It''s proven that you don''t need to see it for it to affect you. Subliminal refers to subconsciousness. The message is displayed in such a way that the brain cannot see it, yet the mind still registers it. Coke was the first to use this widely, with a commercial at the box office a LONG time ago that actually had a message which read "Eat more popcorn, buy more coke" or something stupid. It was joint ventured with the cinema companies to attempt to use it to increase sales.. and it worked. Then they made laws against it Or at least for using it in that respect.
What happens is the eye and brain can roughly pick out 25 frames per second and tell them appart. Any faster than that and the motion appears to be a solid moving picture.. thus motion pictures were born.. still images which played at 32 frames per second, well above the nessicary ammount to fool the brain. This insured against people with good perception, and as far as I know, no one can pick out 30 frames per second. It''s all very interesting in terms of how our mind works.. and how we see things. For instance, the lines on the middle of the road when you''re driving at 80 look to be 10 feet long, while they''re actually 3 feet. Perception in terms of judgement of distance being acturate, the line is actually appearing warped to your mind. This is because the brain cannot process the motion of the line, as it''s moving too fast. Thus it appears to be a long blurred line.
This is also good for understanding slow motion and such, and why we can do things like that in the matrix although.. that''s best discussed further in email if you wish.
As far as Landfish''s idea.. i believe it''d be deemed illegal. The reasons would be the sheer chance of accidently causing someone''s death. Not directly.. not by saying "go kill yourself" but by doing something like scaring the shizzit outta someone till they get a gun and blast the mailman when he comes over next.. simply cause in your game the mailman turned into some hideous monster and your subliminal messaging read "do it! do it! kill him!" or something like that. It''s a very tough question, and i believe you''d have to publish a visable warning about this. As well as give examples in the manual of the things said.. perhaps even full disclosure of all scenes with subliminal messaging.
I''d deffinately ask a lawyer first.. someone who would know. I might actually trek to our school''s law library, where we have a free law clinic where you can get help with issues like this.

J

Ok, Well.. I asked someone who would know and I was told that ALL subliminal messaging is illegal. The reason for this is that the psycological effects and side-effects of subliminal messaging still aren''t fully known. Even a harmless subliminal side effect could have a long term psycological effects that we''ve yet to discover, so it''s been deemed as illegal to use in any way, unless you''re doing it to yourself.. i suppose they can''t stop that

Anyways.. just thought you might like to know that it''s a futile quest right now.. but a really cool idea Think about it in any game.. wargames having ones to pump up your adrenaline.. etc Oh well.. not yet!

J

quote:Original post by Landfish
Why cool? because there are two ways to make a game scary right now, short of this idea. One, you make it gorssly hard, so that you die. This works (kinda) in examples like DOOM, but the player quickly becomes jaded and keeps his cool instead of wetting his pants. Second, you rob the player of control, al la Resident Evil. This is good because it makes use of horror cinematic technique, but bad because, well, the controls suck.

You thought Doom was grossly hard?? After just a little practice, there was virtually no room you couldn''t just run into with guns blazing, sidestep around a bit, and mow everything down. But I was always too scared to play that way I guess perceptions vary from player to player.

And I thought Resident Evil was laughable, not scary, but there you go.