This Last Week, in Summation

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4/26/13
Today I Researched the psychological "tricks" used in the Silent Hill franchise.
I learned about how effective exposing the player to controversial topics can be as a tool, and how you can use guilt as a trick to get players to hesitate long enough to mess up and possibly die.
I spent roughly 3 hours picking through articles and getting this stuff

This is the article I used the most
http://mindhacks.com/2007/05/03/psychoanalysis-of-resident-evil-and-silent-hill/

I used this article a fair amount
http://outsideyourheaven.blogspot.com/2010/09/sexual-nightmares-in-silent-hill.html

And I used this pdf a bit
http://gameplay-archive.org/documents/Boyce_SilentHill2(2011).pdf

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4/27/13
Today I wrote up a nice summary of the research I completed yesterday
I didn't exactly learn anything new, but I reinforced freshly obtained knowledge
I spent about 2 hours typing up my summary

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4/29/13
Today I looked into what careers are possible with psychology in the gaming world.
I learned that only Valve explicitly hires psychologists. The requirements are reasonable, and the pay is very heavily bonus based. But, if I can do as I plan and graduate from Digipen, then I should have no trouble getting hired up by any major video game company, in fact they would most likely be looking FOR me.
It was really difficult to find any relevant information so this took me about 3 hours.

This would be my course catalogue
https://www.digipen.edu/academics/degree-programs/bs-in-computer-science-and-game-design/course-sequence/

This is an article on the work environment at Valve
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/187296/

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5/1/13
Today I researched where exactly psychologists stand in the development process.
I learned that psychologists help make sure a game will remain fun and relevant, and not become tedious or boring. They also work towards making games so fun, almost to the point of addictiveness (especially with MMORPG's). Another thing they do is run tests, having subjects play a game while having their brains scanned, in order to figure out which parts/moments of the game are exciting and which are boring.
This activity ate up a whole 2 hours.

I used this one for the last example
http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2010/11/game-on.aspx

This wasn't so much useful as it was simple affirmation
http://article-library.psychologyandspirit.com/development/20110918-005436-Role-of-Psychologists-in-Video-Game-Design

This article was interesting, to say the least
http://indiegraph.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/psychology-and-game-design/

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