The Gaming-Rageologist Episode 1

This is the first episode of a brand new podcast I'm starting that's all about video games.  This first episode is mainly for guageing interest and receiving feedback. 

The firstlunlink is the YouTube version and the second goes to sound cloud.  Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/tXoB9kE71qQ

https://m.soundcloud.com/jared-arthur-the-gaming-psychologist/the-gameing-rageologist-podcast-episode-1

Kerbalcast Christmas Special Event

Hello Everybody!

J. Arthur here with an announcement. Since Kerbalcast didn't air an episode this week, a little announcement I was making will also be delayed a week. It is a time sensitive matter, so I'm blasting this out on twitter where hopefully plenty of folks in the community will still see it.

For Christmas this year, I want to give back to my fellow Kerbaler's who are on and listen to the show. So, we're going to be doing a drawing. All you have to do to enter, is email kerbalpodcast@gmail.com with the subject line "Santa Shrink". In this email you must include either your steam ID or the email associated with your Steam ID. In TWO weeks from today, I will randomly select TWO winners using a random picker from the great wide interwebs, and purchase you a game (or games, I have a secret budget) off of your wishlist.

As your community Manager I am doing this contest on my own. So all listeners are eligible, even ones that are on my friends list already or even Biff and Nos if they so desire. If I have money left over after the initial two winners, I'll keep going down the list and giving games away.

The reason I'm posting this now instead of waiting, is I want to be able to purchase games during the winter sale so that we all can get the most bang for my buck.

I look forward to all the entries, and may the luckiest folks win!

Let's Discuss: Micro Transactions and Overwatch

In this little test for something in the future, Caffeine_Rage and myself discuss the video game industry a bit.


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Fallout 4: First Impressions and Game Discussion

Myself and Caffeine Rage have a long form discussion about what Fallout 4 is and Isn't. We talk about what both it's positive and negative qualities it has, and we have a good time doing it!

The Martian: Mark Watney A Brief Psych Evaluation - Post Mars

Post Mars Evaluation.

Mark has demonstrated some very extreme personality strengths over the last couple of years. To be honest I don’t know how he’s still standing at this point. After over a year of near total isolation, I’m not sure how well he will integrate back with society, but for now he’s stable.

As we thought, his sarcasm and humor served him well. He wrote in a journal fairly frequently during his time on Mars, and through that we’ve pieced together a testimony for evaluation. Upon initial inspection, it seems he created another person to tell his story to. That person in his log was most likely his parents or a close friend. It’s hard to know for sure, but he has quite a lot of passion in his words, and short hand speech. It’s almost like he was a child and his journal was an imaginary friend.

This is probably the number one reason he pulled through. He created himself a friend to share the experience with.

On top of that, he did manage to regain contact with NASA. Text based communication has many drawbacks compared to real face to face or even over the phone interaction. It was enough of a drip feed though to boost his spirits and keep him going. You can see a shift in his journal as well. During the time when he has contact with NASA, he seems more upbeat and a bit like a kid whining to his friends that his parents make him do chores. When he is isolated, he treats the journal more like a confidant with intimate details and much more true feelings. These 2 things alone contributed more to saving him than any other.

Despite hating Disco music and 70’s TV shows, they provided a much needed distraction from how dire his situation was. Music and TV have been tested for decades to determine what affect they have on people, and 9/10 any music or TV is welcome to no music or TV. The effect only grows as people become more disconnected, as we are able to form simple bonds with these types of medium. They are in our lives, so we form an attachment to them. Marc is an extreme case of this to be sure. We probably could have had him watch anything though, and we would have gotten the desired results. 

Marc’s inner stubbornness is the final deciding factor for him surviving. He decided he wanted to live, and he was going to be damned if anything killed him. That trait is honestly not a rare one, but when coupled with his excellent coping skills and the fact that he actually kept a journal. We have a recipe for success here. Good mental health brought him home, just as much if not more than, the rockets that made the journey.

In All, Mark is going to need a lot of help. Given the seriousness of his circumstances, we would be amiss to even attempt to put him back to work in the next few months. Perhaps years. All of that will come after a full detailed interview where we can actually assess how bad his depression and anxiety issues are. Only time will tell how much we can actually help him recover. Odds are that he will always suffer martian nightmares, but he can probably survive those too.

The Martian: Mark Watney A Brief Psych Evaluation - Pre Mars

Pre Mars Evaluation:

Watney is a man fit for the job. Not only does he posess a strong mind and body, but he also possess a sharp wit. Watney is what we would refer to as the class clown. His inner city upbringing and parental influence have left with a knack for humor and comedic timing. Rather than respond with anger or lash out with an insult, he’s quick to quip about the size of ones mother. While offensive to some, the type of person that has the moxi to survive a trip to mars will typically find this sort of insult funny. As such, Mark is a sure fit for the the mission crew. This type of personality will be good for deflecting a hostile situation.

His mouth may get him in trouble too though. The jokes persist in the happy times as well, and such quips are not always welcome during a serious crisis or moment where focus is required. While Watney himself would be well suited to dealing with another like him, the rest of the hermes crew may find him annoying. The mission commander should be sure to keep him in check.

The humor has other benefits as well. He generally has a higher moral in pressure situations, and allows him an avenue to blow off steam even when it doesn’t seem reasonable to be able to do so. In fact, I might go so far as to say that he has a child like attitude when it comes to dealing crisis and stress situations. He tends to give the negative aspects in his life personality traits. Much like what we do with a child when we ask them if the pavement hurt them after they fell down.

His sarcasm behaves in much the same way. It is a defense mechanism that allows him to essentually blow of extreme adversity/negativity. Few can boast such a strong ability to make a snarky remark and then continue working on the piece of equipment that just hurt them. Mark can though, and that ability will serve him well on the harsh martian environment.

All in all, Mark Watney’s personality is strong and stable. Not many are more better suited to a deep space mission in close quarters. He will be a valuable asset to the team, not only for his botanical and mechanical skillset, but also for his uplifting yet somewhat abrasive personality.

Kerbalcast Mining Tutorial 3: Scanners and how they work.

In this mining tutorial, we discuss each of the mining scanners, and how the function.

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Kerbal Space Program: Crash Landing our way to contract completion!

What seems to be a horrible crash landing, turns into a beautiful hockey puck slide to science perfection.

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The Martian: Psychological Analysis of the Movie / Book

The Martian, a Psychological Analyisis.

The martian as a creative work, in my opinion, is one of the best things come out of the last decade in entertainment. As a production it is mostly well paced, being thoughtful and informative while at the same time being exciting and griping. Few works are able to be both realistic and exciting, as one tends to overshadow the other. However, the martian beats these hurdles in most respects. The book in particular suffers from a slow 2nd act, and the movie had it’s iron man moment. Still I will be shocked if the movie doesn’ receive several nominations at the the various awards ceremonies in the coming months.

The one part where the work waffles the most, and indeed this is the case for most works, is how grounded it is in real world psychology. It isn’t entirely awful, but a few problems exist. 

1. First of all, where are NASA’s psychologists? In the movie they are nowhere to be seen at all, and in the book they get about 3 pages worth of psych 101 stuff that, while true, isn’t a really good descriptor of why / how he survived. In the real world NASA would have gotten a team of the best psychologists on the planet to figure out how to combat his loneliness and helpless feelings. This would have been more important than anything else, because if he gives up one time, it’s over. 

2. The psychological ramifications of loneliness are ignored. Watney spends roughly 2 years on Mars alone with TV reruns and bad music. His only communication is text chat, and while that would go some way towards abating loneliness, it isn’t enough. People need human interaction. Even the most introverted person needs it to survive. Humans sociability is what allowed us to evolve to be what we are now.  He is shown to go a bit loopy towards the end, but in all reality even the most resiliant person would eventually slip into deep depression from the lack of human contact. On top of that, loneliness has the medical ramifications of reducing the effectiveness of your immune system, causing you to feel overly or unesicarrily tired, and extreme cases of loneliness cause psychosis in the forms of auditory hallucinations. A person who is alone for to long will literally start to hear voices around them, much like someone who suffers from schizophrenia. Those are just the big ones, but for the sake of time we’ll move on.

3. The Herme’s crews reactions are wrong. The Hermes crew does react with guilt and anguish to be sure, but psychologically and statistically speaking, at least one of them should be angry about leaving him behind, while one of them should be defending the decision to do so. Yet they all essentially mourn what happened and band together to fix it. While not impossible, people rarely react this way in crisis situations. More often than not, one or two individuals work against the “greater good” in order to preserve the self. That’s millions of years of evolutionary instinct at work, and even in astronauts going to Mars it will still be present.

3a. Furthermore, the hermes crew should be suffereing from guilt responses. Guilt typically impairs judgement, shortens tempers, and can cause severe psychological trauma depending on the situtation. Leaving a friend on Mars to die would rank up there pretty close to the top, as essentially they would feel the colective guilt of leaving a friend to starve to death cold and alone.

4. Even after returning, Watney would be a psychological wreck, and need years of therapy. While the book doesn’t get into this, the movie makes it seem that he comes home and goes back to work. That isn’t the case. Watney’s personality seems likely to recover, but he would be suffereing most likely from sever depression, PTSD, potentially anxiety disorder, and the left over affects of hallucinations. Not to mention the completely unknown effects that months in a highly radioactive low gravity environment would have on his brain. For the movie they needed a happy ending, and for the book it may have been to hard to tackle, but it still is an area that deserves a mention of some kind.

Biff Comes to Monday Night Kerbalcast!

Want some extra Biff Aldrin / Kerbalcast this week? Well Biff hopped onto to Monday Night Kerbalcast with myself and Rage. A great time ensued.

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