Re: Reassurance

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Positive reinforcement given to the participant with the intention of increasing the participant's self-opinion.

Would you say that this is more like recognition, praise, encouragement, appreciation? I am looking at the word "intention" and I am deciding whether this definition is circular. The definition is supposed to answer the question, "In what situation will the player feel reassured?"

I think you mean this:

The player will feel reassured when she gets positive reinforcement that are given to her by agents with the intention to increase the player character's self-opinion.

It is not circular. Then I look at whether the definition can be readily applied, such as whether we can dictate in the definition what we mean by 'positive reinforcement' and what is 'self-opinion'.

I think the term reassurance implies a fear of something. So there is an event that the participant fears, and the other agents are telling her that that event will not occur, or that the player character can overcome that even if it shall occur. The reinforcemance the player gets is a piece of information that necessarily convinces the player to see the event in another light. If the player was not convinced, the player will not feel reassured, so that is a must. (An attempt by npc to reassure the player character is not the same as the player feeling reassured by the npc.) So this is version 2 of the definition:

Reassurance_2 Participant receives a piece of information that suggests the success of participant agent in an incoming event.


Re: Misfortune

Setback and misfortune would have similar definition, the only difference might be that misfortune requires a random event.


Re: Prejudice

I agree that prejudice should be associated with unfair treatment compared to a class that is not being discriminated. Suppose you dress like how people think a terrorist dress, and they assume that you are a terrorist. That is prejudice. The game doesn't need to show how non-terrorist looking character are treated, the game only needs to make the player know that he is treated differently because of a wrong assumption of the role.

I think there is a problem in the way you are suggesting because we cannot easily define what it is that makes two groups similar.

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a basic example of prejudice: a merchant NPC has two different lists of prices, one for class or race A and one for class or race B.

What suggests that different classes or races should be treated equally? Suppose race A are bunny people and race B are carrot-bombs-making fox people, is it prejudice to not sell carrots to the fox people? In my definition, this situation would not be a case of prejudice. However it would become one if the player plays a fox person, but the player character does not intend to make carrot bombs. In that case, I think that the player will feel prejudice because the vendor had wrongly assumed that the PC is also a sly carrot-bomb-maker. I think that the difference treatment will be inevitably implied, but I don't think that just because the treatment is different, the player would feel prejudice.

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A second basic example: an NPC refuses to speak to or give a quest to characters of a certain class, race, or below or above a certain level.

Suppose you are a dog in the animal shelter and visitors that are looking at your are also looking at other dogs. A visitor say, "I don't want this dog(you), it is too small." Is that a prejudice comment? What if the the visitor says, "I don't want any dog here, mom, they were abandoned, there must be something wrong with them." In the first case, the visitor spoke of a fact that defined a class (the class of dogs that are too small). In the second case, the visitor spoke of a fact that defined a class (the class of abandoned dogs), but also an assumption (they were abandoned because they were bad).


Re: Loss

For this definition, I want to distinguish between Loss and Wastefulness. Wastefulness is similar to what said. It is what you feel when something that could be useful is destroyed, although you might have no plan to actually use it or that the item did not belong to you. Say you baked your favorite cake to share with your roommate. She picks it up but accidentally dropped it. If that was just a small piece such that your roommate could get another, then you would probably feel "waste". If that was the only piece you would probably feel "loss", because you wanted her to taste it but now she can't.

In many cases losing something does not generate a feeling of loss. The most trivial case is where you lose something you don't want or are trying to get rid off. Suppose grandma took you to dump the trash. It was too heavy. While you were resting, the raccoon took it. In this case you lost the trash but you don't feel loss.

Personal satisfaction with an avatar's appearance is an outcome. Since we haven't been using the word outcome we might as well just use the word event.


Re: Happiness

My definition is not phrased right. I was trying to have this meaning:

When the player receives an event of value matching the value that the player believes that the state of the character player or the player should get, then the player will feel happy.

Basic Example 1:
The price of a buck is $100. You go hunting and return with 3 bucks. When you sell them, you are in a state expecting to get $300 because you know that each is worth $100. When the buyer gives you $300, you are happy. If you get more, you are not necessarily happy. Say you got $330 instead, suppose the price of a buck hadn't changed in 10 years. Then you will feel confused instead of feeling plain happiness.

Basic Example 2:
Suppose you are unpopular. But you believe that since you are the only kid in school that understood general relatively, you should be popular. Then you are in a state where you think that smart people like you should be popular. You are unhappy because you don't get what you think you should have.

Basic Example 3:
You are a prince and you got transformed into a frog. Another frog finds you very attractive and wants to mate. But you believe that it undignified. You are unhappy until you are restored.

I think I need to define a status or state to be always factual. So this definition of happiness has something to do with a perception worth of the player.

Happiness Participant receives an event that with value matching its mental demand.


Basic Example 4:
You like animal crackers because you like knowing what they are before you eat them. You bought animal crackers. You opened it and you find them many of them are so badly shaped that you don't know what they are supposed to be.

Re: Fun

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I think fun is a combination of several kinds of pleasure, from the visceral enjoyment of visuals, sounds, and adrenaline rushes, to the more abstract anticipation that something interesting may happen at any moment, to satisfaction felt after succeeding, to personal expression and Reassurance which I'm going to define in my next post. Fun also includes a connotation of time, as in the game must provide a certain amount of pleasure per interval of time.

This is one of the cases where a word has parallel meaning and is split. For example, I think that aniticipation is a different feeling than fun, and I would suggest to split it from the definition of fun.

On the other hand, since we concern only emotions evoked from interactions, we must ignore any source of fun we get from visual, audio, or other media. It must be quality based on the interaction itself.

The following is based on the physiology of laughter. Laughter originates from a crying that stops abruptly in the event of recoginition of a comfortable face (that of the mother). Laughter is an expression signifying a state where the person (baby) feels threatened yet the threat is coming from a trusted source (mother). It exists in such a state where something that is normal dangerous is made okay to explore and interact because it exists within a zone of safety. When the interaction escapes the zone of safety it is not fun anymore. Baby starts to cry.

Therefore, fun is what a participant feels when they willingly interact with a source of danger.

Fun Participant uses a zone of safety to explore an event that would be too threatening to explore otherwise.

The zone of safety could be the saved states of the game, the home base with no monsters, the current HP the player character has, the player's option to flee when a fight gets too tough. In most games, the zone of safety can be the separation between the player and the player character, so merely knowing that you are not having a real mortal combat could be enough. Examples of danger include combat, getting into a relationship, an environment with dynamics that harm the player character, or any other environment where defeat is defined.

This definition does not mean that the threat is completely harmless. It means something along the line of playing with fire, where the player travelling along the edge of safety, taking risks at some point and taking refuge in other.

When you look at this definition, you will recognize that many games do not fit this definition. Some of those games are fun due to its visual effect or its theme. Some of those games could also have other favorable interactions. In the case where another set of favorable interaction exists, we might define it as fun2 or with another more specific term. You may feel that we are just elaborating on the term. In some sense that is what we are doing, as long as the elaboration provides more pointers to work with.


Example 1:

Suppose you want to design a game involving an orange as the player character. According to the definition, you would need an unexplored threat that would seriously harm you in real life.

Threat 1: being cut in half
Threat 2: having your juice sequeezed out

Game: You are rolling on a kitchen counter. Evade the hand and the knife.

The interaction would appear fun when the player cannot say, "Been there, done that. I'll pass..."


Example 2:

Suppose you need a game design about paper, but the player character must be a person. According to the definition, you would first find an unexplored threat involving paper that would seriously harm the player if it were real.

Threat 1: Paper cut

Game: Navigate through a chaotic office where your player character is immune to hot coffee, fire, water, dog bite, knife stabs, gun shots, but not paper cuts. In this case, you could argue that the threat presented in this game is in fact no the paper cut, but the other deadly elements that don't happen to harm the player character. A situation where the player character would rather get shot than to touch a file folder.


Example 3:

You could challenge yourself by restricting the game to involve upsetting and objectionable elements. In that case, you will find that the zone of safety is violated in your target audience. If you define safety similar to reassurance, then the current set of definitions will give you a conclusion that you need a piece of information to convince the player that the activity of the game is morally okay. I don't want to elaborate on an example like that, but this reflects why some people would not find violent events in games like GTA fun because violates their moral code to be at ease facing those events. When moral codes are violated the player is not interacting in their safety zone. If they were babies they would be crying.


Example 4:

Design a game involving only abstract geometric shapes. This is a good context in our search of suitable interaction definitions because abstract shapes do not have the associated cultural meaning in other context. In an abstract context like this, we can better tell whether the definition is meaningful. According to the definition, you would first find an unexplored threat involving shapes that would seriously harm the player if it were real.

Threat: Sharp corners hurt

Game: You are a very high speed circle. You are reflected when you hit an edge, and you burst when you get a corner. You are on frictionless environment where the other shapes are initially at rest. Your goal is to start with a certain velocity such that you would escape a bounded area safely. It is like golf but you can only strike once. Once the motion starts, you (the circle), will collide with other shapes. You will either burst or be deflected. If you are deflected, the object you had collided would also move. Shapes other than yourself that collides with a sharp corner would also burst.

[Edited by - Wai on February 17, 2009 3:43:46 AM]

Hehehe winged watermelons [grin]

How about:
Escapism - The interactive environment provides a more desirable array of options than real life. [The desirability is based not only on potential for self-expression, but also reassurance and fun.]

I agree that I want to define relationships as requiring change over time. I view a static relationship as a degenerate case. Are we defining negative terms here? If so, we might want to define Shallow. A static relationship has the trait shallowness. Shallowness can be appropriate for background elements and minor characters, but is inappropriate for foreground elements and medium-importance or major characters. Shallowness is similar to improperly using pixel art or low-poly art in a zoomed-in context where it fills the screen.

I don't think that the existence of a plan in the NPC's 'mind' is required; or rather, I think that every NPC has a plan for themself and an evaluation of their current status relative to accomplishing the plan. Relationship, as I see it, requires a change in the participant's place within the NPC's plan. An unchanging place in someone's plan could be completely impersonal (participant is a winged watermelon, NPC hates all winged watermelons and wants to eat them).

When I used the word 'intention' in the definition of Reassurance, the value of intention is its social nature, only a person or group of people can have intention. Intention can be included in a word like approval which also implies someone doing the approving. It is correct that the participant fears something. All humans fear disapproval or inadequacy. (The two terms are equivalent to me, use whichever you prefer, they just put different emphasis on the result or cause of the negative social judgment.)

So I propose:
Reassurance - The agents and environment communicate to the participant that they judge the participant positively.

Quote:

Re: Misfortune Setback and misfortune would have similar definition, the only difference might be that misfortune requires a random event.

I don't understand why the randomness is important?


I guess we define prejudice differently. My definition is more broad, I would say not selling carrots to carrot bomb making foxes and not buying a small dog because a large dog is desired are indeed types of prejudice. I would define prejudice as being closed to a possibility. Prejudice can be beneficial to the person holding the prejudice, it is only disadvantageous to whoever is limited by the closed mindset.


I do not really like using the word 'event' in an overgeneralized way because it may be confusing and counterintuitive. An event is by definition a change, so it would normally exclude all static elements, and in the context of a game, events would normally be assumed to happen within the game and exclude the character creation phase and other meta parts of the game. But I can't think of a word that includes both dynamic events and static situations and elements, and I agree it would be awkward to say "event or situation" repeatedly so I guess I have no alternative to suggest.


From your examples of Happiness, I would use the word Satisfaction. The two words are similar, but satisfaction implies being satisfied in a specific context or with regard to a specific desire, while happiness does not necessarily have a cause or result from any kind of event. Also, for 'mental demand' you might substitute 'desire'.

Satisfaction - An event occurs which fulfills a participant's desire.

I think fun is a meta-term, it can be completely replaced by multiple more specific terms. When people talk about fun at the essential rubric for evaluating a game, fun is a calculation which averages several other factors.

From what I've read about laughter in adults it is based on the sudden surprising recognition of a pattern. Surprise is related to danger, and pattern recognition is related to relaxation after determining something isn't dangerous, but I'm not sure fun can be directly equated to mock-danger. What about the fun that a child has playing with a doll or fingerpainting? Where is the danger? But if you want to talk specifically about the enjoyment of acting with a source of danger, that's fine, I would just use the word Thrill. The type of fun specific to laughter could probably be termed Amusement. The fingerpainting is a more purely visceral/aesthetic pleasure, while playing with the doll is self-expression.

Perhaps it's unnecessary, but I would also like point out that sound and video elements are an important part of emotional interactivity because they can respond instantly to the player's actions - 'victory!' 'ta-da!' 'level up!' 'monster dies' and 'puzzle solved!' sound effects, and also humorous or cute sound effects, and even 'you lose!' sound effects play a key role in making a game feel fun. Likewise, bright colors, attractive shapes, visual special effects, visual humor, and visual indications of success or failure (such as whether a jumping character falls in a hole or lands safely) do a lot of the actual work of creating fun. In more elaborate games, tone of voice in voice acting and facial expressions and body language of characters can be included too.

Re: Escapism

In the definitions, there is a reason to use the minimal set of terms. In this case I see that these two have the same meaning:

Escapism - The interactive environment provides a more desirable array of options than real life.

Escapism - Participant gets a more desirable event than from real life.

You may notice that the definitions are always phrased in the form describing what the participant gets. The original reason is that it matters at the moment the player gets the signal, not when it is transmitted. The definition includes the situations where the signals are present from a source other than the interaction itself, and the interaction only needs to unblock the channel. The bulk of the work could be outsourced and the interaction only takes the management role of enabling a mixture of events to happen. An escapist game does not need to create the options or the content, the contents and options could be provided by the player, and the game is only linking them into events, or to present them in a coherent context. In this sense writing satisfies the definition because "writing" does not give the writer the ideas, just the medium where different ideas could coexist.



Re: Relationship

For this part the question is phrased as: "When will the player recognize a relationship between the player character and an NPC based on interaction if we disregard all visual or environmental clues?"

Imagine the context of an episodic design where in a given episode, you need to let a first-time audience know that two characters share a relationship, but their relationship is not suppose to change during that episode, and you cannot aford to formal introduce them.

It is in this sense that the evoking definition of relationship should be static. Would you say that what you intent to describe is relationship chemistry instead?

What you would normally do is first through body language or through how they address one another, or perhaps from a family picture. In our context, we considered some of those the explored areas and focus on how it could be shown using interaction (we kind of keep body language because it is mostly a type of action). We are barred from saying, "Mom, I'm hungry" or "Honey, I shrunk the kids!", because these would be verbalized clues. In essence we are asking when would the player recognize that a triangle and a circle are "having a relationship".

You could say that to show a triangle and a circle are having a relationship, you could make them kiss. But they don't have a mouth and you cannot attach a smooch sound to it when they touch. Because those would be visual and audio clues, not interaction clues. Then what?

Togetherness is something you can show through interaction. For example, you can show that when separated, the circle and the triangle would be moving in their own groups. Suppose you play a circle. When you move toward the group of triangles, one of the triangles would come to you and travel along you. You would notice that it is always the same triangle that would come to you (if you could tell them apart). When that triangle comes to you, it always touches you once with the flat side (if it touches yon on its corner you would have popped). This triangle does not do this to any other circle. Just you. The player would not know why that triangle would do so, but the player would feel that that triangle is special and that that triangle treats the player circle specially. Sometimes it would spin at high speed toward you, but when it touches you it would touch you on the flat side.

The other triangles would not care about your existence. Some of them would just pop you if you are in the way. Some of them would avoid you if you are in its collision course (but if you keep blocking its way it would pop you).

So in this sense to make the player feel the existence of a relationship, the relationship does not need to change over time. This is applicable to the episodic design where the relationship is not meant to be present but not to be developed during the episode.


Yes, we do negative terms also.

Since you have a goal in mind for something to do with these terms after defining them and I don't, it makes sense for you to decide the best way of phrasing the definitions.

Yes the relationship I was thinking of is more like chemistry, or we could use the term 'character dynamic'. The kind of relationship you are talking about with the triangle and the circle is at a lot more primitive level than I was originally thinking of, because I was thinking specifically of simulating human relationships in games with humanoid characters who get to talk and preferably also gesture.

The terms are indeed defined so that they could be used. We are defining the path that would lead to the term. There could be multiple paths. We include all paths and we minimize them.

Re: Reassurance

Reassurance - The agents and environment communicate to the participant that they judge the participant positively.

Reassurance - Participant receives indication that a threat will not cause a loss.

I am going to list both because I want to stare at them longer. In my definition, it does not require a reassurer nor intention to assure for the participant to feel reassured. It could be a result of an observation.

Example: A group of circles are moving north with a few triangles. A group of squares appear from the west, posing a threat. A few triangles automatically moves to the west between the squares and circles. The message that the player might get is that the triangles are protecting the circles. In this case, the triangles are aware of the threat, and repositioned themselves accordingly. I think that this alone could be sufficient to make the player circle feel reassured (that the triangles are alert). You can compare this situation with one where a triangle doesn't respond until a circle gets popped. In that case, the player does not get any reassurance because there is no indication that the player won't be popped since the triangles only react after an attack.

In this case, reassurance is not related to a judgement about the participant. It is a type of indication that influences the participant's judgement regarding a threat.

Congratulating the player for being smart (my definition of reassurance) is not at all the same thing as telling the player not to worry about failing.

Re: Prejudice

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I guess we define prejudice differently. My definition is more broad, I would say not selling carrots to carrot bomb making foxes and not buying a small dog because a large dog is desired are indeed types of prejudice. I would define prejudice as being closed to a possibility. Prejudice can be beneficial to the person holding the prejudice, it is only disadvantageous to whoever is limited by the closed mindset.

In your definition, how would you define the feeling when the player is being evaluated?

Which of the following are examples of prejudice?

[1] A swing can only hold 20kg. You are a small elephant. The owner (giraffe) of the swing asks you to step on the scale and you weight 100kg. The giraffe doesn't let you on.

[2] The giraffe's swing can only hold 20kg. The giraffe sees that you are a small elephant, you look like you weight way more than 20kg. It doesn't let you on.

[3] The giraffe's swing can hold 20kg. The giraffe turns you away because you look too heavy. But you claim that you infact only weight 18kg. The giraffe doesn't believe you.

[4] The giraffe's swing can hold 20kg. The giraffe turns you away because you look too heavy. But you claim that you infact only weight 18kg. The giraffe doesn't believe you. It asks you to step on the scale, and indeed you are only 18kg. The giraffe let's you play.

The way I would define prejudice is based on the term judgement. Suppose judgement is a decision based on facts, a pre-judgement can be defined as a decision based on assumptions. Prejudice is the condition where an agent denies facts and base a judgement on assumptions about the subject. A player would recognize this in an interaction when the agent treats the player character based on assumptions that are different from the facts.

In case [4] I think that the giraffe is not prejudice because it is open to facts. I think this openness is associated with your open-mindedness. But I draw the line between closed-mindedness and being informed. Being closed-minded is to refuse to be informed and use the facts to make decision. An agent that is simply uninformed is not closed-minded: its mind is open, but it just doesn't have the needed information.

So I agree that prejudice necessarily implies closed-mindedness. But it is not about closed to possibilities, but closed to facts.

Suppose you are a square. You saw a group of circles travelling, you move closer. A few triangles come out and block your path to the circles, facing you with their pointy end. To show that you are friendly, you show them your flat side. But the triangles do not move away until the circles had crossed the screen. This scenario would not mean prejudice to the player unless the player knows that there are squares that would pop the circles.

The definition means that when the player recognizes that their character is treated negatively because of a wrong assumption the NPC's have on it, then the player would feel prejudice. This may not be the only way. We don't actually care whether this is the only way, we only care whether this definition has fat that could be trimmed.

Prejudice Participant receives an impeding event caused by another agent's wrong assumption on the role of the participant agent.

In the square example, suppose the triangles came near the square but they did not block the square's path, such that the event is somewhat threatening but not impeding. The square could move all the way to the circles and touch them with its flat side. The triangles will not pop the square unless it pops a circle. In that case there would be no prejudice.

Suppose we remove the word "wrong" preceeding 'assumption. Then the player square would be impeded only if the player square is meant to pop the circles. In that case it wouldn't be prejudice, because the triangles are acting appropriately against a real circle-popper.

Suppose we remove the phrase, "on the role of the participant agent". Then the definition would include the scenario where the triangles wrongly assumes that the circles want the squares popped, when the circles meant they want to meet the squares. The squares are just unfortunate casualties of this misunderstanding. The situation doesn't constitute a case of prejudice.

The definitions are refined in a process like this until none of it could be reduced. It is possible to start with a different perspective and get a reduced different reduced definition.