RE: Mechanics are the message

[Kenneth Lu <kenlu@MIT.EDU>]

At 18:39 -0800 11/2/01, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>That only matters for people who either aren't possessed of critical
>faculties, or are so ego-driven in their critical faculties that they
>automatically react negatively to anyone else's idea.  People past a certain
>brigtness level react to the work however they jolly well feel like, and
>being made to "feel smart" isn't an issue.  Your insight might be valid for
>mass markets though.  On the other hand, if you're making a fairly
>intellectual game, what market are you chasing?

[Warning: Rant ahead!]

I think I have a more egalitarian view of human minds than you do.  I 
don't see myself, or ANYONE, as being immune to emotional responses 
or to psychological manipulation.  Everything I said in my last post 
applies to myself, and I'd be surprised if it doesn't happen to 
everyone, to varying degrees.  You don't have to be "so ego-driven" 
to have an irrational reaction to things on some level.  You don't 
have to be stupid to react better to things that make you feel good. 
There's a well-established psychological phenomenon called "cognitive 
dissonance" whereby people are always trying to reconcile any 
hardships they're undergoing with their expectations.

If you spend a long time doing some sort of activity, you tend to 
justify it in your mind as something that surely must be worth doing! 
I think there's evidence this aspect of the human mind is taken 
advantage of in cult initiations, hazing, and other brainwashings. 
Initiates are often forced to do annoying activities.. and whether 
the cult members know it or not, it's because this makes the 
initiates think, "Why am I doing all this crap?  It must be because 
this group is really worth it!"  Likewise, battered wives or kids 
often grow to think that if they're being beaten, it must be because 
they did something wrong.

Does this mean these people are stupid?  That they're incapable of 
rational thought?  That it's as simple as saying, "You idiot!  It's 
clearly not your fault that your husband is beating you!"?

Likewise, my theory that people like to play games that make them 
feel good doesn't imply that people are stupid.  It just implies that 
people are human beings with emotions and psychological reactions 
that aren't always fully rational, and that that's just part of being 
human.


I'm pretty elitist about a great many things, mind you, but I don't 
think psychological effects are limited to the "mass market" by any 
means.

If you look at a game like Civilization, for instance.  It's a game 
hailed by intellectual hardcore gamers, not just the "mass market". 
Why is it so addictive?  It's because at every point in the game, you 
always feel like there's something rewarding about to happen if you 
play for "just a few more turns".  This is psychological 
manipulation, and it's not only dumb people are are suceptible to it. 
We all are.


I think it's dangerous to deny or not to take human psychology into 
account when designing games for the future.


At 18:39 -0800 11/2/01, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>Or, they disagree with the message and it pushes them away from accepting
>the game as real.  They see it as flawed.  For instance, the ridiculous
>knee-jerk environmentalist "global warming" scenarios of Sid Meyer's Alpha
>Centauri.  If the mechanical system of the game is amusing, they'll keep
>playing, noting the lack of realism.  If the system is tedious, they'll
>bitch about both the tedium and the lack of realism.


I fully agree.  I never said that people ALWAYS accept game 
mechanics, just that messages embedded in game mechanics are easier 
to swallow.  Clearly, if there were a game where, say, you had to 
shoot all the black people and save all the white people, I'd have an 
objection to it and likely refuse to play the game.  However, if such 
messages were more subtly embedded, they can be very powerful.

The global warming thing is a great example, actually.  For someone 
who's read up a lot about it and reject the premise of the game 
mechanic, it can be very distracting and annoying.  However, for 
someone who doesn't know as much about global warming, playing the 
game will make them accept it to some degree.

Again, note that I'm not saying people shouldn't use their critical 
thinking and go read up about it and all that.  However, I think it 
would be simplistic to say, "Anyone who doesn't read up about it 
instead of playing games and accepting this stuff is just stupid and 
unworthy of our attention."

After all, ALL information is biased and incomplete, and when people 
express their views, they often do so in a way that exploits human 
psychology.

Think about how novels or movies can make you care about the main 
character.. and if the main character subtlely has a few causes (not 
necessarily political; they could be moral), people will tend to buy 
in to those causes more because they care about the main character. 
Are these people stupid?  No, they're human.


At 18:39 -0800 11/2/01, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>I don't think fiction makes us do a darned thing.  I think authors have to
>work very hard at getting people to suspend disbelief.  You can reasonably
>assume that the audience is at least in a mood to play a game or hear a
>joke, but you can lose that willingness pretty quickly by putting
>dumb/boring/long stuff in front of the audience.


I totally agree that it's not an easy task.  While more overt 
messages work when targeted for children, messages typically have to 
be more complex and/or more subtle when targeted for adults.  This is 
more difficult, but the fact is, there are messages embedded in most 
narrative entertainment, and certainly in most narrative 
entertainment people considered "good".

And yeah, making it entertaining and not just a diatribe is key.  In 
fact, that's my whole point.. That diatribes (like the first half of 
this email) are painful to read and make people try to find flaws 
with them more than something that is entertaining.  When something 
is entertaining, people tend to just go with it.

-ToastyKen

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| Kenneth Lu - kenlu@mit.edu - http://www.mit.edu/~kenlu/ |
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| "Life is far too important to be taken seriously."      |
|                                                         |
|                                          -- Oscar Wilde |
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