Addiction and improvement

This post was prompted by David Wong's new article today on addiction over at Cracked. Let me start by saying I'm a big fan of Cracked, and particularly of David Wong's articles in particular. The format and style of these posts themselves shows I may read Cracked too much. But this particular article's ending disappointed me so hard I had to respond to it.

Hopefully that doesn't just mean I've been on the internet too long
[source]

The Article
See, a lot of Wong's other articles manage to bring you along as he weaves a big overarcing story of some large aspect of society, with just enough personality and self-awareness/humor to keep it entertaining and perhaps 'palatably preachy' and try to offer some hope or way out at the end. And today's on addiction is no different, except at the end.

Wong lays out his story/model/arguments about addiction (loosely defined) and its complex role in modern society and economy. To summarize, it focuses on how advances in understanding it and how to foster such responses, how businesses use that knowledge to make money, and how society is ok with it as long as it increases stability (even at the cost of individual freedom or agency). I can follow that, and it makes some sense. My issue is the downer conclusion it ends on, about how the economic and social incentives will make companies (and other organizations) keep using this knowledge about how to shape behavior to short circuit our reward systems; where Wong asserts people will stop trying to improve because they will have easier options for the same rewards. And oh gods, its so horrible... (slightly paraphrased)

To which I have to say "Bwah?"

You heard me! Bwah?!

 
My Bias and Problem
The thing is, when he starts talking about how to shape behavior, that is literally what I am working on, so the discussion is much less abstract for me. If you recall, I'm working on designing educational games. Specifically I'm coming from a psych background and trying to figure out how to apply what we know from cognitive psychology, combine it with game design theory, and learn from current commercial games in order to produce educational games that are both educationally effective and actually, you know, good games that are fun.

In Wong's model, part of my job is to be an "addiction expert" and figure out how to learn from psychology and other successful games so I can make new games that will hook players, but use that time to do something good for them, like teach them.

"Got math? Well do you? Cause I will SUCK YOUR D-"
"Ok, we may have gone too far..."

And thats my biggest problem with Wong's conclusion; it seems to overlook the potential of these methods to do good, and cast them solely as the downfall of society. It hits me like saying the internet, or TV, or any given technology that is largely being used poorly and having negative consequences is, in itself, bad and will be the end of society. Every time the technology being considered gets more powerful, that threat seems more plausible, but the thought behind it remains just as misguided.

I still think technology is inherently neutral, and can be used for good or bad ends. The standard dramatic example is that splitting the atom can be used to power cities or level them. But its true of technologies that aren't physical as well. The same kinds of superficial gamification that companies use to sell more products can be used to make online communities less toxic, for example.

Somehow previous efforts weren't super effective.

Wong is right to be concerned about the incentives in place for people in power to use new knowledge to maintain the status quo and reduce freedom for those not in power. That is a worrying system and set of implications.

However, I can't help but see the potential of applying this same knowledge to help people and empower them. To motivate them to exercise, learn, develop skills, work with others, and otherwise benefit. Sure, there will be that arms race among and with commercial products, but looking at video game design makes me optimistic about that. There, gamification is a big deal, but those who research such things know that superficial gamification, the basic addictive features most people think of, are only so effective .

A Possible Solution
I think Wong's fear suggests its own solution. Hes afraid that we've found how to short-circuit the reward pathway and it'll damage our progress; that people will be able to artificially get the same rewards from less effort so they'll stop improving themselves to get natural rewards.

So why not artificially reward self improvement as well?
To me the natural solution is to use this knowledge to reinforce natural responses and super charge that cycle. To compete with these incentives directly rather than just give up. Even if it leaves people the same as now, it would avert the dystopia hes afraid of.

...though it may look like someone else's prediction.

I know the downer may be just to get people's attention; to get them to actually care about this and think about things that they normally don't. But I can't help but object that he fails to mention the possible upsides. Since thats what I'm trying to work on, and all.


What do you think?
Is it all gloom and doom? Am I over optimistic?
Is it all worrying over nothing? Have I been on the internet too much?
Let me know in the comments.

I < 3 Valve

So last week I talked about the transition from identifying as a passive consumer, to a critical consumer or even creator of content, and specifically about communities supporting this shift; about how communities often improve themselves and those making this transition. Picking up from there, lets talk about what it looks like when company, a more formal, business oriented group directs its resources to encouraging that.

"Gentlemen, how do we help our customers? Yes, Johnson?"
"I don't understand sir."

If you want to see what it looks like for a company to value that transition (or something very close to it) you want to look at Valve. You know, the company behind Steam, the platform that does ~51% of the digital distribution of PC games (according to 2011 numbers)? Every time I watch a talk  by Gabe Newell, it makes me feel better about the company, its views,  and the directions its going.

Now, I said "something very close to it" earlier because Gabe is generally talking about content creation from more of an economic perspective, as a opposed to the sort cultural and intrapersonal perspectives the vlogbrothers and Jim Gee were coming from. While they talk about how it benefits someone to feel included and productive, and develop their ideas and abilities or how society benefits from more perspectives and new ideas, Gabe tends to talk about connecting creators to markets, or providing monetary incentives to become a creator to people who previously had none (for this type of work).

Its a different way of looking at the at the situation, but it makes perfect sense when you're talking from a business standpoint. It also shows why Valve is encouraging this type of capability growth; by setting itself up so it profits from market activity, its incentivized to help as many creators as possible reach as large a possible audience as possible. As opposed to the way most people think of a simplified model of a business where its incentivized to get as many people to give it as much money for its product.



"Ok, that part I understood"
"Johnson, stop being such a strawman and try to keep up."

So this sort of demonstrates how a system can be set up to where a company is monetarily encouraged to support these community effects that can be so positive, directly benefitting from them rather than it just being a nice bonus that marginally helps your specific game, product, or service.

The really interesting part of considering Valve though is considering how it got to this place and what its continued trajectory looks like, based on that past. Steam may have started as a way for Valve to distribute and verify its own games, but it grew into a convenient way to affordably buy games, lowering the barriers both in terms of availability and cost. Its one of the things Gabe talked about: connecting producers with markets they didn't have access to and making games easily widely available, regardless of what was physically available in your region.

And then there was the step of not just lowering barriers for consumers, but for creators;
making indie games more visible and available. Offering software to make games on Steam. Adding the workshop, so people can make and share pieces of games, and develop their skills.

Without even using training montages.

To the rage of Half-Life fans everywhere, now they seem more concerned with providing interesting tools and spaces for other people to make stuff than making stuff themselves. But the way they moved there from producing, and clearly have people who are still very focused on how to incentivize and influence behavior and who are interested in "creating markets" and enabling creators is what really makes them interesting to watch.

I said Gabe Newell makes me feel good about the company when he talks, but everytime they rollout something new picking apart its design and purpose is what really drives it home . If you don't think they want more creators, look at the workshop, and if you don't think they're still just as sharp on how to manipulate users, look at the trading cards and badges system. There's allot of amusing snark and/or ranting about companies doing one thing and saying another, but this post is about Valve because what they're doing and saying lines up, and what they're doing is very interesting compared to what most everyone else is doing.

Oh, another action/adventure/shooter game as a white male protagonist 
now with microtransactions? Cool, cool.
 Yeah we'll just be over here lowering barriers to entry
and enabling innovative new ideas at lower risk.

Of course if I'm going to talk about them now, I probably should address the Steam universe and Steam box. But its just continuing this trend, albeit very ambitiously. Putting steam in the living room opens up a larger audience to participate in playing games, and even contributing to them from there. But that's not the really ambitious part. Competing with consoles is kind of ambitious, creating an open platform, to enable the hardware competition and peripheral variety PCs have, is pretty ambitious, but again, not what I see as their biggest challenge.

If Valve is in the living room, with this track record, unless they screw it up first, they have to be eventually aiming to reduce barriers for other media: movies, tv, music, whatever. Eventually it'll be competing with (or working with) Youtube and Netflix and iTunes and whatever other media they can.

Yea, he shall be the lord of media distribution,
and this shall be his crown.

Now that much content under one banner is terrifying, for any group to have that much power over communications. But we have massive media empires right now, and I will be very interested to see, if Valve can get to that level, what it'll look like to have one with this creator focused, barrier breaking model driving it.



Ok, I may have gone off the rails at the end, but what do you think of Valve? Am I giving them too  much credit or vastly misreading they're direction? Can you think of are other companies that support a transition to a critical consumer or creator?
Let me know what you think in comments.

photo credit: ign

Creating creators and critics

Originally, this was going to be the Part 2 of the community post; last week's post was originally longer, but I couldn't figure out how to articulate everything by my self-imposed deadline so I split it up. A significant chunk of the followup was going to be talking about Jim Gee's thoughts on 'affinity groups'.

...but then I saw this this video (as part of my continuing effort to watch every vlogbrothers video in the archive) and now this post is going to be about Gee's more recent thoughts and how they're related.


Uh...yay?

 Ok, in order to get there, lets start off talking about "consumers" and specifically about consuming media, be that TV, movies, music, video games, comics books, book books, newspapers, what-have-you. Except for video games, people generally think of "consuming media" as a passive experience; you're reading or watching something others have made. You're really not participating or interacting with it, but just kind of absorbing it.

or at least advertisers hope you are.

This kind of view is really clear  in the language; vegging out in front of the boobtube, or the idiot box, zoning out. All this imagery of being super passive.

However, this is not the only way of 'consuming media'; you can also consume it reflectively, considering the deeper levels of meaning or context in the media. What does this symbol mean? What is the creator trying to say and how? How does this relate to other similar pieces of media?



What does this dick joke say about the environment?

Gee calls this 'being a critical consumer', and the vlogbrothers call it thinking complexly, and its a parallel theme that's very important to both of them. For the vlogbrothers, its how you start to make sense of the world, and they extend this into science, too. To them this idea is about finding some way of more deeply understanding the world, be it through literary analysis or scientific quantifying and statistics, and using it.  To find some way to help yourself better understand the world you are in, meaningfully discuss it with others, increase that understanding, and act based on it.

And that's where we come back to Gee.
If you're not familiar with James Paul Gee,
he's a professor who was trained as a linguist, then became focused the potential of video games as a medium, then started really looking at how video games teach and engage, and how people interact with them and each other around them, then wrote a book about it...

That I'm a fan of.

...and has been an influential thinker in the academic space around games since. (If that phrasing seemed odd, I'm using "academic space around games" to go general and avoid the whole serious games/educational/games for impact/games for good etc. naming issue.)

Now, that's the revised edition, because he wrote it years ago. More recently, Gee's been talking more about critical consumption and a "modding attitude". So critical consumption is similar to what we were just discussing, but from there things go slightly differently. See for Gee its not just about being able to discuss creations meaningfully, but about discussing things in the manner of a creator and from there creating things yourself as part of  larger discussions.

For example, in literature, this could look like someone reading Fahrenheit 451, discussing in classes or online the themes of how man relates to technology, and how they're expressed in the book and whether they agree or not, and eventually writing something themselves, to express their feelings and thoughts on that same topic. Or other topics that became more important to them during that journey.



Like how awesome and terrifying robot hounds can be.

Gee refers to this shift to identifying as a creator as a "modding attitude" because he was focused on games, and there you can plot a nice pregression of person who plays games, to "gamer", to modder, and perhaps from there to game creator.

Though, to be clear, modding is creating something new, the same way a short video , or essay, or parody of a song is creating something new and contributing something to larger cultural discussions of issues. You don't have to be making  full movies or games, or books to be contributing.



A single image can be enough.

And this is where I think the vlogbrothers and Gee's feelings converge; its important to be able to reflectively consume media, because if you can't do that you won't really be able to engage with the issues within or behind those media or meaningfully contribute to larger discussions. And having more people meaningfully contributing makes those discussions richer, bringing new perspectives or ideas that others hadn't thought of. And when someone engages with those discussions its also usually good for them, helping them feel capable, feel like they belong to something, and helping them be better able to deal with their lives in some way.

This was one of the things I was groping for a way to express in the community post, and cut; one of the things good communities do is support this transition. They welcoming novices,  help them develop skills of critical analysis, provide aspirational and instructive examples of higher level discourse, and create safe areas to try out new ideas and ways of expressing them. These communities enrich themselves, and enrich the people involved in them.

If in the last post I had asked "How do you make games that spawn good communities?" rather than focusing on 'positive impact', this would have been part of the definition of "good".



Not taking yourself too seriously all the time would likely have been another part.

Gee highlights facilitating this transition as something the education system needs to be doing and is currently bad at. The vlogbrothers highlight this as a reason they like youtube: because the weak barrier between creators and consumers allows for more interaction and (and this part may be more implicit) a very easy transition from one to the other.

So what do you think about the importance of shifting your identity from the audience of a message to a participant in a discourse?  Is it important? Why?
How about its importance in terms of the media we're bombarded with everyday, and being able process and contextualize it all rather than being buffeted about?

Leave your thoughts in the comments,
or if you have a story of making this kind of transition in some area, whether its how you went from watching films to making them or how it felt doing a young authors contest or science fair, leave that too. It seems that these can be some of the most interesting experiences to share or to hear about.

photo credits: yaelol.wordpress.com, hhhuuuhhh125 on deviantart, , sophiedaveyphoto.wordpress.com, semi-rad.com

Saints Row driving and series change

The last post also made me consider the changes in Saints Row across the series, because the fact the driving was the least fun part to me made me feel like it was only there because of previous games. Not that it was only included for tradition or something like that, but because that's where the series started and while it was going new places and doing new things, it hadn't quite moved beyond that yet. It was like an increasingly vestigial organ, that had some purpose for now, but was mostly there because the organism it was part of is still in transition from what it was into something else.

Something else that I haven't played, but considering I thought Prototype 2
and Crackdown were fun but too serious, something that looks pretty sweet.

Which can lead to those uncomfortable issues that pop up as a series or creator grows and develops into something different from what they started as. Allot of times this works fine: In the Harry Potter series say, it started as light fantasy, but then became darker and more moody and serious towards the end. This made sense in so many ways, as the fans and characters were growing up and dealing with harder issues. The changing tone seemed to serve the story: the contrast with how it started really gave a sense of the stakes and how the villains affected the world. At the other end of the spectrum we might put the farcical edition wars of D&D, the poster child IP for having fans that are not on board for the new iteration.



And discussing the many and varied ways
those are hilarious and terrible would take a while.

Some would say those are silly comparisons;  Harry Potter fans wanted to see how the story went, while D&D fans had a functional game (arguably) and didn't see the need for a new one. But those are the extremes with plenty of things in the middle of a spectrum linking them by degrees of success. Theres plenty of webcomics that changed massively as the author(s) developed a style or tried new things, to varying degrees of success. Theres tv shows that got more or less interesting across seasons. Theres tabletop games that avoided editions wars and gained new audiences and ones that fractioned their audience repeatedly.

Then there's movies series that introduced aliens
so people like to pretend the last film never happened.

Among the various forms of media, video games are kind of in between the difficulty of "complete" tabletop games and the narrative commitment of less interactive stories. I mean, you can have that hook in the audience that they want to find out what happened next (that was the blessing and curse of Mass Effect 3 after all; the audience was really invested in that story). At the same time, you can have a full game that you enjoy and can keep playing regardless of new releases, particularly multi-player games. Theres also the technical angle, where newer games can have better graphics or more complex...whatever, but any critic can tell you that doesn't mean a better or more successful game in any way.

Man, wasn't this great? 

So, reflecting on the various successes and failures (in terms of audience size, finance, and quality), what can we take away? Narratively, changes need to come naturally for the story and characters. Big news, I know, and even then you can get some fan backlash, but it shouldn't be on Mass Effect 3 levels (if this analysis is accurate).

For a game though, if you want to make sure previous fans get on board you need to make sure they can do the things that they already liked doing in the current version, while adding new things to make it worth getting the new version. To oversimplify, this was one of the (many) issues that split fans of 3rd and 4th edition DnD; there were things you could do in 3e or 3.5 that you could not do in 4e, so fans that wanted to do those things didn't update. Being more accurate and general, if fans want to keep the things that were only in the old iteration more than they want things introduced in the new iteration, they won't update. Which of course brings me back to driving in Saints Row.

Hey, remember me?

I'm fairly certain they haven't removed driving from Saints Row 4. I haven't played it, but I think it would've been mentioned as weird somewhere online. However, if there's another way to get around the city (like being a freerunning superhuman) and driving is still an option, my experience will still be improved so I won't have the same complaints as I did about SR3.

After all of this, its interesting to think about the impact if they did take out driving, though. The question would be how central driving is to why people were playing Saints Row 3 and if the new stuff makes up for cutting it? Or if the new stuff will attract enough new audience that the company can afford losing the fans that are that invested in the driving?
And if driving isn't that central to the series anymore, then what is?

Not the zombie voice option, apparently.

photo credit: media.pcgamer.com, looneydm.blogspot.com, saintsrow.wikia.com

Best Game Company?

So, most every major TTRPG that companies have come out with has serious balance issues:

• DnD 3.x: does mages vs. fighters really need a link?
• Pathfinder: the lowdown
• DnD 4e: a "good character" (the responses, not neccesarily the first post)
• nWoD: I can't speak to this as much, but for reasons below (and new mage's "lol atlantis" fluff) I don't have much faith in WW
• Exalted: Anatomy of failure
• Aberrant: various views (this is by no means a major system, but I like fiddling with it occasionally. Also both the bits where 1) claws power vs. str enhancement, where one option is both cheaper and better in every way and 2) the default character creation that allows for characters that would be 306-1198xp if bought with that, makes me giggle)
• Scion: anything past Hero level. Dex is already the god stat, so how do you even fight without maxing out epic Dex? and why are the aesir dex-screwed? What does 10 successes even look like and why doesn't that do half the things dex knacks do?

Yeah, this is entirely about the mechanics, but thats what the systems are for. Obligatory proabably repetitive disclaimer; yes, you can run a good game in any system. But that means your GM is great, not the system is. The measure of the system how much less work it is for the GM and players to get what they want than the alternatives. And for most parties, balance is a concern, which is a sizable part of why you use a system rather than freeform.

In some games these are starting characters,

in some they are balanced with each other,

in some they are both

Basically it seems game companies just suck at playtesting. Like really suck. And economics and demand say they aren't gonna fix it, cause theres enough other stuff in their products that unbalanced mechanics don't nix the deal...mostly. The bigger issue is that they have limited time even when they do playtest, so they won't find everything the rabid masses of obsessed fans will. Charop boards thrive on this fact.

So if the only way to truly stress test a system is to give it to hoards of powergaming fans; in a perfect world (or at least one where 1) companies didn't care about giving away product for free or 2) people would still buy the finished product after having the drafts of the system) we'd just do that. I mean homebrews start as small things or houserules to something established, but if a group put its mind to it theres no reason the people that brought you Crystal Keep and all the "The 3.5 X class handbook" threads that reviewed every option from every splatbook couldn't turn their efforts to actually balancing things, instead of noting the problems and moving on. And this does occur sometimes, but what i'm saying is this writ large accross a whole game, including its fundamentals.

Wikis and boards and such allow input from all sides, and the real issue is everyone having the same goal; a clear statement of purpose outlining direction and philosophy is essential here. So many design calls come down to preference and style, so having a cohesive idea of what the game is for and whats most valued (cinematic vs. gritty, ease of use, flexibililty, etc.) saves allot of repetitive arguments later.

I guess I'm saying gamers, properly motivated and organized, would form their best group of suppliers. If theres any group that would voluntarily put in the time both figuring out fair dice mechanics and fluffing out new setting to go with them it'd be the people in this hobby.

(Those drawn to the mechanics, anyway; I know allot of people play socially or only care about story and often handwave mechanics, which is great for them and their groups. The arcane (not in the magic sense) structure of say dnd 3.5e can attracts a type of person who is great for this, though.)

Why play?

Why do we play rpgs? I mean theres tons of reasons and they'll be different for everyone, but it feels like theres some common core. So much that lots have tried to voice it (and left pictures), but I found a part recently that often gets left out.

...on 4chan of all places. Yet another diamond in the shitpile. It was a thread about 3 wishes, but the genie was bored with wishes for "power in the most uncreative ways possible", more wishes, the best at X, etc., and wanted to be entertained. The question was what do you wish for to deal with those limitations?

One response was of course:

1. Wish for her to be entertained by my wishes
2. "I want huge amounts of power in the least creative ways possible"
3. Wish for more wishes

Problem solving at its best.
 

The interesting one though was:

I wish to be placed in a world that needs active, obvious heroes, rather than the subtle evils and horrible repercussions of my homeland, and to have all the knowledge of such a hero when I get there. if possible, I ask for her to stay with me, freed from the bottle, as my guide and possible ally.

If this is impossible, she's clearly worthless, so I wish for her to be unable to get bored with granting wishes.

which really struck a cord with me, why I play, and particularly the types of characters and games I like to play. I mean it seems like allot of problems in the world are intwined in these complex systems, that are hard to grasp and require some kind of systemic change...

This isn't quite the problem, but close.

And not only is it so much simpler if you could directly fix something, like kill the dragon terrorizing people or overthrow the evil king, but then you have the sense of achievement of having done something. Eternal vigilance may be more realistic or a fitting resolution for certain characters to end on, but there's something satisfying about "And they shall trouble your lands no more!"

Now, this isn't to say I only like hack and slash, or think campaigns should be that simple; to the contrary I really like mystery plots, where you have to piece things together and figure them out. If I had to pick the best source inspirational material for a campaign, right now I'd say Planetary hands down, but there even if the overarcing direction is unclear, there is stuff to do each issue, and behind it is eventually an opponent to "fight" ...rather than something like societal issues being behind the problem, or "the apathy of the common man".

 

There are of course MANY other reasons, like hanging out with friends and exploring characters/settings/ideas, too: