Inspiration
I wanted to think of a new (possibly more accurate) way of assessing medical conditions. For this hackathon, I focused on psychopathy, because I'd read Barbara Hagerty's "When Your Child Is a Psychopath" which implied psychopathy can be mitigated if caught early. Yet, the current measurements of psychopathy (e.g. Hare Psychopathy Checklist) have been discredited repeatedly. Because a lot of the psychopathy measurements I researched used moral dillemmas, I made an interactive moral dillemma - an interactive, psychopathic personality test.
What it does
The Psychopath Experiment is a video game through a chat app. The story is modelled after the fat man trolley problem, the Prison Experiment, and scenarios found at Harvard's moralsensetest.com. The premise: You sign up for a study is entitled "THE PSYCHOPATH EXPERIMENT", lasting 3 days for $25/hr.
As you get deeper in the experiment, things get dangerous, and you face increasingly difficult choices.
How I built it
Art: photoshop + huion tablet Code: vs code / c# Sound: audacity / fl studio Writing: notes for mac
Challenges I ran into
it's very hard to strike the optimal balance between education and fun in games with ulterior purposes. for this game, i definitely sacrificed credbility as a measurement tool for entertainment.
It certainly doesn't accurately assess psychopathy, but i think it is a prototype indicative of a more scientifically sound game.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
while i didnt quite acoomplish what I set out to do, the game is pretty fun for the 12-30 age range, and the aesthetic is great and fittingly spooky ^_^ also you learn about the science/philosophy behind your ending. so yay!
What I learned
the measuring and romanticization of psychopathy and sociopathy, and the trolley problem (and its variations) and the schools of philosophy following it (utilitarianism, consequentialism, deontologism, virtue ethics)
What's next for The Psychopath Experiment
make it sync up in real-time. Then publishing to Steam and marketing its release
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