Turning shortcomings into challenges: Brain–computer interfaces for games

In recent years we have seen a rising interest in brain–computer interfacing for human–computer interaction and potential game applications. Until now, however, we have almost only seen proof-of-concepts where a single BCI paradigm is demonstrated to work as a simple control mechanism, as a measurement of user state, or for neurofeedback. There have hardly been any attempts to design BCI games where BCI is considered to be one of multiple possible input modalities (together with keyboard, speech, gestures, etc.) that can be used to control the game. One reason may be that research still follows the paradigms of the traditional, medically oriented, BCI approaches. In this paper we discuss current BCI research from the viewpoint of games and game design. It is hoped that this survey will make clear that we need to design different games than we used to, but that such games can nevertheless be interesting and exciting.