EPOC Headset’s Mind Games

I first saw a video of the Emotiv EPOC while sitting in a crowded conference room in the middle of Defcon 15. The early versions of the headset looked like a cross between some kind of alien squid and a neon shower cap. The purpose of the device, however, made up for its strange appearance: this odd little headset purportedly read your thoughts, emotions, and facial expressions, allowing its wearer the most direct link to a computer yet.


The most recent iteration of the EPOC headset looks more like something you would see in a cyberpunk version of the future. The EPOC has already been given a limited release to developers for testing purposes, along with a beta version of the SDK. Emotiv has started taking public pre-orders for headsets to ship in late 2008, “just in time for the holidays.”

Emotiv’s current goal for its 2008 gift seems to be player-video game interaction. The demo reel on Emotiv’s website shows a tester grabbing a hold of a great big sparkly tree and pulling it down, just by thinking at it. If that doesn’t define awesome, I don’t know what does. Hopefully the attention this device receives in the gaming community will drive more developers to pursue similar interfaces for other soft- and hardware. Like the voiceless phone call guys at Ambient.

The EPOC is priced at $300, a rather large chunk of change. However, this is rather comparable to other high end gaming peripherals such as the NOVINT Falcon Grip, which costs around $240. The headset will come in two different color schemes: white with orange accents and white on black.

The SDK comes in its own varities: Affectiv, Cognitiv, and Expressiv suites. The Affectiv provides for the detection of a user’s emotions, Expressiv perceives different facial expressions, and Cognitiv allows users to focus their thoughts into one of twelve predefined actions. Only allowing twelve thought patterns to be tied to different actions seems like it might limit the development of a richer game play experience. However, taking into account that most well-designed games only really use about ten keys, the number may be just right. An included application, EmoKey, allows these actions to be mapped to keystroke combinations. With the right mappings, this would allow a savvy gamer to play Call of Duty 4 or Team Fortress 2 just by using their mind.

GDC 2008 Demo debacle aside, the EPOC headset is a revolutionary piece of technology that just might catapult video game interaction to the next level. If you’d like to get a glimpse of this future and will be around the San Fransisco Area in May 2008, Emotiv is looking for beta evaluators. Participants get to experience the “bleeding edge of gaming” and get “a significant discount on their early edition direct-to-consumer Emotiv EPOC neuroheadset kit.” If you don’t mind having saline-moistened electrodes stuck to your forehead, this sounds like a deal to me.