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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

Video

youtube

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTUWrXJId_Y)

Full lenght lecture on Persuasive Technologies and Captology. It’s quite long, so rather than spending all day to transcribe and highlight it, I would like to encourage you to just watch it.

I will add some images that I found online which summarize the information provide in certain sections in this video.

Source: http://image.slidesharecdn.com/sgdforcas-150407053511-conversion-gate01/95/speculative-game-design-22-638.jpg?cb=1428403120

Source: http://www.behaviormodel.org/triggers_files/page6_3.jpg

Source: http://captology.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/behavior_model_650.gif

Source: http://captology.stanford.edu/wp-content/plugins/spotlight-gallery/images/Designing_For_Behavior_Change4.jpg

Source: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e1/bf/d8/e1bfd88dbedd86f21f1389653d505a98.jpg

Here is an excerpt from "Playing Games Is Hard Work: An Excerpt From Reality Is Broken", the book by Jane McGonigal to which the lecturer refers.

After all, we play games, and we've been taught to think of play as the very opposite of work. But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, as Brian Sutton-Smith, a leading psychologist of play, once said, “The opposite of play isn't work. It's depression.” When we're depressed, according to the clinical definition, we suffer from two things: a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity. If we were to reverse these two traits, we'd get something like this: an optimistic sense of our own capabilities and an invigorating rush of activity. There's no clinical psychological term that describes this positive condition. But it's a perfect description of the emotional state of gameplay. A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we're good at (or getting better at) and enjoy. In other words, gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression.

#BJ Fogg #Fogg #Persuasive Technology #Captology #digital media #technology #digital techology #behaviour #behavioural change #behavior change #pedagogy #imagery

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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

Video

youtube

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36ITttm6-KE)

A very neat analysis of the game Revolution 1979 and it’s genre: the documentary game.

Transcript

A few weeks ago, James played Revolution in 1979 and I think this little indie game might have just cracked the case on how to make a documentary game. It's got no free roaming camera, you control like a tank, the graphics are poor, the action sequences feel more distracting than tense or meaningful... and yet, we're still going to talk about it! Because, for all of that, it's an important game. Now, I won't say that it's a bad game or that it's an unplayable game. In fact, James is very glad for his three hours with it. But I want to start with its fault because acknowledging those simply goes to show us how much further people might run with the idea behind this game: the idea of a game as documentary. Revolution 1979 is a telltale-esk game set in the 1979 Iranian revolution. But unlike so many games, the setting here isn't just window dressing. Here, the setting is the point. Living through and walking through the events as they unfold over those pivotal few days in Iranian history is why this game exists. But, unlike so many games that might earn the label edutainment, this was something different. Rather than teaching you about the events explicitly, you instead ride along; taking on the persona of a photojournalist having just returned to his native Iran on the eve of the revolution. In doing this, it provides us an opportunity to present the player with far more than mere fact. It presents a glimpse into the culture and an opportunity to see many sides of an incredibly complex issue. As designers, I think there's a lot we can take away from this, especially from how they chose to present their narrative and the character they chose to have the player inhabit as they walk through this tumultuous world. First and foremost, unlike many games, they didn't put the player at the center of things. You won't ever be meeting the Shah or Ayatollah Khomeini and you won't be shaping major events. That is essential, because in a game that plays like a documentary, in a game that's about observing a period or an event, the player can't change those events. They can't fundamentally alter history. But, since agency is such a big part of the power of games, they had to take another approach. And so, instead, by dropping you in a much more local, much more personal story of somebody who just happens to be living through those events, they were still able to imbue the players choices with a sense of meaning: How do you deal with a parent who might believe the revolution is wrong? How do you defend a brother who's working for the military during all that? These sorts of choices still feel incredibly meaningful as a player and can actually have different outcomes as they don't affect the overarching history. Beyond that, they also help to shed more light on what a traumatic and divisive event this really was for the people living through it. So, unlike a God's eye perspective on history or even the perspective of the superhuman adventurer or the soldier we so often control in games, this more personal narrative helps to imbue the player with a sense of the excitement and the terror that surrounded those events. And while in Revolution it's pretty clear they couldn't build out all of the impacts to the players choices that perhaps they wanted to, this idea of narrative built around minor characters that aren't part of the historical record is a great one. It let's player decision-making change the game without changing the history. And yet, even though they set you up as a character outside the historical record, by making him a photojournalist they present a reason for him to be and many of the major events. And more than that, by making the character an Iranian, it allows the developers to expose the players to elements of the culture. Small things. Things we don't think about and that aren't often put down in history books. Things like the ritual of serving tea or a love of traditional Iranian street bread. Things that give the player a better more well-rounded perspective on the setting and the events that happened there. Rather than simply presenting these events as history, they bring in all of these little elements of the culture and show that through all of this the people of Iran were vibrant and alive. And by presenting us with a character that loves these things, it grounds the player and helps to make them feel present in the event, rather than like they're reading from a history textbook. But perhaps most, importantly by giving the player friends and relatives in the country, and by setting the gameplay just before a major historical turning point - when anything still seems possible - the developers set up a situation where characters within the game can debate both sides of what's going on. It's so hard to make that feel natural in any medium. And yet, it provides such a powerful springboard for carrying the conversation beyond the textbook or the game where you first learned about it. Which is why while other games have at times perhaps skirted the idea of a documentary experience, Revolution 1979 gives us a sort of blueprint for how it can be done right. Unlike with film, games can't simply capture events verbatim. So for some time there's been this question of how we participate in this type of historical examination. It was never a question of bias or of not presenting things perfectly accurately - and that happens all the time in film too - it was more a question of how to allow the player to make meaningful choices while still dealing with a fixed world and fixed events, like in a documentary. And while 1979 isn't perfect by any means, it certainly shows that games can do that. And because they showed us that the solution might come from the narrative rather than the mechanics, it's my hope that this opens us up to a slew of new games exploring this same genre with a host of different mechanics and approaches. I think we have just begun to see how games might record a moment in time. And I very much look forward to playing through other examinations of events in our world.

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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

Video

youtube

Awesome project that use persuasive techniques and stealth measurement (psychometric tests) to create a 10-day immersive and adaptive digital experience through your mobile device.

youtube

#Blast Theory #imagery #Karen app #applications #psychometric tests #Karen is my life coach #digital media #performance art #stealth measurement #adaptation #dr. Kelly Page #Kelly Page #persuasive techniques

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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

Video

youtube

Persuasive techniques analyzed from a rhetorical point of view.

#imagery rhetoric #retoriek #persuasion

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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

Video

youtube

Types and examples of persuasive techniques.

#imagery #persuasion

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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

Video

youtube

Principles of ‘persuasiveness’.

#imagery #persuasion

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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

Video

vimeo

An interesting project by Blast Theory, created in collaboration with my colleague and dear friend Dr. Kelly L. Page.

Here’s a little snippet from the project’s website about how and why the app was created:

“When John McGrath asked us to develop a project with National Theatre Wales in 2013 we were keen to create a personal and intimate experience for smartphones in which you interact directly with the lead character. We wanted you to be challenged about how honest and open you might be and to experience the thrill of having your personality appraised. We became fascinated with big data, and particularly how governments and large companies such as Facebook are collecting data on us secretly and using it without our consent. When we met Dr Kelly Page – an expert in this area – we learnt about the various techniques developed by psychologists to measure personalities. Researcher Geraldine Nichols spent a few months visiting libraries and archives in Wales and England to delve into the history. She helped us trace back to Assessment of Men by the Office of Strategic Services: a book published just after World War Two that helped the military recruit undercover operatives. From there we rifled through hundreds of personality tests across the decades. We chose some of the most fascinating, unnerving or significant scales that we found and wove them into the story of Karen, a divorcee with just enough knowledge to be dangerous.We feel it’s our job as artists to pose questions about this new world where technology is ever more personalised and intrusive. We love having our services tailored to us and we’re scared of the price we’re paying for that personalisation. Karen is a system that gets to know you. She/it uses data about your behaviour – whether freely given or obtained by monitoring – to give you an experience that is personalised, adaptive and intriguing.”

If you are interested to try the app out, please feel free to download it via the AppStore or through GooglePlay.

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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

Video

youtube

MarI/O - Machine Learning for Video Games

Welcome back. SethBling here. You're watching a skilled player play Super Mario World. But this player is not human. It's a computer program I wrote called MarI/O. This program started out knowing absolutely nothing about Super Mario World or Super Nintendo's. In fact, it didn't even know that pressing right on the controller would make the player go towards the end of the level. It learned all of these things through a process called neuroevolution. In this video I want to teach you about how MarI/O learned to beat this level, Donut Plains 1; what his brain looks like; and how it's all based on actual biological evolution. Let's start out by actually looking at MarI/O's brain. Let's play it again, but this time we'll look at MarI/O's brain as it's making the decisions of what buttons to press. It's gonna look a bit complicated at first. But don't worry, I'll help break it down for you. This structure of colored lines and blinking boxes is called a neural network. It's a simple mathematical model for how our brain works, but it can produce some very complicated behavior. With enough computational power a neural network could come close to simulating a real human brain, but modern technology isn't there yet [remark: one of my previous post shows that we might be getting really close]. On the left side you have the inputs. This is what MarI/O sees. It's a simplified view of the level: the white squares stand for blocks the player can stand on and the black square stand for moving objects, like enemies or mushrooms. On the right side you have the outputs. These are the eight buttons that MarI/O is able to press by using its neural network. In between the inputs and the outputs, all those lines and boxes, those are the neural network. Each free floating box is called a neuron and the lines connecting those boxes are like the axons and dendrites in a human brain. At any given time, only some of these neurons and connections are actually being used. And this is what people talk about when they say you only use 10% of your brain. The neural network you're seeing is a pretty complicated one. And it got so complicated as a result a 24-hour evolutionary learning session. So to explain how neural networks work, let's rewind about 24 hours and look at how the whole process started. This is what MarI/O looked like at the beginning of its training session, all the way back in generation number 0. The program is probably even dumber than you thought at this point. Often it just stands there and doesn't even press any buttons. If MarI/O stands still for too long, it'll cut off the simulation and try the next neural network. So it's mostly just jumping from one simulation to the next. But occasionally, the neural network says to press the right button and the player starts walking right. The behavior isn't complicated, but it's enough to make at least some progress level. Let's take a look at a sample neural network to understand just how that works. This is one of the randomly generated neural networks that appeared in the first generation of the simulation. There are some green lines and a red line and one neuron in the middle. Here's how it works: a green line is a positive connection and a red line is a negative connection. A green line reading from a black or white square will turn its output the same color. A red line reading for a black or white square will turn its output the opposite color. In this case, the green lines read from the platform that the player is standing on and make the neural network press the right button as long as a player is standing on it. However, when the red line reads a black square, representing one of those Keeped Koopa's, it presses the A button and makes the player jump. This puts the player in a position where the green lines are no longer reading a white square, so the right button turns off and Mario just stands there. This is a really basic example that illustrates how a more complicated neural network might operate. The more lines and neurons you have, the more nuanced the decisions can be. So, how exactly do we get those more complicated neural networks? The answer is evolution. When MarI/O gets further right on the screen, its fitness goes up. In this case, fitness as a function of how far right it gets and how quickly it gets there. Only the neural networks that produce the highest fitness are selected to be bred, creating the next generation. It took thirty four generations of genetic breeding and fitness evaluation before MarI/O was able to finish the level without dying and get a fitness core of about 4000. You can see there were several places it got stuck for a few generations, but it always evolved out of those ruts. Let's take a look at a few of those ruts. You can look at the top left corner of the screen to see what generation number each rut occurred on. This process of picking the fittest individuals from each generation, breeding them together and adding random mutations very closely matches the actual process of biological evolution that took single-celled organisms and produced intelligent humans. That's the power neuroevolution. And though we don't yet have enough computational resources to produce something on the level of the human brain this way, it's kinda neat to see what it can do on one of my favorite games. I didn't come up with this idea my own. This algorithm is called NEAT, which stands for Neuroevolution of Augmenting Topologies and it's based on a paper by Kenneth Stanley and Risto Miikkulainen (also see Wikipedia for a layman description). It's a really great paper that describes how to use genetic algorithms to build up neural networks from bare-bones without presupposing the best structure for the neurons and their connections. It also includes some really cool ideas for separating genomes into species, which a lot of genetic algorithms don't really try and do. I wrote MarI/O from scratch in Lua as a plugin for an emulator called BizHawk. As I close out the video, let's take a look at the fittest neural network in each generation. It's kinda cool how sometimes you can see them make modifications to each other and improve performance, but sometimes an entirely new species becomes prominent and dominates the others. If you'd like to do more reading about the concepts I talked about in this video, I've provided some links in the video description. I had a lot of fun working on this project and I learned a ton. Hopefully you learned something too. That's about it. Thanks for watching!

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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

Video

youtube

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnUYcTuZJpM)

Very comprehensive video about Deep Mind’s work on artificial intelligence. An interesting extra is the details about how the machine learning is taking place: through through playing games... How about that! Maybe that should tell us something about the power of games to induce learning.

#deep mind #google #AI #artifical intelligence #computer learning #machine learning #intelligence #imagery #learning #games #game based learning #neural networks

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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

Video

youtube

Remix culture

It’s beautiful and intriguing to see how good compositions tend to hold their own and maintain their appeal, regardless of the medium/instrument used to appropriate them.

Other examples:

2Cellos - Wake Me Up (originally by Avicii)

2Cellos - Thunderstruck (originally by AC/DC) : https://youtu.be/uT3SBzmDxGk

Steve’n’Seagulls - Thunderstruck (idem): https://youtu.be/e4Ao-iNPPUc

2Cellos - They Don't Care About Us (originally by Michael Jackson): https://youtu.be/l-9VZZWtMfQ

BLOW - Freed From Desire (originally by Gala): https://youtu.be/l3lps_B8_Ck

BLOW - One (originally by Swedish House Mafia): https://youtu.be/UeYRwmhBOeY

Peter Lee Johnson - Save the World (originally by Swedish House Mafia): https://youtu.be/Nxuue2G0mPE

Peter Lee Johnson - Changes (originally by 2Pac): https://youtu.be/dsn5hmDY-Hc

Peter Lee Johnson - Just the Way You Are (originally by Bruno Mars): https://youtu.be/iB0WG2-hFtc

Peter Lee Johnson - Someone Like You (originally by Adele): https://youtu.be/T_DJ-SeS8Hs

Peter Lee Johnson - Without You (originally by David Guetta featuring Usher): https://youtu.be/j421mh7gD9c

Pentatonix - Can't Hold Us (originally by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis): https://youtu.be/OglS3Q0Zxik

Pentatonix - Cheerleader (originally by OMI and Felix Jaehn): https://youtu.be/P95_pCbCPZw

Pentatonix - [mash-up] Technologic + One More Time + Get Lucky + Digital Love + Harder Better Faster Stronger + Television Rules The Nation + Around The World (originally by Daft Punk): https://youtu.be/3MteSlpxCpo

Ugljesa Novakovic & Nikola Demonja Jr. - Get Lucky (idem): https://youtu.be/ZJ1UK0Xd5Gk

L.E.J (Lucie Elisa & Juliette) - Tous Les Mêmes (Originally by Stromae): https://youtu.be/TR0dIyFFRqA

Brett Domino - House Every Weekend (originally by David Zowie) https://youtu.be/RjM_3KoPOU0?t=1m3s

Flula - Smells Like Teen Spirit (originally by Nirvana): https://youtu.be/VXxAaTtafA4

Ugljesa Novakovic & Nikola Demonja Jr. - Smells Like Teen Spirit (idem): https://youtu.be/pjvIjiRL0mM

Nicole Cross - Waves (originally by Mr Probz and Robin Schulz): https://youtu.be/dwq3J8i_B-M

Nicole Cross - Lean On (originally by Major Lazer & DJ Snake): https://youtu.be/aED0inT7vvk

Robert Mendoza - Just Give Me A Reason (originally by P!nk featuring Nate Ruess): https://youtu.be/_z-DGFwswpM

tLas&Victoria Perenyi - All of Me (originally by John Legends): https://youtu.be/SEY1FC4ddl8

Simply Three - Take Me To Church (originally by Hozier): https://youtu.be/-FMa6jWqO8E

Matt McGuire - Feel The Love (originally by Rudimental featuring John Newman): https://youtu.be/CBBuan98vx8

Kristers Hartmanis - Waiting All Night (originally by Rudimental featuring Ella Eyre): https://youtu.be/T1Ic1E1ORNM

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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

Video

youtube

Transcript provided by the Crash Course staff:

Hi! I'm Andre Meadows, and this is Crash Course Games. In this series, we're going to look at everything from the ancient games depicted on cave walls, to board games, to the rise of the arcade machine, to home consoles, to virtual reality, to role playing games and, hey nerds, even sports -- all games are created equal.

Games are used in schools and to treat medical conditions. They were used to train warriors for combat. Some games have international tournaments, some even have very real political consequences. There are games that you can play alone (tear). And there are games that millions of people at a time can play together. Some of these create a world -- some even have their own economics! Gaming affects millions of players all over the world and makes an impact on popular culture and... "culture" culture! (..). So sit back, hit the pause button on whatever you're playing and prepare for a multi pixel journey through the history of games. (..)

Before we drop into all this like a misplaced tetrad, tetrazoid, tetrazone, tetris piece, we need to orient ourselves. We should answer a basic question: What is a game? The dictionary will tell you 'a game is a construct that organizes play through a series of rules for the purpose of achieving a set of goals overcoming an obstacle and/or attaining an objective'. That's a decent definition.

I would call games "entertainment" but they're a very specific kind of "entertainment". Game designer Chris Crawford came up with a really cool hierarchy to explain this. To start, Crawford characterizes any kind of interactive entertainment as a play thing; anything that you interact with to entertain yourself qualifies. But there are also two types of playthings: a play thing without a goal like a slinky is a toy, but when there's a goal involved like trying to get the slinky down the stairs, Crawford calls that a challenge. Now if you're working to complete this challenge with no other active agent or person involved, it turns out you're working on a puzzle. But when there is some kind of second party involved, then you have a conflict. Ok, we're almost there. Crawford subdivides conflicts into competitions and games. In a competition the participants don't interact or interfere with each other. A good example of a competition is figure skating. Everybody's skating to win but they can't really affect each other's performances. (..) Mario Kart though, now that's a game. Players interact continuously, blocking and passing, and there's no clearer example of interference than when you're in first place and one of your friends in 8th place and they use a blue shell and take you out and take the leap. (..) And here's an interesting thing to think about: You don't have to be playing against a person for something to be a game. Those soldiers blocking your path in Metal Gear are artificial intelligence or AI agents trying to stop you from accomplishing your goal. The rules of solitaire can be constructed as an agent working to stop you from completing the game. So games have goals like scoring points or saving the princess and we achieve those goals by following the rules, like moving our game piece six places if we roll a six on the die or ending our turn if we've spent all of our mana.

Of course none of this matters unless you want to play. Voluntary participation is essential, otherwise it's work.

I'd also like to get at why we play games, but that's a little harder. The short answer is, there is no short answer. There is no universal unified theory of why we play games. There's no constitution of gaming, no ten commandments of gaming. Different games work on our brains in different ways. Games like Tetris appeal to our desire to create order. Something like Animal Crossing lets us be the center of a whole tiny universe. Games like World of Warcraft or Destiny let us live a remarkable life in another world. Games like Candy Crush lets us crush candy. We play games for a lot of different reasons.

Let's leave behind the mystery of why we play for a while and talk about what can a game be and what can a game do. Take video games. Modern video games can be a bit formulaic but recent technological advances have made games available to a wider audience and they've made the tools to create games widely available and that's well... a game-changer! (..) A larger audience and a larger pool of creators means a wider variety of games that get produced. Sure, you'll get Call of Duty and the annual licensed NFL game that cost millions to make and sells millions of copies but more gamers and lower production and distribution costs means quirky games like Braid or Super Meat Boy or Shovel Knight. Games that might have relatively small audiences can be profitable and sometimes those quirky independent games can get so profitable and so popular that soon they hit a wide audience just as much as a Triple A title.

And when I say wide audience I mean WIDE audience. In the United States alone there are around 145 million video game players. 37% of those players are over the age of 36 and 18% are under 18. That kind of breaks the gamers stereotype, doesn't it? And increasingly games are part of players' daily lives. According to video game academic Jane McGonigal by 2010 the average video game player in the US played for 22 hours a week [watch the TED talk]. That's like watching all the Harry Potter movies in order, and then watching Chamber of Secrets again every week! That's a dedicated Harry Potter fan.

Clearly we're spending a lot of time playing video games so what's this doing to us? We now have entire schools devoted to gaming and almost every major university offers classes and degrees related to games. The University of Southern California, University of Utah, and Savannah College of Art and Design all have renowned programs in game art, programming, and design. The gaming industry makes so much money. Even more sometimes than movies and television! There are even people right now on YouTube who are making a living playing video games, on camera - that's a job!

And it's not just about learning how to make games or make money off of games. Massively multiplayer game worlds can provide insights across disciplines. Sociologists can study how people form groups. Economists can finally see if their models work. And in 2005 World of Warcraft became a legitimate subject of study for epidemiologists. Let's go to the Thought Bubble. In 2005 a plague hit World of Warcraft. The game's developers introduced a new mission that called on players to defeat a boss named Hakkar the Soulflayer, blood god of the Gurubashi trolls. Is Gurubashi right? Whatever. When players attacked Hakkar, he cast a spell called Corrupted Blood, which drained the players hit points. The spell was intended to be contagious but it was only supposed to spread in that part of the game. Well, it turns out Corrupted Blood was kind of like a real world pathogen and it got out of the intended area and spread to the entire game world. According to an article from Reuters the major towns and cities were abandoned by the population as panic set in and players rushed to evacuate to the relative safety of the countryside, leaving urban areas filled to the brim with corpses and the city streets literally white with the bones of the dead. This is where science got interested. The Journal of Epidemiology compared Corrupted Blood to real-life SARS and avian influenza outbreaks. Terrorism experts also studied the event. They looked at the decision by some gamers to intentionally infect other players and this provided some insight into how terrorist cells form in the real world. In the end game developers had to invoke the nuclear option and reset the game service to undo the havoc wrought by Hakkar the Soulflayer, blood god of the Gurubashi trolls and, apparently, bio terrorist. Thanks, Thought Bubble!

Games also make their way into daily life through gamification. This grows out of achievement systems some video games use to reward players in addition to the normal game objectives. These systems have proven to be very motivational, so why not try them out in real life? Purdue is doing this. Some schools reward students with badges when they pass tests or complete homework assignments. Gamification is also used in fitness. For example some fitness apps award badges for walking around and even let users compete with friends for the highest step count. (..)

Academic studies also seem to validate time spent gaming. Studies from China and Australia indicate that expert-level video game players have a measurable increase in cognitive functions, perception, and motor control. These players were found to have increased gray matter and increased connectivity in their brains! So next time your mom says you're playing too much video games, you go "hey mom I'm increasing my gray matter." A hospital in Florida studied their surgeons who played video games before performing surgery and found that surgeons who played video games for more than three hours in a week made 37 percent fewer errors. They were 27 percent faster during surgery over those surgeons who did not.

Gaming also has cool applications in medicine. An Oxford University study indicated that playing Tetris can reduce the after effects of psychological trauma and might offer relief of PTSD symptoms. There's this virtual reality game called Snow World. It's played on the Oculus Rift and it's used for pain management. Burn victims report less pain during bandage removal and reapplication while playing this game. Another example is the online game Fold It. In this game thousands of players help doctors an computers fold proteins and other structures to support drug research. In 2011 players helped scientists solve a decade old problem in under 10 days! That's the power of games!

So what we're saying here is that games can be a positive force in the world. And that's why we're going to spend the next twenty weeks or so playing with these ideas. So press Start or set up the board or tee up the ball or whatever. Let's play! Thanks for watching.

#gaming #video games #digital games #imagery #Crash Course #positive effects

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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

Video

youtube

Transcript "Digging Deeper - Do Games Have Less Value than Other Media? (Extra Credits)"

How much of you last gaming experience do you remember? I mean, like really remember. Not just the plot or the boss fight. How much of the moment to moment play can really vividly call to mind. Now do the same experiment for the last TV show you watched, or maybe for the last book you read. Notice a difference?

I've run this experiment with dozens of people and time again I found that, minute for minute, people can recall so much more of other media than they can of games. And it got me thinking. They got me asking "why?" Why time again, even when dealing with totally disposable television shows that were of no higher artistic quality than the games people are playing, could people recite to me in much more vivid detail what happened on an episode of TV than in a game. People could recount television events with such detail, like ... wait, lets see... on detective mentioned to the other to circle around the back and then he shouted "Freeze! Police!" and kicked in the door. In the room, inside was this trashy drug den with, like, three dealers in it. One of them went for a gun, but the detective got the draw on them and took two of them out. But the last one ran for the back. And then the camera cuts to him being arrested by the main characters partner who'd circled around the house earlier. And that's a pretty decent amount of detail. But when those same people tried to remember a recent gaming experience, I'd get statements like ... lets see ... I fought my way through a bunch of rooms, then I found a rocket launcher, and then I fought through maybe two or three more rooms, and then there was a boss fight. We weren't retaining the details.

For recollections of a thirty-minute TV show, I'd get a far more intricate picture then I would from thirty minutes of game play. This bothered me. At first, I thought it was something to do with the nature of interactivity. Where we in fact distracted by the fact that we had to interact and that we had to actually play these games? That really worried me because, as a creator, I had to ask myself: was it even possible for games to become the medium I believe they could be? Or for people to get out off them all of that I though they might if they can't even recall the details about the experience the next day? How are we supposed to deliver the mechanics as metaphor, if people don't register the subtleties in the mechanics? How are we supposed to give deeper meaning or provide more for the player to dig into, if they don't retain the very elements that make such things possible?

So I went back and I tried to find an analog. Where else can I find something interactive that people did, that I could test how much they retained? It had to be something that changed every time, so it wasn't just something they'd memorized, like a play. So I talked to a few of my friends who do improv Comedy, and a few more who do improv Jazz, and the result kind of blew my mind. Now mind you, my sample was woefully small, but among those people, they actually remembered their interactive experiences more vividly than passive entertainment like television... but again, not their games. So, okay, good interactivity isn't the inherent problem at least. That's a relief.

So I want back to the drawing board. I asked more people about their gaming experience and listened more closely. I realized that it wasn't that they were just discarding all the details. Rather it was that their memory around games in general was incredibly spiky. They would describe an hour of play with a few bland sentences and then talk for 10 minutes about an incredible boss fight or heroic moment in multiplayer. I think it was typified talking to Mobo players. They would play a 35 minute match and only be able to say a hundred words or so about the whole thing outside a few key moments, where they could take 10 minutes describing something in precise detail, which took only about 45 seconds to play out on the battlefield. Alright, so this was strange.

I briefly wondered if it could be that the majority of our game playing experience was actually mind-numbing filler that we put up with because the high points were so great. But I don't really buy that. Even in the multiplayer games, which most exemplify this pattern of patchy memory, as a player I know I'm often 100 percent engaged in paying close attention to everything that's happening. So what was it? Frankly, I don't know. But I have a guess.

I think we've been trained to think of games in a fundamentally different way from books and television and music. I think, even when we engage in those other arts simply for fun, we're usually open to the possibility of getting more from them. How many times have you looked up song lyrics to try to better understand a piece of music that moves you? How often have you taken a character from a book or from a film and really pondered what made him tick, and thought to yourself "I'm gonna try to be more like that"?

But I think that with games, we've been trained to tune that out. And I think our industry is at fault to some degree with the way we've marketed and positioned the games as an adrenaline rush or a child’s pass time. But I also think the public perception is at fault, like ... okay, the other day I was riding the ferry and I found a certain beauty in the syncopated rhythm at the engines. But most of us don't hear it. Not because we can't, but because we're not listening for it. I think the analog is true for games. I think a lot of the time we're just not listening for it.

So how do we overcome this? Well, comics had to do the same thing at one point, and we saw the feedback cycle that happened: as people started to accept that we could get more out of comics then just escapist fantasy, creators were able to put more into their comics, which led to people getting more out of those comics, which in turn led to people to look for more in comics. Without which, some of the greatest works of the medium could never have come to be. Could we have had Sandman or the Invisibles in the 50's era comic industry with the 50's era comic audience? I would say "no". There was a level of understanding and examination that the creators needed to be able to count on from their audience before works like those could come about. And the cycle resulted in better comics for everyone, whether it was the evolution of Batman or the Green Arrow, or even pop works like Powers. The increased literacy and receptiveness of the comic audience gave comic creators the ability to deliver work in an even higher level than before, making comics a better medium overall.

So how do we do that? Well, the first step is on us as players. I think we can start trying to observe more and think more thoroughly about our games. Even when we don't feel like they may warrant that level of examination. And some people might say you're overthinking things when you do that, but I bet Alan Moore got plenty of that when he first pitched the idea for Batman Begins, and Mark Miller probably got his share when he talked about how interesting it would be to explore Superman's character with red Sun. Next, we need a better way to talk about the medium. Even among designers, there's no real agreement on the semantics of what a mechanic or a system is. There's no language for our routine conventions and that needs to change. Finally, we need to apply the lessons we learn from our games to our lives. There is value in thinking more thoroughly about anything: books, games, music. But the true value comes in taking the insights we've gained from our diligence and letting them inform who we are and what we want to be.

[Note: my colleagues have embarked on an academic mission to find out if and how the latter is taking place. You can read more about it here or here.]

[introduction Mike of PBS Idea Channel]

The thing, Dan, that you said about mechanics is something I've been thinking about a lot. Like, if it is harder to get the meanings or implications or even story of a certain game, could it be because of how we have to learn to play it? And then that becomes what it is about? I guess I'm asking if every game is also about its mechanics?

[promotion for episode on mechanics on PBS Idea Channel]

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joachimvlieghe · 8 years

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Transcript "Are Videogames About Their Mechanics (Idea Channel)"

Okay, so you're playing Fable2 and you're just working your butt off at the black smith so you can finally afford that master Katana and Mage's Cloak. You're ready to hit Vengence road looking for baddies. When you find them, you expertly shift between surround and targetted attacks, you fire a few shots from your flintlock pistol and end the whole thing with a masterful Katana-fulled chain attack. You collect experience, drink a potion and reward your dog Bonehead with a treat for all of his hard work. Each action and it's results in this scenario - from laboring and spell casting, to experience gathering and potion drinking - is connected to a mechanic within the game.

Mechanics are a vague, but important concept in game design. On Gamestudies.org, Miguel Sicart offers one definition of mechanics as: "methods invoked by agents designed for interaction with the game state". In other words, a mechanic is a part of the design of a game that lets you do a thing. And they are in all games. Chess mechanics let knights move a certain way and describe how pieces are captured. Threes mechanics dictate that cards slide and value are added. Magic the Gathering mechanics say that casting costs are paid by tapping lands, which are then unusable until the start of your next turn. When you add all of the mechanics up, put them in a context and give the whole thing an experience, that is gameplay.

For someone to feel effective and therefore engaged in the gameplay, they have to learn the mechanics. They don't have to be great at them, they just have to know what they are. What I'm wondering is: how learning the mechanics of the game and getting better at it can possibly work against the storytelling of that game?

True, certain games, like Threes, chess, checkers and GO are almost pure mechanic... unless you read the game as a metaphor for something else, which maybe you do. There isn't much beyond the way the pieces relate to one another. In other words, chess doesn't tell a story as such. However, lots of games do tell stories. They have characters and scripts and themes and plots, and when do have those things, they necessarily - no and/ifs/or/buts - also deliver messages. Sometimes even morals. But especially big-budget AAA games with huge worlds, massive casts, and the skills trees, abilities and menu levels to match, I wonder if having to play by its rules can obfuscate story aspects?

Now, I'm not saying that all mechanics work against all story elements in every game all the time, but rather that as players of games, I think there is a common habit of focusing on mechanics. There are certain games that encourage that habit, but it is not nearly a fact of gaming. There's a big and weird tension between what we do as gamers and what is happening to the characters in the game world. My reflex as a player of games ihas always been to consider more closely what I must do in order to progress the dramatic action rather than the dramatic action itself.

[introduction Dan from Extra Credits]

Hello, my name is Dan. I'm from a show called Extra Credits. And earlier today actually, we were talking about a study that our writer James did, delving into why we might remember more of the mechanics moments in our games than the story. It goes along with a lot of what you were talking about here, although I think this problem maybe as much about how we've been trained to understand narrative both as players and designers, as it is about the distracting nature of the mechanics themselves. It's about this idea of game literacy. We're still thinking of games in the way we've been trained to think through television and film, rather than seeing that unique language that games have. It happened with films and comics to. It took a while for us as an audience to really internalize the new ways these media can express things. For example, we all intantly understand when a cut in film or TV signals a transition in thime or place, but even that was once a new technique the first time someone did it. And it probably confused quite a few people in the audience at first. That's sort of where we're at with games now.

[promotion for Extra Credits' episode on the Value of Games]

Going back to what we were discussing before: considering why we might think more about what we do, as opposed to what happens... like I remember that in WATCH_DOGES it's about revenge, that there's the double crossing guy at the beginning in the bank, and that Aiden has to lead hacks for him because of reasons. But I remember exactly what I did in so many missions: sneak - take out this guy - sneak - distract this other guy - climb - sneak - sniper rifle shoot the propane tank to scare this other other guy - why scare the other other guy? I have no idea! Because the menu item told me to.

In this all-too-familiar scenario I did so many more things, engaged with so many more of the game's mechanics than I did with its story elements. In playing them, we sometimes make games more about their mechanics than about their story elements, and therefore messages. [Clip from portal: "That's the proper reaction to being told that you've got braindamage."] This isn't always a bad thing and is true to a certain degree of pretty much every creative medium - dance, movies, music, painting, sculpture. They're all just as much about how their audience interacts with them as they are about the ideas that inspired their creation.

But, the audience isn't an active participant in those other things, at least, not nearly in the same way as they are with games, video games especially. Turning pages to read Ancillary Sword and going to a gallery to see Dan Flavin are important aspects of experiencing those things... but are different from navigating the menu to cast a spell on a Finaly Fantasy game or effectively gathering and managing resources in Starcraft. For some people, myself included, the process of getting good at those things can make Final Fantasy 8 less about how one is in control of their future, only insofar as they are capable of learning from the past and not strong-arming the future; and Starcraft less about the blurry line between right and wrong during combat, not only between warring sides but also within those sides themselves.

When games become more about what players do and less about what happens, talk about story, theme and message can start to feel secondary, even unnecessary. But world building, character defining, action driving, narrative elements fuel video games as an art form, experience giver and vehicle for meaning. And equally provide a document of the historical and cultural moment in which they were created. Media always reflect the conditions of its creation. The situations and dramatic action in games contribute to our understanding of the world, not just games.

Purposefully or not, when we privilege mechanics, we dismiss the capacity of games to contain mening beyond what is found in our practical interaction with them. Thinking of games as a collection of tasks is like thinking of a book as a collection of page turns. I think it also minimizes our role as players in the important critical process of the games industry. Once we've learned a game, feel expert at it, it's easy to forget what's beyond menu items and achievements and side quests. This, I think, is one source of the "it's just a game"-attitude that occurs in response to tons of games criticism. When games are viewed as a collection of actions, talking about the many other elements seems like a waste of breath.

In games, just like in life, it's only once we've learned to sufficiently perform the action that we are empowered to act out our values and goals. To be as Sicart said: "agents interacting with the game state". Those actions might have their own importance. Sure. But that importance is set inside a much more monstrous structure of meaning, intention and ideology. And that's just as true for Fable and Starcraft, as it is for Mario and Katamari.

What do you guys think? Is there this habit of privileging mechanics? And if there is, does it stop you from becoming engrossed in or critical of other aspects of video games? Let us know in the comments.

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