This is a very interesting question. I have considered it before when doing tactical gaming in security scenarios, but without making any headway.

One issue is the ethical: If you could somehow simulate real panic realistically during a game, would it be ethical to subject your players to it during a game? Panic can affect people in lasting ways, perhaps negatively. The answer is probably yes, it would be ethical, if the panic was representative of what players would realistically face in the course of their work. You might be able to argue, for instance, that the experience and the learning from realistic panic would be beneficial for all, but you may need advice and confirmation from your national independent ethics review board.

On the other hand, the value of panic during a game (supposing that one could simulate it) may not be as significant as one might first suppose. The reason is that gaming with cool-headed participants (unstressed by panic) may still be teaching them much of what they need to know precisely in order to reduce or eliminate panic when facing situations in the real world. The purpose of the cool-headed gaming might arguably be to ingrain automatic action or behavior sets that have been proven to mitigate panic in the real world. Much of professional training for critical events seems to be designed precisely for that.

Thus, although it is pretty clear that cool-headed training (gaming) goes a long way to mitigating or avoiding panic, it is not clear that hot-headed gaming (with simulated realistic panic) will do the same thing, or be as effective as cool-headed. Simulated, realistic panic may actually undermine or worsen the training outcomes relative to the cool-headed training. It is an open question.

Perhaps it is the value of simulating realistic panic during gaming generally that you are researching. It is a good question too.

Sorry, I know of no references in the topic.

Ronald

Thanks dear Ronald for your answer. Very interesting topics you discussed here. Still the question remains that how we can make the participants to panic and it won't face ethical issues. 

Hi Parvaneh,

My suggestion comes more from my gaming experience than my research. Designing in the unexpected is key: for example, in Mario Strikers Charged, players usually start with a fixed number of footballers each (as we would expect, according to conventions). However, on a particular football pitch, right before the game starts, a random footballer will be taken away. The first time that happened, I panicked.

Of course, when I encountered that the second time, I did not panic. But the random selection of the footballer to be taken away did add to my anxiety. So, besides designing in the unexpected, designing in some random-ness is key too.

Hope that helps,

Kin (bit.ly/kin-hedc)

Hi Parvaneh

Actually the issue is one of the interesting and main key questions in scenario planning in "futures studies" and "foresight". But the question there was a little different. In this field the question is that: How can we make scenarios believable?  what ever the scenarios being believable the reactions that players done can be near to the real true reactions. 

The problem is that in safe and sound situations players may not show their real reactions and the efficiency of exercise definitely decreased.

So I believe that the panic is one of these reactions therefore in some cases implant panic may not possible or may not work. Because the level of panic in your players is actually different.

So I suggested that instead we could try to make the situation as believable as possible in some below ways with using Additional details and tools such as

- Designed equipment, technologies and special tools for the special scenarios or games

- Providing marginal information for each scenarios

- Effective story telling to make scenarios believable 

- Applying special Effects like movies

- Designed environment of actions

- Providing intervention through skillful players among the scenario

- Provide surprising and unexpected issues during game (secret arrangement with some players)

- Shocking start also can breaking ice and involved in other above mentioned tools

- etc.

I believe all of these tools or techniques trying to change the image and the sense of your players in their mind. It is obviously time consuming and costly and needs creativity and designing process. anyway I suggest to take a look at the book wrriten by Karl Weick, entitled "Making sense of the organization"  John Wiley & Sons, 2012. In this book in page 129 forward, you may find some concept about process of sense-making. It may not directly answer to your question but may build a mental framework to make a sense for your games and scenarios.

Best Regards,

Ardeshir Sayah

Thanks everyone for answering my question, I got really good ideas. 

Dear Parvaneh,

Ideas that come to mind are also:

- to give your participants a clear time limit that can be stressed during the game (numbers turning red and beeping, etc.)

- to couple failure with punishment, and success with reward

- to make the environment in which you conduct the game very uncomfortable

These do not create real sentiments of fear, but they put the sort of pressure onto participants that is ethically acceptable and can intrinsically stimulate panic rather than you trying to bring it in from the outside.

Cheers,

Dora

Hi Parvaneh

You might wish to take a look at what's been done by companies in that specific area.

Here are two I know, VSTEP 

http://vstepsimulation.com/news/new-state-art-fire-behaviour-training-centre/

and e-semble

http://www.xvrsim.com/

Regards, Rafa

Hi Parvaneh,

My research is about emergency training in VR. From my point of view, this is technically possible (not definitely), but you might never get approved by ethics review board.

Another issue is, who can tell the panic in game is equivalent to that in real emergency? It is hard to measure and evaluate. Also, some psychologists claim there is no real panic during the emergency. They believe the emotion of panic we are talking about is just panic-like emotions....

In real world, there are many factors may contribute to panic or panic-like emotion, such as exposure of fire and smoke, alarms, congestion of evacuation flow, familiarity with target environment etc. You may implement features based on one or more factors and see how users feel and react to it.I think this could be a very interesting experiment and will be helpful for future studies on danger perception.

Best Wishes,

Mingze 

Thanks everyone for your useful answers. 

The question that repeatedly comes to mind is: What is the technical definition of "panic". I was hoping that someone would try to define it here.

In the present context, it seems to mean cognitive disability due to fear or similar stress. As suggested in some responses, cognitive disability due to stress might be artificially simulated without fear, by imposing an urgent demand for decision making, perhaps amid high uncertainty, where the cost of error is perceived to be high.

The point to be made is that, whatever the definition of "panic" may be, the definition itself points the way ahead to the methods for its simulation. 

Dear Ronald, the point you mentioned about the concept of panic is very true. In our serious game/exercise, we want the participants to experience panic, and then the impact of panic on their ability in evacuating the building (path finding, decision making, and using decision support tools) will be studied.  

Dear Parvaneh,

panic is a very strong and especially a spontanuous reaction. Even in games and films it is very difficult to create such a response. While we want to believe the "story" or narration we are still aware that the game or film is "just" a story. To create panic, this knowledge had to be overcome at least temporarily. I doubt that this is possible in a serious game. In your situation I would go for intense stress instead.

Best, Oliver