I'm back! Sadly, I did not meet Gabe and I did not play Portal 2.
I will be going back to play Portal 2 soon though!
I had a real good time! They had me play through 'The Passing' in Left 4 Dead 2 while I was hooked up to a device that measures galvanic skin response and a webcam that was tracking my eye movements and facial expressions. They can match up my emotional responses to specific events in the game to see how the game affected me. I had a nice long talk with my friend that is doing the research there. We talked about all kinds of games and how the psychological field can influence game design (I'm a psych grad as well, which is how I know him). We are loosely talking about creating some kind of psychology consulting group to work with game designers for providing better experiences in games for ease of use, directing attention, and elicitation of emotions. I don't know if anything will come from that, but I have a lot of ideas.
I took some photos of the inside of the headquarters with my cell phone camera. The place was all decked out for Halloween. There was a head crab climbing on the wall. hehe. I'll have to upload them later to show you guys.
