Biofeedback games again... would you play using cheaper hardware?

Hi folks,

Earlier I started a thread about biofeedback-based games in SL. There was considerable interest, but one of the criticisms was the high cost of the hardware identified at that time, a device sold as part of a game called "Journey to Wild Divine," which lists for US$160.

I think I've found a significantly less expensive way for people to get into this concept. Here's a device that measures "galvanic skin response" a.k.a. skin conductivity, a key measure of stress:

http://www.mindgrowth.com/gsr.htm

The list price is $59.99 (unless you want it in blue, in which case, add $5.) That's about the price of a reasonably good joystick for a flight simulator game, I think, and US$100 less than the game package I first described.

This device actually emits a tone, rather than a coded signal, but I think it would be fairly trivial to write a utility to capture the tone on a Mac or PC (using the device's provided headphones jack and the sound input jack on the computer) and convert it to a signal to send across TCP/IP to a server which could reflect it into SL using XML-RPC. (It would also be trivial to use the same utility to whistle into a microphone and pretend you had this device, but what would be the point?) Possibly if we had enough people to place a bulk order, we could get a wholesale price break.

Note that this would only provide a somewhat limited form of biofeedback exercises, those based on a stress level as detected by skin conductivity. (Those are probably the most generally used type of biofeedback exercise for stress reduction.) The company that makes this product (Thought Technology, Ltd.) also makes a whole range of other sensors and processors, including heart rate sensors, EKG, EEG, EMG (measuring muscle tension), breathing sensors, etc., but since these seem to be designed for clinical use, I assume they're more expensive. I am attempting to get a quote. Another company (http://www.themindconnection.com/english.html) has an EEG device for 500 Euros which already has software that can transmit across the net, so we could certainly add more variety of events later if people were interested and wanted to upgrade their hardware. Another option for those wanting to upgrade hardware would be a wireless hands-free GSR device using Bluetooth.

My question is, how many people would be willing to pay US$50-60 for the hardware (which also works by itself), and then about US$10/month for access to an island-based service with, say, 40+ biofeedback games and other activities on it, constantly being updated and added to? I think we'd need to have the expectation of about 120 steady customers to keep the service running and be able to pay developers, etc. We should be able to support at least that number of subscribers on an island, as I wouldn't expect everyone would be logged in at the same time. If fewer people are interested, we could run a smaller service on a quarter island or less.

Thanks for your input,

neko

The $60 is good, the $10 / month is unlikely.

I don't need a device to know if i'm stressed or not. I don't really see the point?

The $50-60 is easy. I do not want to pay a monthly fee. I'd rather go with the $150 model outright than pay a monthly fee.

The idea is not to know that you are stressed out, but rather to use the feedback from this device to get OUT of stress.

-Ghoti

Right, Ghoti. I found the standalone game to be extremely helpful in learning ways to manage my own stress. I'd like to try it in a multiplayer environment. There are other kinds of activities planned as well. See the general description from the link at the bottom of this page. I can post a link to a complete project plan if people are interested.

There are upfront expenses, and recurring expenses (e.g. SL land, XLM-RPC server). But $150 is a pretty good chunk of money. Ghoti, would that be in addition to the hardware cost? I think that could work as an alternative.

Would it make a difference if people could pay in L$/month instead? It would be about L$2k/month at the current price model.

Another alternative might be tier, and we could build it with group land. That seems more complicated to me, but I'm trying to be flexible. It would not help prospective players with Basic accounts.

I could cut the price in half and try for twice as many subscribers, but I'm trying to avoid selling more subscriptions than the sim can support. Figure about 30 people can be logged in at once if we have an island. 120 subscribers assumes no more than 1 out of 4 people are likely to log in at the same time. If we had to support twice as many subscribers, the ratio would go to 1 out of 8. I know people are in different timezones and log in on different days of the week, but that starts to seem riskier to me.

Of course, changes in SL that might support more concurrent logins to a sim could greatly impact this business model, but no matter how you look at it, someone is going to have to pay the basic costs. I'm not independently wealthy, so it can't all come out of my pocket. I'm not looking to make a profit, but the operation has to at least cover fixed, recurring server costs, and I'd like to be able to pay contributing developers something as well.

neko

Actually, there's another option for getting this going-- a themed sim, with everyone buying their own plots and developing their own events, which they could then choose to charge for, or not. I don't have the upfront cash for this, though. Guess I'd have to talk someone like Anshe into the idea.

neko

Suppose the biofeedback activities themselves were free, but for an initial investment of $49, plus $11/mo, you would own 2000 sqm tier-free land on the island, subject to "theme" restrictions? This is the model the Uru group uses. All development in that case would be on a volunteer basis, but the service itself would be free for anyone once they had the hardware.

Alternately, no up-front investment, but the monthly fee is $16/mo, same land benefit, with a cost to drop to $11/month after a year? (The odd numbers are because we need to pay for an XML-RPC server, too. We might be able to charge a small one-time registration fee instead.)

I should start a new thread with a new poll... but I'd like to get a few more comments, first.

My own feeling is that the overall quality of the service might be higher if we could pay people for development and management, but if no one wants to buy the service at $10/month, I don't think we can do that. I'd rather in that case make the service free and set people's expectations accordingly. The only thing that worries me with this model is the prospect of people leaving and the others getting stuck with the island cost.

neko

I've finally realized that we don't need an XML-RPC server, so that cuts down on fixed costs. I'm discussing possible island rental strategies with folks who provide those sorts of services. I've also been contacted by a maker of biometric hardware who wants to discuss low-cost options with me, so maybe we can get the hardware cost down even lower.

Need to figure out how to fund the sim, though. It really doesn't seem like people will be willing to pay a monthly access fee. I can appreciate that. But the sim cost has to come from somewhere.

The Uru Live model is that a few dedicated souls pay for the island by chipping in for the initial purchase and each renting tierless land. Anshe's Midge project has both rental and purchase options, but she really "owns" the land so she can enforce the TOS (and her basic model doesn't allow for group land, just individually rented land.) The Dark Life model seems to be more based on selling game-related items to cover costs, and they rent shop space -- I haven't had a chance to contact one of the principles to find out how else they pay for their land. What do people think of these strategies?

I'm not looking to make a living on this project (which is too bad, it would be a nice way to make a living). But I can't afford to cover the island costs myself. I welcome suggestions at this point, either here or at the project website: http://gaeacoop.org/InnerLife

neko