{"id":2544,"date":"2013-11-17T16:30:47","date_gmt":"2013-11-17T16:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/?p=2544"},"modified":"2021-12-22T20:20:31","modified_gmt":"2021-12-22T20:20:31","slug":"love-is-over-gaming-a-love-tester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/?p=2544","title":{"rendered":"“Love is Over” – Gaming a Love Tester"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following on from my earlier adventure with the stress tester<\/a>, sat right next door was a love tester, presumably developed by the same company given it was using the same chassis as the stress tester*. The love tester is probably one of the most familiar, and oldest, commercial biofeedback games around. Its function is to assess the sexual magnetism of the player using a comically named rating scale e.g. “Cold and Clammy” for no magnetism, “Out of Control” for lots. A love tester is basically a gag device which uses physiological input to provide some authenticity to the assessment. Their a common prop in media where making fun of the sexual prowess of a character is needed (e.g. The Simpsons<\/a>); you can often find a love tester in a bar or the funfair if you want to try one out,
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\"Coin-operated<\/a>

Coin-operated Love Tester<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

The love tester I found was using heart-rate to assess the player which was being captured by a pulse-oximeter. Obviously, I gave the device a whirl and being only the tiniest bit full of myself I thought I would score “Out of Control” on my first try. Sadly no such luck, I scored a measly 2 for a “Mostly Hot Air” rating. Not to be out done by the love tester I decided to game the device using a heart-rate monitor. Using the monitor I could determine how the love tester was mapping my heart-rate to the rating scale. This is a relatively easy task as early biofeedback tech commonly used linear models which are easy to recreate from just a few sample points. Once I had the model I could easily induce a heart-rate which would select the love rating I wanted.<\/p>\n

\"Love<\/a>

Love tester assessment, a 4, “Warming Up”<\/p><\/div>\n

In order to create the model I would need to input a range of heart-rates into the love tester. Unfortunately the love tester isn’t located in an ideal place to induce a nice range of heart-rates, with no place to sit down, and a walk away from work, I had to contend with the fact I wasn’t getting my heart-rate under a 100 beats per minute. Subsequently if I couldn’t get my heart-rate down I had to push it up. I’d imagine the scene looked awfully strange to a bystander, a random guy running around a love tester checking his watch the entire time. Below is a linear model I created from four data samples.<\/p>\n

\"Love<\/a><\/p>\n

Basically the love tester will label anyone with a very high heart-rate as a Casanova. I imagine the developers set such a high rate because as a device that requires the player to stand, their baseline level is already going to be high. I find it rather amusing that the pinnacle lover ends up being either a very unhealthy or very exhausted and thereby sweaty person.<\/p>\n

* I couldn’t see any overt company logo’s on the stress tester. A cursory glance online indicates the manufacturer is either defunct or no longer operates in this market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following on from my earlier adventure with the stress tester, sat right next door was a love tester, presumably developed by the same company given it was using the same chassis as the stress tester*. The love tester is probably one of the most familiar, and oldest, commercial biofeedback games around. Its function is to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20,156],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pY315-F2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2544"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2564,"href":"https:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544\/revisions\/2564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.physiologicalcomputing.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}