Game Theory With Peach And Ponies · 3:41am Jul 31st, 2016
In today's world, video gamers have come to expect a backend system to be so solid that they never have to judge the mechanics of the game, only the graphics. The Legends of Equestria staff started with these outward appearances, and it indeed looks and sounds like a good game. The composers/musicians who have worked on that game did an amazing job, and don't get enough credit, in my opinion. However, for as much as the outside is polished the inside is unsophisticated, and that's what makes me want to share with you my thoughts on games.
Part 1 - Definitions
If you want a well educated examination of game theory, I found This Paper, but if you want a very simple explanation of what makes a game, Chatoyance gave the best definition, “a game is any activity where the reward far outweighs the effort put toward achieving it.”
My favorite type of game is the roleplaying game, abbreviated RPG. Most people today seem to be confused about what defines a roleplaying game. The term role-playing comes from acting and means simply “to play the role of a character”. Because of its relationship to acting, roleplaying in games is inseparably linked to story-telling. Before roleplaying entered the world of video games, it could be seen most commonly in Choose Your Own Adventure books, where after a certain amount of story was given, the reader, playing the role of one of the characters, was given the choice of taking one of two or more actions which would sometimes drastically change the outcome of the book. A simplified definition of a roleplaying game is any game where the player's choices change the outcome of the game beyond the binary states of win and lose.
Common people have come to think of RPGs as games that have stat based fighting systems, where fighting is the key to reaching any goal given by the game and the character(s)'s prowess in fighting grows through a leveling system that requires more fighting in order to raise it. These aspects, hack'n'slash and grinding respectively, are game elements which are very common in RPGs, but they do not define RPGs. I have theorized for the longest time, that gamers are no longer able to understand playing the role of a character without fighting being present in the game. Undertale serves as an example of this misconception when it advertised itself as, “the first RPG where the player does not have to kill anybody.”
Dating Sims are a specific type of RPG where the player's goal is to improve their relationships with characters in the game. Most of these games are explicitly sexual, however, the game element of improving relationships with non-player characters (NPCs or characters in the game) has always been a common reward in any RPG including games of pretend. In fact, the 1993 children's game Tales of the Crystals was a game of pretend that offered a few props and an audio cassette that set up a problem in the first part of the adventure's audio, asked the players to stop the cassette until they completed it, let the players do and imagine whatever they wanted, then thanked the players for solving the problem in the second part. In this way, the only reward given in the game, aside from the enjoyment of using one's imagination with others, is being praised. This is my personal definition of an RPG: a game where the player is invited to change the world and is recognized for their changes.
Part 2 – A Shared Dream
Like a lot of gamers, I am sick and tired of the best 3D RPGs being completely centered around fighting. The reason it happens this way is because fighting is the lowest common denominator to all things as it is a base instinct in humans. Because of this, fighting can occur repetitively, but the player usually has the same enjoyment out of winning these encounters. It requires significantly more thought, effort, and time to create a repeatable minigame that offers the same risk/reward that is almost inherently understood as fighting. The outcomes of fighting are simple win or die. If you win, you usually get something, but if you die, in modern games you are set back to a previous point. The choice of engaging in a non-mandatory battle is the risk of dying or the possible reward of looting or building stats.
The problem with most RPGs, is that everything that is not fighting ultimately shows itself to be useful because of how it aids in fighting. It is not the fighting that is necessary but the minigame that is. If a game offered a minigame that was mandatory at sometimes, optional at others, carried an estimatible range of risk and reward, and gave the player a clear understanding of how doing this would improve their game, then the role of fighting could be completely replaced.
Now, I shall give an example of how this could play out as a roleplaying game that does not use any violence at all: Your pony has the option of baking a cake for a party. Baking the cake will make these NPCs take notice of your generosity, and because a shy character of interest is attending this party, it may allow you to start talking to this character. At this point, you have a wheat field that started out as a few stalks of wild wheat you found while exploring, but by replanting from the best of your wheat, you now have domestic wheat (I'm talking about a minigame of course), but you still don't have anything else to make a cake. For now, you decide the best way to fix this is to buy the eggs, milk, and sugar, and you can get the money for that by seeking out will-o-wisps, magical bubbles that go around sucking up lost things imprinted with the idea of value. When you touch one you get sucked inside and have to use your skill, magic, and items to work your way out after claiming the treasure on your way out. When baking the cake you play another minigame risking all of your materials. In this minigame (the only one I'll actually describe) you have to keep a ball in the center of a bar by using your left/right controls while the ball randomly tries to slide to either end. If the ball hits either end, you know you've waisted your materials, but if you keep it in the center, for the time needed for that item. Then the cake goes to baking. For so many real world minutes, the cake will be in the oven, and you have to get it out when the timer rings. During that time, you can study one of your skills, let's say alchemy. This minigame will be between X and Y minutes so you know you can do at least one round, but you don't know how many more after. If you take the cake out at the right time, you find out how well you did.
In this way, the game becomes minigame after minigame to aid in the player's quests, and you can use your imagination as to how each output might make another minigame easier, and of course all of this leads to the purpose of bettering your friendship with NPCs. Abilities and items can be crafted or bought to repel will-o-wisps below a certain level or to force them to drop their loot without having to puzzle them out completely. None of this hinders other RPG aspects such as exploring. In fact, it aids in the realism of exploring by giving the player a way to survive far outside of the cities.
As a Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, MMORPG, these various elements would allow players to interact with one another instead of just the base quests and stores. If a player wanted their real world friend to join, they could offer to give them various things to skip over part of the growing process. Groups could work together in specializing various skills so that they may go out as a group to collect rare items that may ordinarily take days or weeks acquiring the skills and tools to reach them on one's own. A non-violent RPG is far more involved than a cookie-cutter RPGs, because instead of needing a group with a fighter, a healer, a wizard, you need a pony with rock climbing, metallurgy, plant studies, cooking, cartography, will-o-wisp repel, gem finding, and some pony with enough strength to carry all the gear needed to get from here to there. In this way, you can still play the game alone, but the real adventure comes from needing others.
Out of all the various game projects that have slapped the phrase “friendship is magic” somewhere into itself, I have yet to see one that exemplifies these words, but what I have just finished describing is one way, not the only way but one way, that a game could be very involved, very satisfying, very roleplay-y, non-violent, and on top of all that, inspires a feeling in the player that friendship really is magical.
EDIT: So the minigame I mentioned is something borrowed from another game. This Video shows one of my favorite games for the PS2, Kengo Masters of Bushido. It's a sword game so if you can't stand them, don't watch it, but at 5:50 you can watch a minigame I describe for the baking process. In this game, both ends of the bar read “sleep”, but I picked this game to represent tasks because at the time I thought of it, I was learning a lot about flow theory that flow, or the maximum pleasure in the moment and successful output a person can get from doing a task, exists between the two extremes of One: not focusing on or fearing the task and Two: over focusing on the reward. The funny thing is that Zen Meditation in real life is all about finding and maintaining this state of excellence between two extremes. Kengo does a disservice of labeling the two extremes as the same thing. I would like to believe that implementing demonstrations like this would teach the player on a fundamental level to observe their own actions and find the right way of acting toward their own real life goals.
I am not the only person thinking about changing minds through video games; the designers of No Man's Sky encourage nonviolence by making it so that players get absolutely no reward from killing animals. In fact, they have gone out of their way to make the player feel bad if they have killed an animal. That may not sound too happy, but it means that players will learn very quickly that they are not rewarded for senseless violence.
EDIT: To continue being honest in my factoids, I have discovered that at least the predator animals in No Man's Sky do give resources, however, pre-release footage of the game does not show this, so it may have been a late edition. Still, non-lethal solutions are available and still encouraged.
I read this post once a month because so many ideas. It would be nice to play a MMO where you don't have murder or steal your way to the top. Don't even want to be near the top. Happiness would be a quiet farm.
4235226 I'm glad it brings you joy.
well, playing (computer) game in itself ofthen considered too self-centered, removing you (and other players) from real world and not giving them anything real in return. I think reading in general (or watching, but my own sin is reading) can be described in such negative, but not unreal, colors.... My own thinking tend to make circles more about bringing game-developed cooperation to real life, for example, and make game change real world. For example 'price' to enter some area might be real-world _lasting_ good action...so, game will encourage _real-world_ changes in players, and around them. In this light real time flow at least during some moments of such game definitely will help...
Humans developed many potentially-useful techniques of self-improving, but they never have chance to work if humans not honest with themselves, or not (self)observable enough ...those two abilities seems to be at foundation of everything. They were said to be at foundation of science, but modern scientists hardly changed by any of this - too narrowly-professionalized their self-reflection and honesty.. too big pressure from already installed 'values' of humans around them, on whom they depend ...too many times desire to be above or first just overwrite everything else.. :/ It seems, there is no universal solution, but there must be something for those who understand need and direction of such self/collective improvement!
4895913
I'm having trouble understanding you. Can you edit your message to better English? If not, can you write out what you said in your original language?
4895913
Going on what I currently understand from your post:
Animal Crossing is a game that does try to encourage the player to take real world action in a rather subversive way. You see, in Animal Crossing (New Leaf specifically) the player is shown what good can come from going outside. The player is show, in a gentle way, how his or her choices will effect other people. My favorite subversive aspect of the game is how the game encourages the players to clean their rooms and take care of their real houses by providing a reward system in game: dedicated players will figure out how to get a high score by keeping clean paths and making things both functional and decorative. The idea is that because all of these things are related to the real world, a player who really enjoys the game, will realize that he or she can enjoy doing these things in the real world, making that person more productive, and by taking care of his or her home first, the player will create an environment of comfort from which he or she can branch out and make further positive changes on the world.
...hm, sounds good (while my room/flat definitely far from clean, by the way. dog's place, literally). May be little example will help you...see, I currently have no avatar picture on this site. Why? Because I don't think I did anything important IRL to 'gain' one. While this is nowhere near required by any written or unwritten rule - I can use this self-motivation to actually try and do something IRL just for allowing myself to install profile picture...
4897785
I do not agree with your motivation: people who feel they must do something to deserve something so small, often become soldiers.
..may be I am? Or I was? I wanted (and still want) to protect dolphins (+whales, +small and forgotten cetacea, +horses, +dogs, + ...you get the idea ..inclusive empathy, or something...it started from dolphins yet expanded...intellectually. Until I hit simply wall of physical possibility: I can only realistically care about small number of beings, pretending I can care about all/many of them just false ...) from all this shit humans do to them...so, animal rights (vs. animal welfare), and other strange places and ideologies I tried to integrate into myself... But, if my real objective was to protect them (in very wide sense of this word) - then, I mostly failed and see no way improve...
Unrelated, but I have few links open right now, I was looking for famous film "Blade runner" and its book inspiration..and was a bit surprized to find ref. to unicorn, and horses:
https://br-insight.com/library/what-defines-human/ -
. + fan video related to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7PAQ-Bhlug
https://www.grin.com/document/324270 -
.
To be honest, over Internet you can find any amount of very incompatible interpretations, so those links only can serve as illustration of my search focus..
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/do-androids-dream-of-electric-sheep/themes/humanity-androids-and-empathy -
- yeah, and I feel the same about basically all those films/books/essays producted to date..IF their real goal was change humanity in specific direction - they, effectively, failed ....
Hm, so I looked up Animal Crossing series on wikipedia and Youtube ... Strangely enough, those overly-abstract models and environment require a lot of effort from my side..plain text much better for me! And additionally, even small game in 3D require a lot of human-years to develop, and amateur voluntary teams hardly large and stable..over years. Some game projects/modifications for Deus Ex were started like ..12 years ago (2006) and only finished year or two ago!
I think idea behind Celestia-as-shadow world ruler was cool (not speaking about uploading here), but in Reality humans tend to ruin a lot of everything simply by behaving ....a bit too stupid in critical moment(s). And our amazing hierarchized behaviour basically disable any hope for ethically/rational environment, even virtual one. It seems peer pressure over time can have biggest effect on any individual human than real battlefield (I think I read this in book dedicated to famous russian aeroplane designer Tupolev...author talked about events right after our part of WW2, so he had very fresh memory to compare ...humans who were really brave on battlefield were unable to resist organized group pressure. Therefore, this 'soft psychology' apparently kicking even harder than actual war/combat! So, in order to make different humans _some_ isolation from everyday's social environment of today must be provided, it seems. So, all those books/films/videogames/internet communications not just lazy and cowardy escapism, but _can be_ used as ...sort of recreation/protected space, not for spending there all time, but for functionating in real world differently, compared to most widespread 'humans fails, but pretend they not'.
But you see, we have no real AI of required level, so we only can hope to use our own brains...There is idea: humans tend to hog high-power positions, but (unhacked) game can play God on them and rearrange administrative rights based on how 'good' specific 'ruler' behaved. So, it will be unnatural selection of behavior ...note, I'm not talking about player-driven 'democracy' here, even democracy require quite anarchist humans, for functionating properly and not failed victim of usual wrong types of politicians, who prey exactly on our built-in and widespread psychological bug-o-features. Of course, measuring and dynamically upgrading definition of 'good' is not easy at all ....