and the Gods will behave according to their cultural-mythic identities. AI, friends, and allies will be computed relative to their harmonic qualities and archetypal significance. Just as a person is not functional only in the flesh, but in the bodies called emotion, thought, and spirit, characters in Sojourner will function in these less substantial bodies in order to portray paranormal experiences and intra-dimensional game play.

Game play elements The contextual scope of game-play is vast, but the elements are finite. A player will be able to function in any of the four bodies or a combination of those bodies and to interact with the denizens and archetypes of those dimensions as they are dramatically portrayed. For example, early stages of the game

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correspond to childhood, so the player may be restricted to a child’s parameters of bodily coordination and simple emotion. As an adolescent, s/he may function primarily as more complex emotional-thought. Much later, the player may earn the ability to function in Plato’s domain of ideals or in the fiery realm of spirit and the High Gods. Experiences in all realms—dreams, memories, past lives, fantasies—will be linked according to authentic narrative-metaphorical symbolism, color and musical harmonics, algorithms of Fourier Transforms, and the stored, earned, and emergent characteristics of the player’s personality profile. For the purposes of the Demonstration Project, the protagonist’s player profile will be linked to that described above in the character formula. (page 30) The character premise will focus on changing from a value structure supporting Work as Reward to one supporting Work as Exchange. This premise would be consistent with the overall objective of the comprehensive Journey which is to develop empathy in order to serve the planet with responsibility and wisdom.

Game physics and statistics Incipient trends in cognitive research can be facilitated by using PEGs to collect data relative to the archetypes of psyche and the frames of the cognitive unconscious. As a dreamer responds to dreams from both conscious and unconscious dimensions, a PEG gamer responds from both conscious and unconscious psychological dimensions to the “living” (energetic) symbols that constitute the image. For these reasons, PEGs can be formatted computationally to simulate Jungian functions of Psyche as well as Jung’s amplification method of analysis and treatment. Amplification is akin to contrastive analysis and the framing dynamics of the cognitive unconscious. Accordingly, experimental design using PEGs can be articulated to track neurobiological pathways in the cognitive unconscious of the player and to associate these pathways to archetypal libido. (Jung’s libido is defined as life energy.) Data derived from this tracking process can be employed to calibrate a restructuring of neurobiological pathways according to sane principles of narrative framing defined by George Lakoff as the Nurturant Family Metaphor. DBGs could be designed as analogs of the Theatre Model in which contrastive analysis could be employed to research the narrative-metaphorical framework of the cognitive unconscious and the narrative metaphorical archetypes of what Jung defined as the personal and collective unconscious. Such restructuring of personal cognitiveneurological pathways would have impact on the content and quality (value intensity) of the collective energy field. This might lead to a psychological “critical mass” something like an epiphany leading to collective insight or metanoia. Though research on cognitive frames is already extensive, in order to achieve optimal benefit from cognitive reframing in cultural and global dimensions of psyche, the accumulation of neurobiological data could be expanded to incorporate Jungian principles and methods of psychological healing.

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Just as real life and dreams are symbol-driven cognitive experiences in which the goal is insight as to purpose and meaning, DBG software can be programmed and designed as symboldriven narratives programmed according to authentic principles of cognitive framing. Such game narratives—like real life and dream narratives—would seem to be highly interactive and “open ended,” but—according to the “view sequence” characteristic described above—winning the game will be structured in accordance with the same parameters of cognitive discovery as is the Jungian psyche. This game theory is likely consistent with the mathematics of the Nash Equilibrium. In conjunction with player personality profiling and such emergent technologies as “gaze-tracking,” player experience of the unconscious narrative would seem much like real experience. DBGs designed according to principles of the Theatre Model, narrative-metaphorical framing, and the amplification method could be employed to research the dream dynamics of the cognitive unconscious and to define the healing potentials of cognitive frameworks that are consistent with psychic balance and beneficent decision-making at personal and collective levels. Such healing frameworks could be fostered in DBG game design and resulting data could be applied to global media policy in order to address the Media Dream. DBGs have extraordinary potential for research on the Psychecology of a media age, for educational reform, and for benign amplification of the media dream. Computational levels of the game will key the following data to a matrix defined by the game image, player personality profile, and player premise.       

Clinical data from Jungian therapy and Jungian scholarship Data from Myers-Briggs and Big Five personality profiles Cognitive data relative to perception, global workspace, cognitive framing, semantic fields, contrastive analysis, narrative therapy, and behavioral psychology Target group data and demographics HeartMath research on coherent heart rhythms and their impact on cognition, physical systems, and organs Research on the Global Coherence Monitoring system (tracking relationship of earth’s ionosphere and human emotion) Genetic research: Chromo-therapy, sound therapy Computational models might include the following:

    

Finite Element Analysis packages Munsell Color System Mathematics of recursion, pixels, and projection Holography, gaze tracking Nash Equilibrium & Game Theory

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 

Kohonen Networks, Connectionism,* Correspondence model of memory,** correspondence model of truth***

*Connectionism A promising model for higher order modeling of the mind with symbolic representations is connectionism. “According to connectionism, cognition is not symbol manipulation but dynamic patterns of activity in a multilayered network of nodes or units with weighted positive and negative interconnections. The patterns change according to internal network constraints governing how the activations and connection strengths are adjusted on the basis of new inputs (e.g., the generalized “delta rule,” or “backpropagation,” McClelland, Rumelhart et al. 1986). The result is a system that learns, recognizes patterns, solves problems, and can even exhibit motor skills.” (Harnad, p. 3) Harnad observes that, “An early rival to the symbolic model of mind appeared (Rosenblatt 1962), was overcome by symbolic AI (Minsky & Papert 1969) and has recently re-appeared in a stronger form that is currently vying with AI to be the general theory of cognition and behavior (McClelland, Rumelhart et al. 1986, Smolensky 1988). Variously describes as ‘neural networks,’ ‘parallel distributed processing,’ and ‘Connectionsim,’ this approach has a multiple agenda, which includes providing a theory of brain function.” (Harnad 1990, p 3) Harnad goes on to observe that it is premature to “constrain” a cognitive theory to account for behavior in a brain-like way. He says, “First and foremost, a cognitive theory must stand on its own merits, which depend on how well it explains our observable behavioral capacity.” This seems consistent with Chomsky’s explanatory adequacy requirement for a linguistic theory—it explains how humans are able to learn languages. (Ludlow 4) Though research on Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) progresses apace, a significant gap remains between artificial and natural neural networks and we don’t yet know how biological neural networks (NNs) work. Of the two training methods (supervised & unsupervised) that weight ANs (assign input values), unsupervised learning rules show promise. Perhaps using complex self-organizing networks (Kohonen networks) would bypass our ignorance both as to natural and artificial networks so as to generate outputs that are veridical according to Jungian parameters of dream analysis; i.e., with a significant degree of narrative verisimilitude and architectural authenticity, subjective states may be accessible to verification. Perhaps another paper should be written dealing with the definition of Jungian referents to healing parameters—equations that calculate the relationships between semiotic dream referents and parameters of meaning relevant to discreet subject cases. This might dictate against the development of a technology of behavioral control as opposed to one of personal and cultural healing. The Meaningful Media Game, though it be based on principles of symbolism and neural networking, has the potential to explain observable behavior that originates at deeper levels than

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language, just as the language of dreams allows Jungian practitioners to access deep levels of the personal and collective unconscious.

**Correspondence Model of Memory Another promising example of a more subjective research trend is the “correspondence model of memory” in which a laboratory approach to thinking about and evaluating memory is distinguished from a more “naturalistic” approach. “These metaphors, the storehouse and correspondence metaphors, embody two essentially different ways of thinking about memory and about how memory should be evaluated: The storehouse metaphor, which likens memory to a depository of input elements, implies an evaluation in terms of the quantity of items remaining in store. In contrast, the correspondence metaphor, which treats memory as a perception or description of the past, implies an evaluation in terms of the accuracy or faithfulness of that description.” (Koriat & Goldsmith, p 3) ***Correspondence Theory of Truth The “correspondence metaphor” focuses on qualitative, graded, intentionalrepresentational functions of memory in which there is a veridical correspondence between what a person reports and what actually happened. This is consistent with the synergistic correspondence theory of truth (Wikipedia: correspondence theory) which places more value on accuracy as to memory of the proposition (or meaning) expressed by a statement than upon the quantity of details. This emphasis on accuracy as to value may be related to Chomsky’s premise that an individual’s judgments of acceptability and meaning derive from unobserved levels of representation. Also, with regard to “meaning” or purpose, what a character learns in a story is called the premise (Glassner, Schafer) and the premise, whether in a story or life, is emergent and enactive. When a character understands the premise of his story, s/he achieves psychological climax. During the process of dream analysis, when a patient understands the meaning of a dream s/he achieves psychic balance that translates to a condition of health or relative wholeness. Both depend upon “memory” that is emergent from a subconscious state and dependent upon accuracy or faithfulness of memory as opposed to how much detail has been stored. Measures of proof & experimental controls The measure of truth as to the question of whether PEGs can be used to track unconscious neurobiological processes of a game player is the data itself. Based on the particular sensing modality (EEG, ECG, fMRI, MEG, etc.) and experimental design, data capture will be consistent with existing data, but more comprehensive and synergistic. The potential for

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diverse experimental design is virtually unlimited, but for the purposes at hand, the experimental design will be focused on data acquisition relative to neurobiological patterns that suggest conscious/unconscious processing (perception/affordance). Resulting data will be contrasted with existing data relevant to perception and affordance. Similarities in the data will be veridical. Dissimilarities will be subject to validation with repetition and design variation. Experimental design will be treated in greater detail in the technical design document. However, our basic assumption is that a game player’s neurobiological and cardio-biological responses to game play can be tracked with EEGs, VHR (variable heart rate) and ECGs, while approximation to a flow state can be measured with biofeedback. Dream states of game players are already being studied (Gackenbach, et al.), and other measures of the relationship between dream states—such as lucid dreaming—and the psychological states of DBG players can be designed and developed. Once the basic demonstration model is established, it can be infinitely adjusted and data analyzed according to an extensive array of experimental hypotheses posed according to the demands of molecular biology, neurobiology, perception, narrative therapy, flow research, education, sociology, hallucinogens, and even paranormal experience. However, the basic demonstration model must first be funded and its efficacy established. Nevertheless, some aspects of the game structure can be defined. Due to the recursive structure of narrative-metaphorical drama, DBGs can be experimentally framed in accordance with known brain functionalities and all cognitive models: Jungian Amplification, Global Workspace, and progressive framing of the cognitive unconscious. If, in a demonstration project—with statistical validity—a game win can be associated with problem-solving insight, learning, heightened game player awareness (such as that achieved during a Flow state, peak experience), or improved states of psychological-physical health, the fundamental hypothesis will be established. Differences in data may be validated with repetition and adjustment of the experimental design. A more comprehensive experimental design would entail discreet data capture using different technologies in order to contrast data and establish technological correlates. For purposes of measuring the extent to which neurobiological correlates represent Jungian functions, processes, and dynamics, a more comprehensive experimental design will be necessary. The measures of proof will depend on a triangulation of correlates: psychological meaning as measured against reported realization of premise, affective immersion as measured against indicators of flow state, and game win assessed at various levels of progress. Based on theoretical synchronicities in the fields of physics, psychology, neurobiology, and cybernetics---the design of the Meaningful Media Game as simulation of the cognitive psyche is feasible. David Foster’s brief survey of the Cambridge Club provides a perspective that synchronizes principles of physics, neurobiology, language, and cybernetics. It includes

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discussions that include: the universe as the thought of a mathematical thinker (Sir James Jeans), mathematics and logic are identical (Bertrand Russell), organic mechanism (Alfred North Whitehead), and sums up in the words of Sir Arthur Eddington, “The stuff of the world is mindstuff.” (Eddington) Foster remarks that, “Jeans tightens up Eddington’s rather vague mind-stuff proposition by suggesting that reality is centered around symbolic data as a general interpretation of what we mean my mathematics. This implies that the mind-stuff has specific forms or what we call symbols, including numbers and letters,” and their permutations. (Foster, p 27) Jungian scholars have written extensively about the use of affective symbolism in film (Broodryk, et al.), and improvement in the affective use of symbols is being increasingly addressed by the game industry. (Freeman, Jenkins, Hopson, et al.)

User Interface The objective of this demonstration project is to show that a successful drama-based game (DBG) can simulate authentic psychological states based on the most current cognitive science and Jung’s dynamic principles of Psyche. Our assumption is that the narrative architecture on a game screen can be used to simulate the dramatic architecture of dreams in order to access all functions of Psyche and the cognitive unconscious. In Jungian terms, this narrative architecture consists of symbolic expressions of the archetypes as they vary contextually in the Journey of the Hero. Contextual interface is discussed in more detail in the index. Such personalization of the game depends upon the computational synchronization of a variety of correspondence models: Cognitive science; Fourier Transforms; Myer’s-Briggs personality profiles; Circumplex, chromo-therapy; Munsell Color System, Finite Element Analysis packages, Connectionism, Kohonen Networks, etc. Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell studied myth from the standpoint of their psychologicalsymbolic meaning. Campbell observed that all myths are based on the narrative called The Journey of the Hero which symbolizes the psychological evolution of personal and collective humanity within the context of human development from the state of emergent personality (the sense of individuality) to the stage of transcendent soul (a sense of the integrity of all life). Told in symbols, the Journey parallels the stages of individual human development from conception to old age where each stage is characterized by generic qualities and objectives. This journey is described by Campbell as a Road of Trials or a vision quest fraught with challenges. While travelling this road of trials, the hero overcomes the limitations of the separated personality and finally achieves a state of consciousness that is holistic. Personal limitation is understood as a necessary condition for the development of a sense of individual self, but this

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sense of separation is not the final objective. The goal of the hero in search of Soul is to travel the return journey to a state-change characterized by balance and psychic integrity. What the person learns on the journey (the premise of the hero) is to achieve empathy with all life in order to serve evolution in a unified field of psyche. Who does the hero serve? The answer is a paradox. In learning to serve self, the hero becomes the True Self. In order to serve the unified Self, one must understand and experience empathy with its components in order to achieve integration and harmony of conscious and unconscious Psyche. If the dramatic architecture of the return journey can be incorporated into DBGs, the experience of game-play will simulate “real” life in both its mythic and mundane aspects. In modern social science and psychology, human developmental stages parallel the mythic “Ages of Man.” A variety of social-psychological models such as Maslow‘s hierarchy of needs reflect the evolutionary principle, and the graded public school system mimics the Journey of the Hero. In the educational model of the United States, each grade is an initiatory level with its own story within the over-story, its own characters, and its own challenges. These subsidiary levels echo the metaphor of the psychological journey through graded stages. In this educational model, each student-disciple is an emergent hero experiencing contextual challenges along the path of return. When this experience is simulated in DBGs, educational pedagogy will be revolutionized. The unconscious-computational plot sequence of the game will be leveled, causal, integrated, and linear. However, most of the dramatic scenes (like the morphing in dreams) will occur as to what Andrew Glassner calls a “view sequence”. View sequence includes flashbacks and flashes forward that are consistent with Jungian definitions of dream dynamics as well as the observable dynamics of personal experience; i.e., your physical body may be sitting in class while your thought body is more or less emotionally involved in the images of fantasy, memory, and speculation. However, your physical body has a plot sequence that includes birth, growth in predictable ways, and death which remains primarily unconscious. On the other hand, the view sequence of our experience often has the appearance of being random and unstructured until— based on the accumulation of experience—we begin having insight as to its underlying structure and meaning. Game-play interactivity will be increased by nesting stories within stories according to Fourier algorithms. Feedback loops keyed to significant contextualized (personal) symbolism will have the affordance of being random or open-ended until enough player experience is gained and the player begins to recognize significant patterns. According to Jung, dreams do not express in causal order except as applied to what Andrew Glassner calls “plot sequence” or the linear narrative that underlies the discovery of causal meaning. In Jungian terms, discovery of this meaning constitutes insightful psychic balance. In other words, a player can keep

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experiencing the game at his/her own pace, but eventually insight will ensue and this insight will be contextual, meaningful, or causally connected to the player’s need (premise). Every story has dramatic components, and some stories employ them better than others. Aragorn, Frodo, and Sam each pursue a contextual (personal) character premise (what the character learns) as the story unfolds. Max Payne, Zelda, Spiderman, and Roger Rabbit do the same according to relatively unsophisticated story patterns. If characters were portrayed more coherently, made more significant choices, and learned from their experience, the journey would have greater psychological scope. An example of how avatars could be designed with more depth is that they could be synchronized with gamer personality profiles assessed in pre-game Myers-Briggs or Big Five tests. Sophisticated target group profiling would also be effective as to the design of avatars and AI characters. In this way game stories could be programmed so that more meaningful choices and a greater variety of choices would be articulated according to the view sequence. Meaningful choices would lead to a more meaningful game experience that addresses realistic character premise accessible in the exposition of the plot sequence.. When the game player identifies with the avatar, s/he identifies with the meaning of the avatar’s premise. When the premise is associated with the game win, the player experiences meaningful insight and a degree of psychic adjustment—the same sort provided by real experience. As in dreams, immersion and meaningful narrative will be keyed to symbolic content in projected imagery. Words will be used minimally while other languages such as music, facial expression, body language, and archetypal symbolism will be used to maximum effect using nuanced changes in the narrative architecture. In other words, writing stories that accommodate many significant choices will become a matter of symbolic-computational reference as opposed to linguistic reference only. The objective of story-writers will be to develop an understanding of the symbolic language of the unconscious in order to help the player navigate the domains of psyche—the Jungian functions and dramatic frameworks of cognition. The prototype game, Sojourner, represents a good beginning in the demonstration of this sort of sophisticated psychological simulation. Interactive navigation of symbolic domains in the cognitive unconscious The demographic target group of game players will have been established with focus groups in the general age group of adolescent to young adult. The game story will have been formatted in terms of binary choices framed according to the radial domains of conservative (SFM) and progressive (NPM) value frameworks. Within this complex computational framework, demonstration project interactivity will be directed to contextual player insight as defined by the premise. In this particular case, the premise is to develop empathy and the sequence of “empathetic” game choices is associated with winning the game. Metaphorically, the association of a game win with the development of attitudes of empathy will tend to reframe actual neural networks in the players cognitive unconscious. The limited framework of our

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demonstration project will focus on the transition from a conservative moral metaphor that understands Work as Reward to a progressive moral metaphor that understands Work as Exchange. Jungian parameters of psychological interactivity will be based on the dichotomy that exists between two character profiles in the Myers-Briggs pantheon of Jungian Functional Preference Orderings: INTJ and INFJ. More specifically, the dichotomy exists between Auxiliary and Tertiary levels that relate to introversion or extroversion of the Feeling function. In other words, in order to win the game, the player will need to develop insight as to the intrinsic value of expressing his/her feelings. Interactive choices leading to a game win will be based on expressing extroverted Feeling (as characteristic of the INFJ profile) relative to the domain of the work ethic morality metaphor (Exchange vs. Reward). Player quandaries will ensue because this expression is contrary to the fundamental moral structure and environment in which the player lives. In this psychological environment (SFM), Feeling is introverted and not expressed. This particular functionalcognitive framing configuration was chosen because it is fairly easy to communicate. Remember that the potential array of game premises is infinite due to the factorial differences that can be formatted across the sixteen Jungian Functional Preference Orderings (obtainable with simple questionnaires) and the numerous radial domains of cognitive framing. INTJ  Dominant (introverted intuition),  Auxiliary: (extraverted thinking),  Tertiary (introverted feeling),  Inferior (extraverted sensing)

Vs. INFJ Introverted Intuition Extraverted feeling Introverted Thinking Extraverted Sensing

Based on this initial computational formatting, the player will establish his/her own story according to the following procedures: 1. The first few minutes of the game will be in the form of cinematic images. The purpose will be to let the player establish (unconsciously) his/her preferred personality parameters. Cinematic scenes will portray embedded symbolism that correlates to the Jungian Functions:  Sensing physical  Feeling emotional  Thinking mental  Intuiting spirit/judging In first person (true Self) perspective players will experience the visceral-psychological responses to images such as a roller coaster ride, deep-sea diving, hang-gliding, or soaring through outer-space. Each cinematic experiences would correspond to a Jungian functions or complex of functions. Additional cinematic images could be imbedded with the symbolism of functional complexes that are related to contextually complex cognitive frameworks. No one expresses the ideal SFM or NPM. Rather, these moral frameworks are mixed according to an individual’s experience and contextual predispositions.

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Neurobiological impacts will be measured with sensing devices such as EEG in order to discover the parameters of neurobiological-Jungian functionality. 2. As the player is viewing the cinematic display, an auditory prompt will ask questions designed to establish the trajectory of the contextual game-story. The questions are:  Who are you?  Whence come you?  Where do you sojourn (travel)?  Wherefore (for what purpose) are you here? 3. The player will respond intuitively according to subconscious-conscious promptings, therefore establishing the trajectory of his/her personal game. Because at computationalunconscious levels of the software, the program is “aware” of the player’s personality profile, possible player choices will already have been articulated at programmatic levels. An indefinite number of subsidiary prompts could be offered to the player in order to answer the various questions and to articulate the distinctive drama. For example, if—in response to Who are you?—the player clicks a particular scene and a particular figure in the scene, AI could ask the player, “Who am I?” An AI conversation would ensue in order to evoke player insight as to his own identity by way of the reflection provided by his/her responses to AI questions. Substantive features like name (fantasy or actual), appearance, sex, and apparel designated by the player would be keyed to data banks of symbolic meaning. Player designations would thereby constitute relatively accurate identity projections from the player’s unconscious psyche. 4. Further scope of normative-conceptual identifications will be established in order to flesh out the “Functional” character, to assign appropriate personal symbolism within the unfolding drama, and to propagate characters consistent with the player’s emergent living-drama. Appropriate symbolism other than the fundamental earth, air, water, fire will be determined by the player, and this symbolism will persist and evolve throughout the story. For example, in answer to the question, “For what purpose are you here?” the answer of an INTJ might be, “To save the world by communicating my ideas effectively.” This answer places an emphasis on the Jungian function of Thinking which is characteristic of INTJ and is symbolized by air, puzzles, and games like chess. Such a response would probably not be forthcoming at this stage of the game, but the AI conversation (like Eliza) would evoke optimal responses from the player at this stage of the game and provide a psychologically insightful trajectory at this point in the incipient drama. The greater premise would be anticipated in the player’s realization that he likes to solve puzzles. Puzzles would then become a symbolic conduit for the emergence of the premise. The puzzle pathway would persist and evolve throughout the drama. Relative to puzzle solving, if the player has a preference for the game of chess, chess will become a game-defining symbol and a conduit for insight as to the premise. 5. Game interactivity will be designed to give the player an opportunity to choose symbols that are most meaningful, and the choice of certain symbols will influence the trajectory

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of the contextual drama. The premise of the INTJ is to become more attuned to Feeling (as with the INFJ) in order to develop empathy with specific relevance to the morality of the work ethic (SFM vs. NPM) and the symbolism associated with these elemental domains. At computational levels keyed to the player profile and premise, player interactivity may be articulated with a high degree of versatility. With each interactive choice, the player accrues authentic experience and increasing self-awareness that can be recalled as memory in the unfolding drama. The player’s psychological experience constitutes the player’s emergent story; therefore, any scenario that emerges as the result of interactive player choices in conjunction with the tutelage of the game software remains personalized and unique without the need for traditional storytelling techniques. Gradually, the contextual story will begin to emerge at a pace chosen according to the psychological nature and predisposition of the player and prompted by the game software. 6. Game software will perform the function of the psychiatrist, teacher, or Bard. Questions asked by AI characters, implied by the symbolic context of the game images, or proffered by the player’s subconscious cognitive frameworks will serve to evoke and articulate the drama. In such way, the psychiatrist draws the consciousness of the dreamer toward insight, the teacher guides the student toward a premise, the Bard evokes feeling and wisdom from the neophyte, and the Soul—through the experience of life—transforms the personality by bringing subconscious contents of the player’s psyche into a state of consciousness. Such tutelage in terms of metaphorical amplification is akin to the use of sophisticated Socratic Method. 7. Successive screen images will take many forms and draw content from many themes—all determined by player choices and psychological predispositions. They may appear— dreamlike—as a collage of seemingly unrelated details, as mini-scenes, or as longer, more discernible stories. According to Jungian principles, image sequence is not linear at the level of “view sequence.” The view sequence in which scenarios appear (like surfing the net) will be determined by player choices in conjunction with the computational overview. The computational overview includes “knowledge” of the plot sequence. Because the computational overview will incorporate all the cognitive-mathematical models with which to synchronize player choices into a meaningful media experience, view sequence scenarios will rarely be the same twice. Instead, even slight variations in the projected images of the formatted cognitive frameworks will—like variances in URLs—result in different consequences. However, beyond the seeming randomness of the emergent images will be the “plot sequence” determined by the parameters encoded in the software.

Art and Video Overall Goals

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The overall goal of the Demo project is to prove the complex hypothesis. Part of the process is to experiment with a variety of modalities such as Cinematics, 3D art and animation, 2D art and animation, etc. to see what works best. Due to the dreamlike appearance of the game, narrative scenarios can be portrayed in a variety of artistic styles. Relative to the healing potential of the Meaningful Media game, principles of chromo-therapy will be applied to color.

Sound and Music Overall Goals The overall goal of the Demo project is to experiment with various modalities in order to integrate science (including music and color), art, and narrative according to authentic parameters of cognition to optimize access to all the dimensions of psyche. Experimental approaches to multi-media sound and color will be a natural direction for research. Relative to the healing potential of the Meaningful Media game, principles of sound therapy will be applied to sound and music.

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