Originally Posted by Tool

How about using the THREAT of PTSD to get scrotes to take breaks while playing? Play for longer than an hour without a break, your character's attention span starts to wander, reflexes slow, that sort of thing. You will need real-time pauses to "refresh", and your character will need to get to a medical centre for "councilling". Additional points/health/skills for looking after your character psychologically as well as physically.

Like it, and then they are rationed to how much gameplay they are going to have.

Originally Posted by TheMinister

Perhaps it would be easier to portray it in another character, instead of the player. Maybe if your squadmates start acting up, zoning out etc etc- whatever the outward signs might be.
There'd be a world of difference between just showing it in the game and making the game about it though.

And thinking back to Far Cry 2, remember the jackal? To me, he seemed to have some kind of mental health problem- the way he *spoiler alert* kills himself at the end of the story. Perhaps making mental health integral to the plotline of the game would allow you to do it a bit more justice.

And before you get all angry tropper, surely it must be a good thing that PTSD gets more exposure- hushing up about a problem rarely solves anything. At very least, it's already caused us all to have a nice little debate here- how many more people can be made to think by this game?

In the time I have been involved in this I have found the opposite. People claiming to have PTSD when the have been rear-ended in Tescos carpark to claim insurance

Originally Posted by chocolate_frog

Originally Posted by Tool

How about using the THREAT of PTSD to get scrotes to take breaks while playing? Play for longer than an hour without a break, your character's attention span starts to wander, reflexes slow, that sort of thing. You will need real-time pauses to "refresh", and your character will need to get to a medical centre for "councilling". Additional points/health/skills for looking after your character psychologically as well as physically.

Like it, and then they are rationed to how much gameplay they are going to have.

It's an interesting take on "ethical programming" to stop sprogs (and me...) playing for six hours straight, but if you do it at the expense of realism, game context, or entertainment you risk ruining the game. If Squiggers wants to use this to push awareness of PTSD, going all overkill and using it as a method for making a game boring will backfire.

Seeing it in squadmates (assuming Squig's game features them) is a very good idea.

My tuppance worth. It's worth a try, if only to bring PTSD into the forefront. "Combat" sims will NEVER truely reflect actual combat (for example, we only ever had perhaps 5 different weapons to select, and not all on one patrol!). Senses other than sight cannot be properly replicated (we used smell much more than sight in a lot of instances).

There's actually a British bloke who we do some work with - genius with the whole "games for military training" thing - who's developed a smell-producing peripheral to do just that, and in the name of PTSD research. I'll try and find a link later - I think he's called Bob Stone.

We all know films that touch painful, difficult and complicated things, and a game incorporating the right plot and cut-scenes could do potentially do the same thing in just as sensitive and respectful way as some films do.

No?

More and more I'm beginning to think that tropper is a severe technophobe, inherently against the use of gaming as a medium. I doubt you'll be able to convince him there's any similarity between film and games, because he can't see beyond the "clicky, shooty, boomy" aspect. The fact that many games now get Hollywood to provide writers, and even famous actors, to contribute to storylines seems to have bypassed him. Maybe his PTSD comes from getting an Amiga stuck up his arrse when he was little. Regardless, the guy has shown absolutely zero interest in sensible debate since he started posting in this thread. It's a shame, because if (as he seems to be implying) he truly does have a broad experience of the subject, he really could have provided some useful input.

Unfortunately he's just a throbber.

Oh yer a TechnoPhobe with B.eng(hons) in CAE from the Universirty of Glamorgan

And when you can program emotion into a game it has to be an award winner

Glamorgan has a Uni? Well done, you.

If you're an engineering graduate I'd expect you to be able to construct a relatively sensible, literate and plausible argument - although you can be excused the inability to spell or use correct grammar.

Now, are you going to contribute or would you rather carry on crayoning?

Edit to add in a response to your own:

For the umpteenth time, will you read the fcking thread? No-one's asking for programmed emotion. The vast majority of us have said it's implausible, and to leave its depiction to cut-scenes.

Originally Posted by BrunoNoMedals

Glamorgan has a Uni? Well done, you.

If you're an engineering graduate I'd expect you to be able to construct a relatively sensible, literate and plausible argument - although you can be excused the inability to spell or use correct grammar.

Now, are you going to contribute or would you rather carry on crayoning?

Now you are just becoming a name calling cnut.If you read what i have said, and the questions I have asked, allright but you have not,

You cannot de-humanise PTSD into a game,explain how, you know nothing about the subject,

See my edit for (yet another) response on that matter.

If you need me to break it down any further for you, I will - but I really shouldn't have to.

Oi! You lot of heroes!!
I'm with Tropper - PTSD is a serious fcking disorder and is being abused as a term in the last 5 years and now the mental health 'industry' sells treatments and counselling to people who have been in a little fight in town, fallen off a ladder. Someone even claimed on here he was suffering some kind of PTSD from reading too many Andy McNab books etc. FFS.
So now you want to package PTSD into a video game and disrespect people who may geniunely have suffered from it? (Ref especially Tropper having an Amiga rammed up his arrse....what are you on about you idiot?? ) Have a look at what you are saying. Sounds virtually insane.

Its a game and yes - if its about war then show the mental side - have a mental health score or something great idea - but remember its a game and people who have been to NI might not be shaking their hands in glee that your Pacman cries a bit at some point. There is a bit more to it than that.

Originally Posted by BrunoNoMedals

See my edit for (yet another) response on that matter.

If you need me to break it down any further for you, I will - but I really shouldn't have to.

You asked a Question about somthing you know nothing about, I answered, and you don't like that answer, but as you have no experiance of the subject you are now telling me I am wrong. I won't tell you how to write a game program but your telling me you know about PTSD?

What we have here is a Civvy Know all and a REMF telling us about somthing that they think is a game EFF off and get a life as I am fed up trying to talk to a fool

In fact you might find that a number of NI vets take great offense at your taking the p*** out of them

Originally Posted by tropper66

Now you are just becoming a name calling cnut.

Yeah, you tell him dribbler.

Originally Posted by tropper66

What we have here is a Civvy Know all and a REMF telling us about somthing that they think is a game EFF off and get a life as I am fed up trying to talk to a fool

The irony..................