Telepathic Play: Towards Playful Experiences Based on Brain-to-brain Interfacing

Brain-to-Brain interfaces (BBIs) are systems that facilitate direct information transmission between two brains via a combination of neuroimaging and neuromodulation technologies. These systems can stimulate one user’s brain based on the neural signals of another. While Brain-Computer Interfacing is often discussed in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) game and play community, BBI is underexplored. In this paper, we investigate the social play potentials of BBI systems by proposing three types of ”telepathic play experiences” based on a wearable BBI system called ”PsiNet” which we designed, engineered, and evaluated in a previous study. This system measures the neural activity of players via electroencephalogram (EEG) as the input to the system and stimulates associated brain activity in other users using transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) as the system output. We hope this work will inspire game design researchers to create novel play experiences using neurotechnology such as BBI systems.