Game in the Brain

I like how Insurgency has a lot of dust and visibility penalties and the bots have good sneaking AI. They know when to slide, sneak, stay still and move, especially on the highest level of difficulty. Then after you are killed you can spectate and observe how people scan their surroundings. This is where we see the inattention blindness.

Expectations
There is one way I know how to compensate for Inattention blindness: its to “expect” an enemy to come out of every corner. The more paranoid you are the more thoroughly you scan through areas. I came to this as a result of playing too much when I got sick and had to stay home instead of participate in the game. I couldnt sleep because I kept seeing insurgents. I reflected on it and realized, It is a combination of baader-meinhof phenomenon and the 1994 friendly fire incident . Playing so much hardwired it a bit, and now I have little phantoms of insurgents popping up in my imagination. It gives me an idea of how it can cause PTSD, from all the anxiety it gives me even if it was just a game.

Awareness vs Impressions
I’ve gotten a lot better scanning, I realized why. Basically I’m used to having just an impression of something instead of actually looking into the details. This is particularly about my area. I was driving when I thought about this and actually tried to ask my self: how many people were in the over pass you just passed? What are the colors of the cars around me? How many buses were there just now?

This is mentally exhausting and its best practiced to be good at it. I guess its not good for me because I have low short term memory and have better working long term memory. I have to dump a lot of “processes” when I try this and concentrate only on it. I forget many other things.

Search by Contour
An old trick, but cannot be emphasized enough: look for contours and scan along those contours. Its just helps one be more efficient and gives a more 3d idea of the area. Being able to know that there are depressions allow your sense of danger expect enemies and hazards there.

As you get better you move slower.
This is one of the funny things about analysis, you get better but you become slower. You take the time you need to look for clues and you look for hints of income opponents. After doing the near to far scan, I find myself trying to think where they are coming from and already list my plan of action. Its about looking for other clues of their presence and not just their direct disturbance of the surrounding but their indirect disturbance.

Anyway hope it helps the team.