La Inteligencia Artificial, La Cognición, y los Video Juegos

(Lo siguiente es la versión ensayo de la charla que ofrecí en el Primer Festival de Video Juegos en Puerto Rico, el 20 de julio de 2013.) 

A través de la historia de los juegos de video, el énfasis primordial, en un contexto evolutivo, ha sido el de mejorar las gráficas. Desde muy temprano se descubrió que el ojo domina en cuestiones de juzgar la calidad de los juegos. Si tomamos un juego de cada uno de los años, desde el 1980 hasta el 2013, uno puede apreciar la tendencia hacia juegos mas llamativos gráficamente.

Una selección de juegos, del 1980 hasta el 2013.

Claro, estos ejemplos son tomados del ámbito profesional, no de desarrolladores independientes. Esta tendencia de mejorar las gráficas ha sido posible por los avances tecnológicos de procesadores y tarjetas de video cada vez mas potentes. Cabe recalcar que los primeros juegos para las masas (juegos como Donkey Kong, PacMan, Mario Bros.), aún cuando sufrían limitaciones en cuestión de tecnología (4K de memoria era enorme para aquél entonces), dedicaban una gran parte de sus códigos para el despliegue de gráficas a la pantalla. Esta limitación y énfasis en gráficas obligaba a los programadores de aquél entonces a ponerse creativos al querer introducir otros elementos a los juegos. Piense, el juego Mario Bros., producido para el Nintendo Entertainment System (el cual corría un procesador MOS 6502 con no mas de 2K para la memoria), pero aún así, logró tener una gran variedad de enemigos (algunos de los cuales exhibían una inteligencia rudimentaria), y de niveles (o en buen castellano “tablas”), y también logró tener música. Esta creatividad al programar es la semilla de muchos algorítmos que hoy en día se conocen como “Generación de Contenido Programático” (o como se conoce en inglés “procedural content generation“), una técnica de la inteligencia artificial para introducir contenido a medida que corre el juego. Es decir, antes de prender el juego ese contenido no existe, y los códigos del juego crean el contenido (por ejemplo enemigos, niveles) dinámicamente.

El Fin de la Revolución Gráfica

Hay quienes que piensan que la revolución gráfica (por darle nombre a este movimiento) se acabará dentro de 10 años. A mi no me gusta hacer ese tipo de predicción, porque la tecnología es verdaderamente impredecible. Lo que sí me siento cómodo en decir es que en algún punto se acabará. L.A. Noire demostró lo que era posible para juegos de consolas. Varios juegos como Grand Theft Auto IV, y Skyrim (que fueron publicados en consolas como también para PC) han disfrutado de mejoras a la calidad de gráficas, impulsadas por comunidades de fanáticos de dichas franquicias. Pero llegará el día donde no se podrá mejorar más. Y entonces vuelvo a la pregunta que motivó esta presentación: ¿cuál es el próximo paso evolutivo?

El Inicio de la Revolución de la Inteligencia Artificial

Como ya saben, mi respuesta a la interrogante es: la inteligencia artificial. El problema es que tenemos que deshacernos del concepto que comúnmente se le atribuye a la inteligencia artificial en contextos interactivos. El problema no es uno de crear enemigos más difíciles para que el jugador sufra derrotas casi injustas; eso sería inteligencia artificial en el sentido mas grosero. Sino, el problema es el de la Ingeniería de la Experiencia – cómo asegurarte de que cada individuo pueda disfrutar de una experiencia interactiva, que cambie y evolucione con la jugadora, y que sea única cada vez que se siente a jugar.

Si son fanáticos de la ciencia ficción de los 80 y los 90, ya se habrán dado cuenta de que lo que estoy describiendo aparece prominentemente en la serie de televisión Star Trek: The Next Generation: la visión del Holodeck. Es muy posible que esta metáfora murió hace 10 años, tal que para aquellos que desconocen, el Holodeck era una computadora única, en la cuál uno podía programar un ambiente interactivo con representación fidedigna de la realidad, solo que era una simulación computarizada sofisticada. Como punto y aparte, mi área de investigación sueña con crear una computadora lo suficientemente avanzada como para crear el Holodeck.

Volviendo a la Ingeniería de la Experiencia – el problema de crear experiencias interactivas, únicas y cambiantes, cae en el dominio de la inteligencia artificial, lo cual provee la motivación para la revolución que se aproxima. Analicemos entonces las experiencias que la Inteligencia Artificial facilita:

El Efecto Catalizador de la Inteligencia Artificial para la Ingeniería de la Experiencia

He identificado cuatro áreas en las cuales pienso que la inteligencia artificial puede únicamente facilitar diferentes experiencias.  No quiero decir que estas son las únicas áreas, pero pienso que es un buen punto de  partida.  Para evitar que este escrito se convierta en una mini-tesis, proveeré enlaces para cada uno de los proyectos de ejemplo.

1. Generación de Contenido Programático –  la programación de algorítmos que generan código para contenido dinámicamente.  Este contenido no existe antes de que comienze el juego como tal, sino que se genera a medida que la jugadora juega.  Ejemplos: PaSSAGE, Galactic Arms Race, Games by ANGELINA
2. Análisis Conductual de Jugadores – el análisis de la conducta de los jugadores, que puede ser interpretada de diversas maneras. La data que se recopila puede ser utilizada para mejorar el juego, como también para generar contenido personalizado.  Ejemplos: Análisis Conductual de los Jugadores en League of Legends
3. Modelaje de Situaciones Sociales Complejas – a medida que los juegos intentan simular aspectos de la vida real, se torna cada vez mas compleja la simulación.  Los algorítmos de la inteligencia artificial son capaces de lidiar con complejidad emergente, y han sido utilizados para crear juegos cada vez más sutiles.  Ejemplos: Façade, Prom Week, Versu
4. Diseño Automatizado de las Mecánicas de los Juegos – el desarrollo de juegos de gran embergadura se torna cada vez mas difícil, dada la demanda para más contenido, y más interacción en los video juegos.  Esto crea una demanda para herramientas que puedan ayudar en el proceso de diseño, y que puedan razonar acerca de las reglas de los juegos, al igual que sobre el contenido que los jugadores enfrentarán.  Ejemplos: Ludocore, Tanagra

En conclusión, estamos empezando la revolución en la inteligencia artificial, demostrado por esta selección de experiencias únicas, las cuales no hubiesen sido posibles, sin avances en técnicas avanzadas.

La Cognición

Hay una comunidad, compuesta de desarrolladores e investigadores científicos de los video juegos, que piensan que el componente mas fundamental de un juego es su capacidad para proveer modos de interacción. En otras palabras, lo importante en un juego es lo que puedes hacer. La Dra. Janet Murray, catedrática de Georgia Tech y una eminencia en el estudio de juegos, proclamó que tu capacidad de intervención en un juego determina tu disfrute del mismo. Ella definió la capacidad de intervención como la potestad de poder actuar en un entorno interactivo y observar los efectos de las acciones; o sea, no basta con poder actuar, sino que también tu debes poder observar algún cambio en tu entorno, presumiblemente causado por ti.

Junto a varios colegas, retamos este punto de vista. Diseñamos un experimento en el cuál varias personas jugaron un juego de texto, similar al juego del antaño Zork. Los partícipes del experimento jugaron una de dos versiones del juego; en la primera, se les presentaba opciones para jugar como es de esperar de un juego de texto, y en la otra versión, se presentaban las mismas opciones, pero con una modificación simple: aún cuando presentaba las mismas opciones, eran falsas – no conducían a nada diferente. Como es de esperar, las personas en la versión modificada reportaron sentirse limitadas a través del juego.

Entonces, tomamos la versión modificada e introducimos otro cambio. En esta segunda ronda de experimentos, las dos versiones del juego producían la misma respuesta – es decir, todas las opciones para jugar resultaban en lo mismo. Lo único diferente es que ahora, en una de las versiones, el juego reconocía la acción, presentando un mensaje personalizado.Mi argumento es que la percepción y la cognición son clave para el desarrollo de experiencias interactivas.

Por ejemplo: tu empezabas el juego, y tenías la opción de escoger entre la espada o el arco y flecha, antes de continuar. Si decidías escoger la espada, lo único diferente en esta versión es que el juego te demostraba un mensaje como el siguiente: “Haz tomado la espada por el mango, y decides salir de tu casa.”

Aún cuando este cambio es relativamente insignificante, los partícipes del experimento reportaron sentirse significativamente más en control de la experiencia interactiva, de lo cual concluimos que no hace falta crear un juego complejo para presentar opciones de juego satisfactorias. Basta con crear la ilusión de control para que los jugadores estén conformes.

Mi Tesis:  Modelaje Cognitivo del Razonamiento Narrativo

Mi tesis intenta realizar el modelaje cognitivo a través de la inteligencia artificial. Me interesa modelar cómo es que uno interpreta los cuentos interactivos, a medida que uno los vive. En particular, yo me enfoco en la memoria como base cognitiva de diversos fenómenos narratológicos. En esencia, mi argumento es que la memoria es fundamental porque afecta tu capacidad de hacer inferencias, y da paso a sensaciones de suspenso, sorpresa, y hasta terror. Considera la escena donde el antagonista de la película Skyfall intenta tomarle la vida a la dirigente del MI6.

Cuando uno ve esa escena, la memoria de los eventos (el hecho de que el antagonista se encuentra de camino a “M” en todo momento que ella habla) y la capacidad de inferencias (el hecho de que uno sabe las intenciones del antagonista y puede extrapolar sus acciones) lleva a uno sentirse ansioso.

Comprensión Narrativa en los Video Juegos

Mi tesis no es en el contexto de las narrativas cinematográficas, sino que es en el contexto de los juegos. El contexto interactivo ofusca los fenómenos narratológicos, ya que los juegos llevan consigo ciertas expectativas (como parte del medio en el cual se realizan) que afectan los procesos de inferencia. Aún pienso que la memoria tiene que ver algo, pero es menos claro cómo. Mi tesis se dedicará a investigar la naturaleza de la interacción entre la cognición y los juegos.

En Resumen,

estamos en medio de una revolución de la inteligencia artificial (IA) en los juegos de video. Mi argumento es que la cognición esta al centro de la experiencia de juego. Mi tema de tesis intenta modelar la cognición con estructuras de datos tomadas de la IA.  La revolución artificial ha comenzado.  Espero que seas parte de ella.

* Si te interesa, puedes ver las transparencias que utilizé en mi charla.

Reply: “The Simulation Dream” by Tynan Sylvester

I was recently recommended a Gamasutra article on “The Simulation Dream,” by Tynan Sylvester.  I wanted to write down a quick response that I’d love to start a discussion around.

Overall, I agree with Sylvester’s article, which essentially echoes that what matters in a game  is what players perceive, as opposed to what the game offers.  In essence, a game may hold great potential (through extensive narrative content, or intricate game mechanics, etc.), but if that potential is never acted upon, then it is, for lack of a better phrase, wasting space.  This also implies, as Sylvester suggests, that you can play with the player’s perception to elicit game content that isn’t actually there, something my colleagues and I have studied in our paper on The Illusion of Agency.  While we didn’t call it that, Sylvester references “Apophenia,” the cognitive bias of perceiving relationships which aren’t necessarily there, as the reason for the primacy of player perception.  Apophenia is not the only cognitive bias relevant to the study of games, but it certainly merits a great deal of attention.  Also, his comment regarding creating story-richness reminds me of some of the problems that the field of Artificial Intelligence faced when studying issues relating to Knowledge Representation.  Sylvester writes that we should “choose the minimum representation that supports the kinds of stories you want to generate,” a question that has beleaguered AI researchers for quite some time (although not necessarily in the context of games).

However, there are some things I disagree with, of which I will name two.

First, the statement that “anything in the Game Model that doesn’t copy into the Player Model is worthless,” to me sounds like too broad of a catch-all.  Perhaps this complaint is due to my desire to be precise, but the statement implies that everything in the Game Model ought to be in the Player Model (because if not, it is not worth putting in).  I think what he’s implying is that things intended (i.e.) to be perceived ought to have feedback to advertise them, otherwise they risk not making it into the person’s mental model of the game, which I think is fair to say.  However, I’m taking a risk in further refining his original thoughts, since he doesn’t explicitly define the Game Model; does he mean the mechanics of the game?  or all the supporting code?  the code that helps the game run smoothly is certainly not worthless, but it may not be perceived in the player’s mind.  Small tangent: part of the Game Model (I presume) includes the game’s AI, which we as developers actively try to shield from the player’s mind in the sense that we do not want them to know how the AI “is smart,” because we want to maintain the willing suspension of disbelief.

Second, the statement that a real complex system will “constantly break the Player Model Principle” (succinctly defined as: “The whole value of a game is in the mental model of itself it projects into the player’s mind.”) to me is a gross over-generalization of complex systems.  While it is true that complex system interactions make it difficult to tease apart causal relations (and transitively, to parse stories), I don’t think it will constantly break the Player Model Principle as long as the interactions with the story are actively mediated by the game itself.  I don’t think I necessarily disagree with Sylvester’s point, but I would rather have the problem of “from all the content I have, let me pick and choose what I think you would like best,” rather than the problem of “let me come up with content that I think you would like best.”  Thus, I say I disagree with him, but what I really want is to avoid discarding complex systems, because I think there is great potential in them for cool stories that we have not even come up with yet.  A computer is excellent at bookkeeping, and it has the capacity to store relationship information between artificial story agents living in a fictional world.  A  human, contrarily, must focus on content with a limited set of characters, because the author herself is a bottleneck in terms of keeping up with intricate social relations and happenings.  Complexity, for lack of a better word, is good.

The Simulation Dream is alive and kicking in me, and I think generous amounts of complexity is the way to do it.  The task is knowing where, when, and how much.

What does your gut tell you?

Lately, I’ve been encountering a problem when I mentor others.  During mentoring, I try to follow a very Rogerian approach, choosing to let others talk through the problems they are facing, as opposed to providing direct advice.  Like the fallen Jedi Kreia, I feel that sometimes you may inadvertently rob someone of a growing experience if you provide too much help, and so sometimes, you need to let others trip, fall, and get back up.

The problem I have found, however, is that fear of the unknown may stunt others from even thinking about the consequences of their actions.  And so, when I ask people: “What do you think you should do?,” I’m often met with a blank stare, often times succeeded by the phrase: “I don’t know.”

What I’ve resorted to asking (with odd success) is: “What does your gut tell you?” On countless occasions, this has helped my mentees at least utter what they’re thinking of doing.  It’s almost as if relinquishing agency to an external entity (even if it’s a conscious-less object) makes the process of detaching and objectively evaluating yourself even easier.  Admittedly, relinquishing agency could be thought of as what people are doing when they solicit advice on what to do next, but what’s interesting is that in this case it’s completely imagined; maybe people think that their gut is actually telling them something?  Maybe it is easy to abdicate the choice point, so as to not take direct responsibility for the consequence of the decision.

What does your gut tell *you*?

A view from the outside: my experience at the 2013 Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Research Symposium

Being at the intersection of gaming, stories, computation, and cognition (as my blog’s headline suggests), I often have a research identity crisis, which I suspect (although this has yet to be confirmed) is a shared feeling with other researchers in my field.  This inner confusion does have its advantages; like a chameleon, I can float around different kinds of people and find some language in which to converse.  Such was the case at the 2013 Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Research Symposium, where I was scheduled to talk about my research “Computational Models of Narrative and their Relation to Human Action,” as part of a panel on Gaming.  My “language” was cognition, and (I think) it was the most appealing aspect of my research to the community .  Regardless, there were several takeaways from the symposium that I wanted to share:

• Everyone is working on something related to everyone else

Something I perceived, which was most likely affected by my inexperience in CRDM, was the fact that everyone seemed to be working on topics that were relevant to everyone else.  What was remarkable is that seemingly disparate topics shared a common thread (which was often Dr. Carolyn Miller’s landmark paper: Genre as Social Action).  The concept of genre (I learned) is definitely a cross-cutting thing, and has useful taxonomic properties, as well as historical fingerprint qualities.  The fact that this common thread was woven, I think, was probably due in part to the excellent focus of the workshop.

• Support is overwhelming

Despite feeling I was overly technical, and that my presentation had too much jargon, the response was overwhelmingly positive.  I had several people throughout the presentation nod in agreement, had others tell me afterward that the presentation was well done, and even had one professor approach my advisor to congratulate me by proxy.  I’m sure I’m not the first one to say this, but having experienced it first hand, I think the following is worth repeating: communities certainly welcome outside perspectives.  I think it’s worth reaching out.

• Be precise!

Like Dr. Nicholas Taylor said before delivering his talk at the Gaming Panel, “all games researchers apologize before beginning their talks,” as a way of acknowledging that, because we’re all from such diverse fields, there’s bound to collision on some aspect of research.  I did, in fact, apologize for “possibly offending someone with my research.”  While, at the time, I sincerely doubted that my scientific advances would constitute an offense to anybody, it did help a bit.  Someone called out distinction of the virtual v. the real, alluding to the philosophical arguments relating to phenomenology.  All I meant to highlight was the distinction of video games and non-video games.  Specifically, I was talking about the challenge of borrowing non-interactive narrative concepts to analyze an interactive medium.  I should have been more precise.

• Keynote by Dr. David Herman

Dr. David Herman, Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University, was the evening keynote speaker.  His talk was probably the most valuable aspect of the whole symposium, because his research has been highly influential on my own and because we both see narratology as a cognitive science.  In essence, narratives are such a core part of our lives, that we use them for more than just entertainment; we use them for sense-making, for structuring our reality, and for guiding our future action.  These ideas merit their own set of posts, but my ideas aren’t completely formed yet.

All in all, a very fruitful symposium.  I hope I get to invade other types of academic gatherings to gain unique insights going forward!

My research, using the ten hundred most common words

A while ago, I ran across the famous XKCD comic, Up Goer Five.  That comic inspired the namesake text-editor, which makes for a very interesting communicative challenge.  Being a fan of unique ways to communicate science to the masses (e.g. The Tiny Transactions of Computer Science), I took the time to write down what my thesis work aims to achieve using the ten-hundred most common words:

Computers can tell stories, but they can’t see what goes on inside your head; more to the point, a computer can’t see what you remember, which is actually a key part of how well you enjoy a story. My work deals with finding out what you remember from a story as you are reading it. I will then get a computer to track what you remember, so it can change the story on the fly to give you a great one. My work can be used in both usual stories, and in games.

I submit this to Ten Hundred Words of Science, and I encourage you to do the same.

Game-Theoretic Analysis of Doing What You Like v. Getting Tenure

Earlier this month I had a chance to sit for lunch with a longtime friend and professional colleague, Dr. David L. Roberts.  We had a small chat of the State of the Union, where I commented on one of the personal weaknesses I have when it comes to professional engagements: I have trouble saying ‘no’. (I’m working on it!)

In general, I like doing a lot of things and I get distracted by shiny objects.  David smiled the smile of “been there, done that,” and said: “let me show you something that was shown to me in the context of tenure.”  Using a really bad paper napkin and a pen that could barely get ink out, he drew the following chart:

(Doing…)	Things that get you tenure	Things that don’t get you tenure
Things that you like	[ +2, +2 ]	[ +1, -1 ]
Things that you don’t like	[ +1, +2 ]	[ -1, -1 ]

Game-Theoretic Analysis of Tenure – Your payoffs are shown in bold, with the other payoffs corresponding to the University, which we will assume wants you to get tenure and has the capacity to do so.  +2 payoff is highly desirable, +1 payoff is desirable, and -1 payoff is undesirable.  The strategy of doing “Things that you like” strictly dominates doing things you don’t like.

The justification for the payoffs is simple: you prefer doing things you like all the time, you’d rather get tenure than not, and each individual reward is independent and discrete (so getting tenure is +1 unit of reward and doing something you like is another distinct +1 unit of reward).

Anyway, the point he made (and very eloquently), is that “doing things you like is a strategy that strictly dominates doing things you don’t like”.  Recalling the wonders of dominated strategies:

We say that s_i strictly dominates s′_i if, for every choice of strategies by the other players, the payoff to player i from using s_i is greater than the payoff to player i from using s′i.

I felt it was a very interesting game theory problem, since you can kind of abstract this setup to anything that fits the pattern: “things you want to do v. things you have to do”.  In fact, David brought it up precisely because I had a situation that fit the pattern: the problem of doing things you like v. graduating with a Ph.D.  The above abstraction does not capture (even though it could) the repercussions of taking extra time in doing things you like that don’t get you tenure or get you graduated, so if you would like to do this for your own case, be sure to change the payoffs to your desired level of detail and/or sophistication.

I think I’ll be chasing some more shiny objects until these payoffs change for me.

Game Jams: 3 Perspectives, 3 Lessons Learned

Last weekend I took part in my 3rd game jam, the Global Game Jam at NC State University. For those of you who aren’t familiar with what a game jam is, I think the official Global Game Jam summary says it best:

Think of it as a hackathon focused on game development. The weekend stirs a global creative buzz in games… while at the same time exploring the process of development, be it programming, iterative design, narrative exploration or artistic expression. It is all condensed into a 48 hour development cycle. Although the event is heavily focused on programming, there are many other areas where people who don’t code can contribute to a game.

Mind you, the Global Game Jam format started it all, but there are many different jams with different formats, sharing the common thread of getting a game done under a time constraint.  Like I said, this was my third rodeo; the other two times I participated were not official Global Game Jams.  I had different roles in each of the game jams and I wanted to share what I learned.

Game Jam #1: A 48 Hour Game Development Challenge with both Red and Green
Lesson Learned:  Experimentation is OK.

My first round was nowhere near my comfort zone:  I participated in the New Mexico Game Jam, run by the one and only Jon Whetzel, with people I had never worked with on games, having no knowledge of the programming language everyone on my team wanted to use (JavaScript), in an area I wasn’t familiar with.  However, the aforementioned list of items were not a detriment to my game development.  Quite the opposite – I was as eager as ever to lay down some code.  I volunteered to handle AI and was excited to really get down to business, which is why I was a bit bummed when several members (I’ll call them subteam A) on our team wanted to pursue an idea that I felt was…well, bland.  Not just bland, but large in scope, and complex to finish.  By contrast, the subteam B wanted to pursue quirky, experimental games, which I felt were not only doable, but would have made really interesting experiences; at the very least, they would have been funny to play through.  Subteams A and B debated a while, but subteam A won out – and we embarked to develop a complex game.  48 hours later, there was barely something you could interact with.  My AI was very adept at spinning in place, which I think is hilarious since, in retrospect, the in-place spinning could have been viewed as a metaphor for our progress on the game.

Subteam A’s rationale for picking the design that we pursued was simple: they wanted to make a game that would be memorable and that people would play.  Given the format of the game jam, I think that that goal is admirable, but ridiculous.  We would all love to be the next Minecraft – but why not take a chance on a crazy idea that may or may not be a hit?  If you’re going to be crunching to get something done, that probably won’t be worked on beyond the jam, why not take the risk?  Subteam B all saw it my way too; Subteam A was just louder, I guess.  My point in this story is this: when you’re in a game jam, go ahead and experiment!  You’ve got nothing to lose anyway.

Game Jam #2:  Game jam in the NC Triangle Area
Lesson Learned:  Cut your scope by half before you begin.

My second round was ever more exciting than the first.  Given that I had not finished a game my first time around, and that I had gotten a taste of what a game jam was, I was ready to start and finish a game at the Triangle Game Jam, run by professional developers Nick Darnell and Michael Noland.  This time around, I was working with my lovely wife, Allison, and a super awesome close friend, Ian, under the banner of our yet-to-be-formed-but-trademark-pending Sweet Carolina Games.  After having settled on a theme to pursue, we decided to implement after a tower defense game, with 3 different types of towers and 3 different types of enemies.  The premise was simple enough.  Instead of JavaScript, I was doing iOS, and was way more of a generalist; whenever we needed something, Ian and I were pretty good about sharing the load.  As we started coding however, we realized that what we thought was going to be a quick and easy game had ballooned to a art/asset heavy application.  In addition, the mechanics of a tower defense game are simple enough to play, but vastly more complex to code (at least, the way we pursued the implementation).  48 hours later, we relied on the magic of video to make the game seem playable, but it was little more than a simulation of what could have been.

We thought to have controlled for scope issues when we started.  Allison, Ian and myself had been adamant about not wanting to pursue a complex game for fear of not finishing.  We sadly still underestimated the scope and missed our mark by about several days’ worth of work.  So remember kids, whenever you think a project scope is simple, think again.  Please don’t think that you should pursue games that aren’t artistically fulfilling for fear of not finishing.  Ian and I had only begun our quest to master cocos2d (our weapon of choice), and so, the real reason we had to scale back the project was because of our novice status.  If you are adept at using any particular game development kit, then you should have a reasonable idea of what you can accomplish in 48 hours or less.  However, a general rule of thumb is that when you’re in a game jam, you should probably cut your scope by half before you begin.  Do more with less!

Game Jam #3:   The world’s largest game jam event
Lesson Learned:  You need to sleep.  Sleep is not optional.
Bonus Lesson Learned (to potential game jam organizers):   Have an online backup site.

I lied:  In truth, there are four lessons in this post.  The bonus lesson however, applies to those of you who might be interested in organizing a game jam.  I had the pleasure of organizing the NC State Global Game Jam of snowy hell™ and I learned a ton of things.  Due to inclement weather, we couldn’t all physically make it out to the Global Game Jam site.  We had to kick off the event virtually (streaming from Justin.tv and later through the use of a Mumble Server), and it would have been an absolute nightmare to coordinate had we not had a collaborative wiki site (we used Piazza and it is fantastic…and free!).  So, be sure to have a backup web presence that you can post to to keep everyone in the game jam on the same page.

My third round was definitely the most interesting of the three.  In addition to managing iOS programming duties (which I feel Ian definitely took the lead on) I had to manage the Global Game Jam site itself.  The duties weren’t extremely tiring, but they did consume time.  Being extremely cautious time-wise paid off, but we’ll get to the results later.  When we started the jam, we must have gone over 4 different game ideas that we liked, but weren’t too thrilled because of scope.  We finally settled on one idea that we thought was both cute, and do-able given all the time constraints.  We also had matured regarding our self-management:  we had to sleep – we all have commitments outside of the jam, and so, we needed to be realistic of how much time we could pour into the effort so that we wouldn’t die by the end or so we wouldn’t show up as zombies to work on the Monday after the jam.  We settled on a minimum amount of sleep time (6 hours at least), break time (to cool off), and food time and planned around the leftover time:  we had (realistically) approximately 30 effective hours to finish a game.

And we pulled it off.  The final result, (Space Thing IV:) The Heart Attack from Outer Space was uploaded with great form and complete function.  Resting really keeps you alert and helps avoid the stupid hour that will inevitably creep up on you as you get fatigued.

Three Game Jams, Three Four Lessons, and plenty of memorable experiences.  I hope this gives you some ideas on how to succeed in game jams.  It paid off for me in the end, hopefully it can pay off for you too.

The Role of Perception in Games

(This is a cross-post from my entry in the Liquid Narrative blog at NC State University)

This upcoming November, my colleague, Stephen Ware, will present a paper at the 2012 International Conference for Interactive Digital Storytelling.  This paper, on which several colleagues and myself worked, is titled “Achieving the Illusion of Agency,” which argues that complex drama management systems (see Roberts et al. for a great survey) are not necessary for dynamically creating appealing interactive narrative experiences.  As long as we can create an illusion of agency (using cheap tricks), it is enough.

I expected that this paper would ruffle some feathers – which is always a plus when you are engaging a community of worthy scholars.  The paper was accepted, for which I am happy.  However, the paper has (at least for me) a hidden agenda that was not picked up on by the reviewers of the paper.  I do not fault them, since the point is implicit, but here I will make it clear:

To find the future of game experiences, we have but one place to look: inward.

On the Value of ‘False’ Choices

One of the reviewers of the paper had this to say:

“It is difficult to address subjective aesthetic experiences such as ‘agency’ within a narrative in user testing,  so it is useful to have this well-designed study.

[…] but they reach very different conclusions than I would, ultimately arguing for the value of false choices.”

It’s an interesting point, which raises a philosophical question: what is a false choice?  That which is truthfully false? or that which is apparently false?

I argue the latter.  Since an interactive narrative is a controlled user experience, the player is not aware of false choices, because she never is told about the manner of the choices.  Given the existence of cognitive economy, the player assumes that what is being stated or presented is true, following Gricean pragmatics about quality of the “conversation” between her and the game.

To follow up, if it is not apparently false, does it matter?

Not to me.  Even if the choice is truly false, it is apparently true unless told otherwise, which is all that matters for her.

And so, to find the future of game experiences, we have but one place to look:  inward.  Perception, a sort of middleware for general cognition, is of utmost importance when creating games.  Ergo, to create experiences beyond what are currently imaginable in games, we need to tackle perception head on.

“You’re just making games.” – The Importance of Marketing in Our Controversial Science

(This is a cross-post from my entry in the Liquid Narrative blog at NC State University)

I have been on the receiving end of the title quote.  Often, I receive it verbatim.  Other times, I receive it in spirit.  As games researchers, we walk a fine line between art and science.  In my short academic career, I have found that justifying our work to scholars of the arts and the humanities is not as difficult as justifying our work to scholars in the sciences; not for lack of scholarly rigor in the arts and humanities, but rather because artists and humanists already know that it is important to look at games for what they represent, as well as their ubiquity and communicative power.  Our peers in the sciences, it seems, need a little more goading.  However, it is not their fault.  It is ours.

I admit, on the surface, it is difficult to imagine how the scientific process fits inside the machinery of video games. Games are primarily known for entertainment, and so, what possible science could there be?  What compounds the problem is that it is very easy to imagine that video games are a waste of a person’s time.  My anecdotal experience is very telling of this:

Exhibit A:  at a conference that was not focused on games, I had the very challenging experience of explaining my research to a community of scientists and non-scientists.  I had the opportunity to engage with some of the brightest minds the world has to offer…who (without fail) asked of my research:  “where is the science?”  I smiled every time, and tried as best I could to explain the complexity and the implications of my work.  Some got it (and were genuinely excited), others didn’t (and diplomatically dismissed the work).  Those who didn’t are especially memorable, for reasons I won’t go into here.

Exhibit B:  when I applied for the Graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation, I received praise for the general quality of my application.  However, I got one specific bit of feedback that I will never forget:

“his proposed research topic – digital games – may be less critical for the society.”

My gut reaction to these experiences is always the same:  diplomatic anger, followed by personal disappointment.  It is not easy to get a Ph.D. in the first place, and it becomes more difficult to justify its worth when a community of scholars cannot see why games research is real science.  My mentors have often said that it is important to have thick skin and mental toughness for getting a Ph.D.  However, nothing really quite prepares you for a scientific community that routinely reminds you that “your problem is not worth solving.”

It’s easy to say:  “The scientists are bound by the shackles of the old guard.  They’re old, and close-minded.  They have lost touch with what is really important.  They don’t realize that games are a multi-billion dollar industry, eclipsing Hollywood and providing a pillar for the U.S. rebound economy.”  All these comments and many more are whispered in the halls of game research centers, and screamed in the heads of the scientists that study games.  However, I do not fault scientists for being skeptical; a healthy dose of skepticism is necessary for science.  It is our own fault.  I blame ourselves for not knowing enough marketing.  And I don’t mean marketing in terms of buzzwords (adding the terms “crowdsourcing” or “metaspectral” add fluff and will only impress marketers by trade),  I mean marketing as in “communicating science.”  We are not the only ones under this pressure; the government funding agencies have recently come under fire for funding basic science research that has no apparent immediate benefit or application.  This cascades into making video game funding especially hard to come by (who wants to fund a bunch of graduate students to make games?)

We games researchers are not doing enough to communicate the importance of our science, both to our scientific peers and the (much greater) non-scientific community.  And who could blame us?  We already know that it sucks to talk to scientists that look down upon your work.  As junior scientists, we seek experiences that help us grow professionally.  Pungent criticism stunts growth if you’re not prepared to handle it (and junior scientists, myself included, often aren’t).    This leads us to become a recluse of the general community – we prefer hanging out with our own crowd; publishing in blogs, conferences and journals devoted to games research, preparing posters that other games researchers will appreciate, and eventually establishing a network of games researchers.  This has to stop.

Rather than making the critical feedback personal and seeking the relative security of the games research community, I have set myself the goal of improving my science communication, actively seeking ways to engage and publish in other communities and I urge all games scientists to do the same.  The mindset of “they don’t understand and therefore they are close-minded” is not helpful nor productive.  Instead, ask yourself what I ask myself every time I encounter someone critical of my work:  “what am I not communicating that makes my audience think this is trivial or not worth doing?”  This becomes an issue of developing a deep understanding of your work, as well as anticipating potential criticisms, and knowing your audience, challenging aspects of research that are nonetheless do-able.  When someone tells you that you are just developing games, the correct response is:  “It may seem like it, but this is why it’s so much more than that: …”

An account of the Storytelling Workshop at the Albuquerque Comic Expo

My wife and I recently visited the Albuquerque Comic Expo and we both had the pleasure to go to a Q&A session featuring Michael Golden, an American comic book artist, and co-creator of the X-men character Rogue.  He has recently stopped doing illustration work and has focused more on other projects, notably a Role-Playing Game, which he did not reveal.  His session was focused on storytelling, a topic that I am passionate about.  Granted, his focus was storytelling in comic books, but I felt most of his commentary could be applied to other mediums as well  (*sigh* I know, I know, the medium has much to do with how the audience perceives the story, but just let me get on with the blog post.  I can talk about why some storytelling principles are not domain-specific later).  Like most “words of wisdom” sessions, he started out with three golden rules of storytelling:

1.  Cover the basic six points of storytelling:  “Who?”, “What?”, “When?”, “Where?”, “Why?” and “How?”
Michael mentioned that he often became upset when people would talk about a (what he felt was a false) dichotomy between “old-school” storytelling and “new-school” storytelling.  To paraphrase,

There is no “old-school” and “new-school”.  There is only one way to tell a story – if you don’t cover those six basic points, then it’s not storytelling.  It may be (at best) story elaboration, but you’re only telling a story if you cover those points.   You don’t have to reveal all the information, but you at least have to set it up.

2.  Audience perception is crucial:  spoon feed them the facts, or risk them not “getting it”

Essentially, it means that you can’t count on the audience to be smart.  (This is one of the times where it became comic book centric: ) highly abstract symbolism is not welcome when the time to deliver the story is constrained to twenty-two pages.

3.  Know the basic story structure:  Have a beginning, a climax, and an end

Michael went over this point briefly, and emphasized to (for goodness’ sake) “end the damn thing.  Don’t tell the never ending story!”  He also revisited point (2) saying that the climax must be led into – everything must be purposeful and plausibly lead into the next event.  He also mentioned that above all, the ending must answer “why?” questions that are left unanswered.

The session then went into a formal Q&A.  I asked the second question, which (for those who know me and my research work) had a thinly veiled purpose.  I will paraphrase his answer from my notes and memory:

Me:  One of the really cool things you can do with storytelling is play with the expectations of the audience.  In your experience, what are some effective and non-effective ways that you can play with expectations?

Michael:  There really is no “slap-your-hand” answer.  Anything goes.  Because the audience can’t be expected to keep up with everything you are throwing at them, it becomes really easy to spoon feed them false information.  That can also be a burden: if you want them to expect that something will happen 3 pages down, you really can’t afford to be subtle.  It’s almost like “journalistic storytelling”: you have to stick to telling the story in a concise way that doesn’t lose the audience.  I will say though, genre has plenty to do with how you play with expectations.  There are certain tropes and devices that are genre-specific and will often distinguish what will happen next.

The fourth question, asked by another audience member, asked him to comment on how storyboard design differed from the comic-book domain to the video game domain (great question!).  He noted that it was like a “tree” of storyboards, but that all branches should coalesce into one ending. I asked a follow up:

Me:  Often, video game story designers will often playfully complain about the player and how he or she is “messing with the story”.  What are your thoughts on players disrupting a story?  Essentially, players can do whatever they want in the context of the game.

Michael:  You know, I often hear that complaint.  My rebuttal to that is always:  “Isn’t the point of RPG’s to mess with the story?”  Allow the player to tell his or her own story, but be sure to have a great resolution to tie it together, or have the player not make it.  Just as a note, I’m not a fan of multiple endings, because they force the player to go back and replay to figure out what happens, and I don’t have the time to do that.  I try to have a solid resolution to which all players lead up to, and let the player mess with the middle.

The remaining questions were more about the editorial process (which he thinks is crucial) and other production issues, which I wasn’t nearly as excited about.  Still, the workshop was very informative and I was happy that he was very straightforward about the process.  The idea of spoon feeding the audience so they can reason about what will happen next resonated with work in cognitive psychology on inferencing during reading (essentially, readers make inferences only when they are necessitated and enabled – go read the paper to figure the details out).  Also, the simplistic account of storytelling is nice, and I wonder how we might approach it from a computational perspective.  However, while the 5W’s and 1H might be the backbone of storytelling, the devil is in the details.  You can easily reduce most stories to The Hero’s Journey, but what distinguishes Mass Effect from Halo?  The Legend of Zelda from Skyrim?

In conclusion, I felt the workshop was a success.  Like most 1 hour talks, I left with more questions than answers.  Although, I suppose that is the hallmark of a good story.