next »

[brog]

well, if nobody solved it in four years, and a lot of people knew about it, that either means it's a puzzle that can't be solved through rational process (most likely) or that it can, but nobody did (less likely)

Plenty of problems have been open longer than four years, with lots of people knowing about them, and are still probably able to be solved rationally - plenty have been open for a long time and then solved.
Although, I too am unclear on what you mean by "rational process" here.  Please state definitions so discussion may continue.

Anyway, creativity doesn't need to be required for it to be used.  Many puzzles can be solved by brute force, but this tends to be a tedious and time-consuming approach, and people derive pleasure from solving them by shorter, more elegant methods.  It's easy to write a Sudoku solver, but some people still enjoy doing them by hand.  Computers play Chess by brute force and memorisation; humans play Chess by creative thought (and memorisation).

[increpare]

It's easy to write a Sudoku solver, but some people still enjoy doing them by hand. 

And some people enjoy writing solvers

[+peter]

Fascinating!

TLDR: External rewards are only effective when tasks are mechanical -- in any task requiring "rudimentary cognitive skills"  performance is reduced when rewards are introduced.

Fathat, thanks for posting that video. Completely derailed the work I was doing.

I wonder what the implications would be if a game was designed more around intrinsic/self motivated rewards more than external rewards were a lot less prominent.

Perhaps if player managed to really be engaged in the in the game, they would find the experience much more personal and interesting.
As you stated, the greatest problem is getting the player engaged.

[B. van Stokkum]

Since we're now talking about puzzles, I would like to say something.

Spelunky is a great platformer.  How is this related?  Well, it's pretty tough to FAQ that game.  Yes, there are certain conditions which are constant... however, they need not be there for the main gameplay.

I suggest creating a puzzle game that generates procedural content.  We teach the compy the rules, the loopholes, the 'lateral thinking', and see what the compy designs as interesting puzzles to pose the creator.

You wouldn't be able to FAQ your way out of that game.  Also if it's kinda fun, maybe people won't mind. 

You know it's difficult to brute-force FAQ out of procedural content.  However, most procedural content is so open that there are many solutions for any dilemma (ropes/bombs.)  But it may be possible to create a more 'intelligent' process.

I like this idea a lot.  In addition, I think this sort of thing, paired with the Scribblenauts concept would be pretty rad.

[FatHat]

Fascinating!

TLDR: External rewards are only effective when tasks are mechanical -- in any task requiring "rudimentary cognitive skills"  performance is reduced when rewards are introduced.

Fathat, thanks for posting that video. Completely derailed the work I was doing.

I wonder what the implications would be if a game was designed more around intrinsic/self motivated rewards more than external rewards were a lot less prominent.

Perhaps if player managed to really be engaged in the in the game, they would find the experience much more personal and interesting.
As you stated, the greatest problem is getting the player engaged.

I've been thinking a lot about this the last couple if weeks.

I'm thinking that one of the best ways to get players engaged and create intrinsic rewards is to make it a sandbox. The best example of this I can think of is Sim City -- there's no real goal to the game, and you can't win, but its a very rewarding game to play even though there aren't many explicit rewards. The main reward is just in making the city itself.  The game gives feedback along the way, but not in the tacky XBox achievement sense.

I also have some friends that have been playing the Minecraft alpha, and they're totally hooked. They've created this sprawling world with an intricate subway system and fire control and aquariums and all sorts of things. They've even created maps of the world. And this is in a game that basically just lets you place and delete boxes -- that's it. It's not even really a game. It's just a medium that allows people to play. I think the cooperative aspect really helps here too.

"Sandbox" is a term that's totally overused, but I think a sandbox is the most direct route towards creating a game that's intrinsically rewarding (although certainly not the only way... just the best one I can think of right now).

Also a bit of an aside, but I think as an industry we define games too narrowly. Sim City and The Sims barely even classify as games in the traditional sense (there's no ending, or story, or levels), but they've also sold about a bajillion copies and people love them. So I think if we want to make games that are intrinsically rewarding, we might have to throw away some very basic assumptions about what a game should be.

[FatHat]

the video wasn't about *any* rewards, though, it was about extra rewards. like, being paid a livable wage for work shouldn't reduce performance for that work, it's only when you give specific extra rewards for work that it'd reduce performance. i.e. like an extra $1000 if you can finish something on time would reduce performance if the task requires creativity rather than mechanics. but that doesn't imply a mere salary counts as that sort of extra reward.

also, @fathat, what you say is interesting but i one note: don't think many (if any) videogames qualify as requiring more than rudimentary cognitive skills in the sense the video means. anyone with at least a 70 IQ can beat any videogame in existence if given enough time and a faq. it's not particularly mentally challenging to learn to jump around and collect coins or rings or even the basic strategies and puzzles that you find in strategy and puzzle games. they're almost always purely mechanical tasks

I think what they meant with mechanical actions is something you can do without thinking about it. Certainly most puzzles in games can be beaten with a FAQ, but many of them still require quite a bit of creative thinking and lateral thought, even if the solution is the same. Braid is a really good example of this -- the solution to the puzzles is linear and predefined, but it still takes a lot of thought and discovery to find the solution initially and most of them can't be brute forced -- you have to think very hard about them. Puzzles like that are very similar to the problem he was talking about with the candle. In fact that candle problem was very similar to puzzles you see in most games.

[valambrian]

I think what they meant with mechanical actions is something you can do without thinking about it. Certainly most puzzles in games can be beaten with a FAQ, but many of them still require quite a bit of creative thinking and lateral thought, even if the solution is the same. Braid is a really good example of this -- the solution to the puzzles is linear and predefined, but it still takes a lot of thought and discovery to find the solution initially and most of them can't be brute forced -- you have to think very hard about them. Puzzles like that are very similar to the problem he was talking about with the candle. In fact that candle problem was very similar to puzzles you see in most games.

In the presentation Dan talked about solving two versions of the candle problem. Solving the more complex version didn't benefit from an external reward, but solving the simpler one did. So it's not just strictly mechanical actions. I've seen a book diagram of the optimal level of motivation for solving problems of a particular complexity. It looked like an inverse U - you would benefit from a higher level of motivation for a number of the problems, not just the simplest ones. As far as I understand, motivation in the book was the same as external reward in Dan's presentation.

I'd agree with Paul that most games don't require much thought process to play once you have the solutions laid down for you. Playing minesweeper for the first few times was problem-solving at each step, but after a while I started to rely on a small number of rules to open or skip a tile, and after some more time I stopped to notice what rule did I apply for a particular tile. Yes, solving puzzles is hard and requires creativity. Following up someone's instructions rarely is.

By the way, ted.com has a bunch of other interesting videos that can be relevant to games. Check, for example, Dan Ariely's lecture on our buggy moral code (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html). It's hilarious.