Comments on: Pushing ideas to different parts of your brain

By: Noah Falstein

Noah Falstein — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:53:20 +0000

I think you’re right to be cautious about assuming what parts of the brain interpret things, as sometimes it can be surprising – deaf people for example use the same language centers as hearing people even though sign language is expressed without sound. And there may be an effect just from repetition, regardless of the part of the brain being used. But that said, this all sounds reasonable to me as a best guess. I would be astonished if this sort of thing hadn’t been researched, but I’m not up on the extent of that research. Someday I may study neuroscience and cog. psych. just to satisfy my curiosity on this and related subjects, it’s so close to game design.

By: Jurie

Jurie — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:03:44 +0000

Interesting! I am sure Mr. Moore with his rational approach to magic might have interesting things to say about this. Using rituals can also be seen as pushing something to a certain part of your brain.

Re writing demons: Andy recently asked how I would design hell, and I very quickly decided I didn’t want to think about it. The research I did for Manhunt 2 was bad enough.

By: James Wallis

James Wallis — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:46:38 +0000

In ‘Writing for Comics’ (1985/6) Alan Moore describes using the same technique as Mantel, visualising himself as the character he’s writing, and essentially role-playing or experiencing the world from within them for a while. Particularly useful when writing demons, he says.