External Rewards and Jesse Schell's Amazing Lecture

I read a lot about psychology, then I tell you guys none of it. This is probably because I spend practically every waking moment working on the graphic design of three different card games and the logistics of manufacturing them. Anyway, Jesse Schell takes the opposite approach and clearly explains the intersection of games and psychology, instead of keeping it to himself.

Prisoners to External Rewards

The unspoken premise of his DICE 2010 lecture is that people are prisoners to external reward systems. "External reward" is practically a curse word to me, a thing I'm ever vigilant against. I don't need experience point systems giving me a false sense of mastery, or Xbox "achievements" for watching the opening movie of a game (that's a real one). But people absolutely are driven by external rewards. So much so that Schell doesn't even question it, he simply takes it as given.

He muses about a (dystopian?) future where games with external rewards permeate every minute of our lives. He looks at the beginnings of that in our current world and extrapolates out an extreme future where this stuff has completely taken over. What will stop it from taking over? Nothing, of course. Humanity has thoroughly proven that it can be manipulated by hollow external reward systems, and so these systems will take over. Most "games" on Facebook right now are hardly games at all, they are simply viruses-of-the-mind that are designed to spread, rather than to be of any actual value. Once your shoes have sensors on them, your Corn Flakes box has an internet connection to your friends' Corn Flakes boxes, and your e-book reader has eye-tracking which rewards you with points if you really read a book...points and "games" will be woven into your everyday life.

Who Exactly Will Design Our Future? 

Facebook "games" generally have their (virus-like) systems designed by skilled game designers. Schell points out that currently the external reward systems we see cropping up in places like his car's dashboard (that shows a plant growing the more energy he saves) are designed by "whoever happened to be around at that company." He rightly points out that actual game designers have the power and skill to make sure the future external reward systems that will permeate our lives will actually improve our lives also. These systems could cause us to read more and better books, to brush our teeth as much as we should, and so on. Yes, that could happen. DanC of lostgarden.com made that exact point as well, and we've already seen the benefits of it in exercise games like Wii Fit.

I'm with Schell every step of the way in his lecture, except for that last bit though. While it's true that skilled designers could use all this for good once sensors and points take over our real lives, it seems almost certain that they generally won't. If Facebook is any indication, they will simply create the most effective mental viruses that drive whatever commercial behavior they want, with little regard to the victims (consumers).

The Good Side of External Reward Systems

For the record, I'm ok with (and sometimes do consulting work for) external reward systems that are not evil. For example, a leaderboard system or matchmaking system surrounding a competitive game is an external reward system, but it also legitimately improves the experience of competition. As mentioned above, the various fitness games we're seeing these days use points and gamey systems to motivate us to exercise, and I can't say I'm against that. It's a helping hand to do what we should be doing anyway. These things certainly can be used for good...it's just that they so often are used for evil (such as to stimulate addiction with no benefit to the victim).

Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Freedom

I urge you to be vigilant against external rewards. Brush your teeth because it fights tooth decay, not because you get points for it. Read a book because it enriches your mind, not because your Kindle score goes up. Play a game because it's intellectually stimulating or relaxing or challenging or social, not because of your Xbox Live Achievement score. Jesse Schell's future is coming. How resistant are you to letting others manipulate you with hollow external rewards?

The Best Board Game Video Ever

Sometimes I research board games, usually to scoff at their overly complex designs and the 500 pieces that come in the box. Occasionally I find really well designed games. And even more occasionally, I find mind-blowing video reviews that leave me thinking "this is the greatest video about a board game ever!" This is one of those times.

Dear Board James: please make Yomi, Flash Duel, and Puzzle Strike look as awesome as DragonStrike.

Dexter's Mechanics and Flavor

A year or so ago I read up on various critics' top 10 lists of TV shows. One show that came up often was Dexter. I have to say that it's incredible and it fully deserves all the praise it gets. I've been thinking about the show from the point of view of a game designer.

Mechanics Matching Flavor

Game designers are often faced with the challenge of matching mechanics with flavor. What I mean by that is on the one hand, we have to create a system of rules that actually works, but on the other hand, the experience these rules create has to be aesthetically pleasing somehow.

As a simple example, let's take Rook in the card game Yomi. We have to balance Rook so that he's fair against other characters. Rook has lots of slow moves so making them faster would be a way to increase his power if we found him to be too weak. This solution isn't aesthetically pleasing though, because it violates his flavor. He's supposed to be a big stone golem so he probably shouldn't have fast moves. Instead, we need some sort of solution to make him fair (the mechanics), but that fits the experience you're supposed to have while playing Rook (the flavor).

As you can see, the solution I chose is Rock Armor, also know as "super armor" in many fighting games. He has slow attacks, but unlike other characters, he has a way to continue his attack even he gets hit by a faster attack from the enemy. The mechanics and flavor work together here, and there's even another level to it. Rook's card game incarnation has a mechanic (super armor) that's familiar to fighting game players. He'll probably have that same mechanic when he appears in an actual fighting game someday. So not only does Rock Armor make sense inside the card game, but it also helps the entire card game's flavor match the experience of playing a fighting game.

Plot vs Character

Fiction writers face a similar type of challenge. They have to deal with "mechanics" too, though they usually

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The Goings On At Sirlin Games

Here's an update on what's going on with Sirlin Games. We're working on physical and digital versions of all three of the announced card games: Yomi, Flash Duel, and Puzzle Strike.

The digital versions will appear on a new site with all sorts of nice multiplayer features. The site will use Flash while the games will themselves will be in Unity. Even cards are more fun in 3D. We're sadly lacking in Flash and UI artists, and I don't know what we're going to do about that yet, but functionality and design are coming along.

Yomi

Yomi is now at version 8.0, which is really more like 800 or something. New decks here (scroll down in that link to download pdfs fo all the decks). This new version has been a long time coming because we completely changed the way the card images are generated. The new method is a pain in the ass, while the old method was a gigantic pain in the ass, so that's a great improvement. Also, there's a bunch of new art in this version, but also several placeholder pieces. There might be technical problems here and there with the new cards, but you'll tell us pretty quickly I bet, and we'll fix them.

To play Yomi before its actual release, you could print your own physical version from the pdfs linked above, cut them out, and sleeve them against CCG cards or something. Or to playtest online, you're stuck with having to use Lackey for now (see forums). We're working hard to change this state of affairs though!

For our upcoming "real" online version, we're working on the core functionality of playing Yomi. That means seeing cards in your hand, dragging them around to rearrange them, playing to the table (face down or face up), looking through discard piles, and so on. We're basically starting by creating a virtual table that doesn't know the rules of Yomi, but at least lets you play the game in a reasonable and easy way if you do know the rules. And that just feels good when it comes to moving cards around, drawing them, playing them, etc. We're trying to make it feel really nice! More on that in a future post.

We have a lot of features lined up for this new site, but our first goal is to get the basic mechanics of our virtual card table, and having those 3D cards look exactly the same as the print version's cards. When just *that* works, even though parts will look ugly (things like placeholder text for your health instead of a nice looking health bar), even though the site itself will be entirely placeholder art, we're going to let you guys try it. That will be weeks from now still, but I think it's better to get it into someone's hands early than to wait months instead of just weeks.

After we reach this first goal, we'll then add the game logic to enforce all the rules of the game, and I think we'll also add rule-less versions of Flash Duel and Puzzle Strike so you have an easier way to play test those games, too. If you're willing to put up with in-development, placeholder stuff, you can help us develop the site and the games together.

Yomi Art

For some reason, it's taken literally years to get the necessary art for Yomi. Certainly not for lack of me paying money, I'll tell you that much. Anyway, let's take a look at Valerie Rose, Manic Painter (by GenzoMan):

Valerie has heterochromia, meaning she has one blue eye and one green eye. She "sees things differently," and expresses herself through painting. Emotionally, she experiences highs and lows, which she believes gives her even more appreciation for the full spectrum of human feelings. She also happens to like both boys and girls--a crime in the capital city of Flagstone. She now lives at Rook's Morningstar Sanctuary, a protected city labeled as "enemy of the state" by Flagstone. She serves as Rook's artistic advisor, alongside Max Geiger, Rook's scientific advisor.

Valerie's punch, kick, block, dodge, and throw sprites (by Long Vo):

Flash Duel

This game is now a "Final Candidate" phase. That means it

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Avatar: The Movie: A Game?

There's some debate on my forums about various movie reviews like this one that call Avatar "like a video game."

The problem some of my forum members have is when movie reviewers call something "like a video game" and have no idea what they are talking about. Take this quote:

You’ll feel like you just mastered the greatest video game ever conceived in an amazing three-hour setting. You’ll change your life, get the girl and save the world, yet all you had to do was sit back and enjoy the fly.

You actually won't feel like you've mastered anything because a movie is a form of passive entertainment and mastering something, especially something fundamentally interactive, is an active process. So what the heck is that even supposed to mean?

The thing is, Avatar really is like a game, it's just only certain people can really credibly say that. It's kind of like how I can't really say the N-word. If I say it (or even if I write this paragraph?), it would be really offensive. If a black person says it though, they say it with a kind of knowledge and experience that I can't have. Incidentally, I saw a news report yesterday where a woman described a Nigerian terrorist's appearance as "African American." Wow. Political correctness gone so awry that it ends up describing a terrorist who hates America as "American" just because we have no acceptable way to say "black" anymore.

Back to our story. At the very least, I will claim that somewhere in the world, you can call something "like a video game." I mean a thing that isn't a video game...isn't a video game. We know that. But a thing can really be "like" a video game. It can share some essential quality or remind us of a video game. In what way is the movie Avatar "like a video game" then?

It takes place in a fantasy world. The world uses hyper-saturated, vibrant colors. More importantly, it's a world with *jumping*. Lots of it. Running, jumping, climbing, and swinging through trees. It's a world where the ground lights up under your feet as you take a step. A world where touching a plant lights it up or makes it change its size. A world where you can ride an array of fantastic beasts--both ground and flying versions. In short, it's a world of INTERACTION.

Now, you could be a jerk and claim that everything has interaction. The world of, say, Law & Order (a cop / lawyer show) has "interaction." The cops fire bullets, the lawyers open doors, etc. But seriously, don't be a jerk about it. The world of Avatar has an extreme level of interaction (between the world itself and the inhabitants of the world) that's just uncommon. I fully understand that there is no more interaction between the screen and the audience than any other movie. I'm not saying *that* type of interaction is going on. What I am saying is that if you held a mirror up to "interaction" you'd see something like Avatar in the reflection. What you wouldn't experience is "feeling you've mastered the greatest video game ever made." That's kind of ridiculous. Nonetheless, I think it's still fair to call Avatar "like a video game."

But here's the boring part: so what? I don't mean the comparison as a compliment. I don't mean it as an insult. I simply mean it as description. (Incidentally, many movie reviewers seem to assume a game is automatically some terrible thing and they use the comparison as an insult.) Anyway, we've now described a facet of the movie. We've described that it depicts a world that's highly interactive. Pretty boring (yet true) statement, if you ask me.

It would be more interesting to discuss the story, that it casts humans as the bad guys, just like in the movie District 9. In both cases, the ignorant humans have no regard for the "others" and are happy to destroy what's sacred to the others without a thought, to slaughter them without a thought, and so on. A member of my forums named WaterD famously said, "The humanity is sad," and I applaud movies like these that try to drive that point home so that maybe "the humanity" can be a bit less sad going forward. Maybe occupying foreign countries is bad. Maybe huge military budgets aren't the greatest idea, in light of the healthcare shortcomings our main character faces. In his world, they can afford outrageous expeditions to conquer foreign lands, but they can't afford to fix his legs, even though they have the technology. The humanity is sad.

Anyway, it's "like a game." And that's not the point.