Comments on: Ideology and persuasion http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/games/2008/03/18/ideology-and-persuasion/ a quest for games that change the world Fri, 14 Sep 2012 01:58:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 By: Peter http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/games/2008/03/18/ideology-and-persuasion/comment-page-1/#comment-10 Peter Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:02:20 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/games/2008/03/18/ideology-and-persuasion/#comment-10 "Social physics" certainly seems like a term we need to keep around. I've never been big into The Sims, but one of the things that impressed me about it (via secondhand descriptions from my partner, a more avid player) is that as your "social" stat drops lower, your ability to be pleasant in the company of other people--i.e., your ability to get it back up--weakens. As a result, characters go into depressive spirals, and the people who most need social interaction can't help but drive it away. I like to say that this represents an astonishingly effective simulation of my first year in undergrad. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis lays out a rather mechanistic (one might say ludic) vision of Christian ethics. I've been trying to think of a good engine in which it could potentially be applied. I'll, uh, keep working on that. “Social physics” certainly seems like a term we need to keep around. I’ve never been big into The Sims, but one of the things that impressed me about it (via secondhand descriptions from my partner, a more avid player) is that as your “social” stat drops lower, your ability to be pleasant in the company of other people–i.e., your ability to get it back up–weakens. As a result, characters go into depressive spirals, and the people who most need social interaction can’t help but drive it away. I like to say that this represents an astonishingly effective simulation of my first year in undergrad.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis lays out a rather mechanistic (one might say ludic) vision of Christian ethics. I’ve been trying to think of a good engine in which it could potentially be applied. I’ll, uh, keep working on that.

]]> By: Gene Koo http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/games/2008/03/18/ideology-and-persuasion/comment-page-1/#comment-9 Gene Koo Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:01:34 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/games/2008/03/18/ideology-and-persuasion/#comment-9 Peter, very insightful and stimulating as a high-level description of the task before us. With some reformatting: (1) Make the players recognize the world on an intuitive level, regardless of the obvious differences (2) Motivate them to do the things you want to do (3) Have some explanations for the more obvious holes in the simulation I think the concept of "simulation" is quite important, as a simulation is a purposeful distillation of reality that is "hyper-real" by removing aspects of reality that are irrelevant to the purpose of the sim. When you note that games "set the rules to encourage and discourage behaviors," one of the greatest potential of games is to make explicit those social rules that are normally hidden by the cruft of daily life. To some extent, this is what I mean when I muse on the possibility of replacing Newtonian physics (as in falling, shooting, jumping) with "social physics" in game engines. Peter, very insightful and stimulating as a high-level description of the task before us. With some reformatting:

(1) Make the players recognize the world on an intuitive level, regardless of the obvious differences
(2) Motivate them to do the things you want to do
(3) Have some explanations for the more obvious holes in the simulation

I think the concept of “simulation” is quite important, as a simulation is a purposeful distillation of reality that is “hyper-real” by removing aspects of reality that are irrelevant to the purpose of the sim. When you note that games “set the rules to encourage and discourage behaviors,” one of the greatest potential of games is to make explicit those social rules that are normally hidden by the cruft of daily life. To some extent, this is what I mean when I muse on the possibility of replacing Newtonian physics (as in falling, shooting, jumping) with “social physics” in game engines.

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