What maketh the 'game'?; problems with 'difficulty'.

This piece was instigated by Shivoa's take on this article for ARS technica (and Wired). As usual, I've tried to deconstruct the concepts involved (for the sake of: "If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself" - John Searle).

So, does a 'game' (as in, a computer game), by definition, require a level of 'difficulty'?: Obstacles to overcome...

I think successful games are those that manage to mirror the configuration of a player's mind: An artefact image refracted through the prism of human senses and perceptions. On the finest (most literal) scale this means presenting concepts that arouse the individual's attention (i.e. interesting memes). But also, from an overarching structural viewpoint, the form of the thing (this 'game') should sync with a player's reward response. Biology...

Human physiology (like most mammals) evolved to provide a stimulus reward for achieving tasks that benefit the organism (well, more accurately the transmission of their genes, but gloss over that). A similar, smaller squirt of dopamine is also released during failure, when the goal is nearly reached (so I've read). This is why many persist at gambling, and slightly unbalanced brains can become addicted. It's also why gamers so often enjoy 'difficulty'.

DOA; addictive while it lasted, Trials 2 quickly got too hard for me!

However, frustration wins out (during failure) when the end-goal appears unattainably far. Depression probably dampens down dopamine release/transmission, thus making all goals more distant, thus a depressed individual will struggle to engage in previously fun things, and struggle to persist in general.

Adaptive difficulty attempts to milk this near miss response (re-calibrating it's obstacles to make players keep reaching, just so). The such systems risk more than distracting the player, if they notice: If the pretense of the game's scenario is lost, it's like watching a badly shot fiction movie where you keep seeing accidental glimpses of the production team and their equipment. Without that invisible 4th wall, an individual will struggle not to perceive events quite literally: moving patterns on a screen, empty of meaning and/or relevance.

So, a 'game' requires:

Last Month in New Scientist (The Best of August 2009)

For all the articles in the magazine that I've found interesting but not thought worthy of an entire blog entry devoted to them. I was aiming to mention about 4 articles per issue, with a paragraph each. Naturally, I've elaborate significantly in places (the Noel Sharkey interview became a full blown piece on it's own), and there were 5 magazine issues this month (opposed to the more usual 4). I'd say that it is, at the least, worth a scan through the article titles listed below, in case anything jumps out at you too.

I've not provided links to individual articles online, just the issue's index page, seeing as most people won't have full access to many of the articles anyway.

** 29 Aug:

+ "It's a small world - in a healthy brain" p14 -

The neuronal structures (in human cortices) display behaviour consistent with their connectivity being finely configured to a state of 'self organised criticality'. Basically that means cascades of activity are as unpredictable as earthquakes and the neurons form a structure more like human society (where one's only ever 6 degrees of separation from anyone else on the planet), rather than merely relying on neighbouring cells to pass signals on to their neighbours, etc. This comes as no surprise to anyone who's up to speed with the revolution of network theory from the beginning of this decade. And it doesn't elucidate much further as to how we think, let alone what makes us conscious/sentient.

The sited study looked at brains with Alzheimer's (which were seen to have long distance connections that were too random) and Frontal Temporal Lobe Dementia (which had too few long distance connections).

So I now wonder if something similar might be the cause of dyslexia (rather than macro-scale variations, like a particular brain region being smaller). For me dyslexia has meant: very slow reading speed in particular (even more prominently than blindness to certain spelling transliterations). What if my current condition also represents a structural deviation in my brain?; A decline in cognitive ability, particularly higher order (conscious) thought that, presumably, requires the most widespread cortical co-ordination, making it most susceptible to such faults.

Of course, even in an optimally order brain, each cell's activation threshold has to be carefully tuned, so that the network operates in a region of chaos, rather than epileptic fit or coma (too low threshold & too high threshold, respectively). Neuromodulation (by serotonin, melatonin, dopamine, adrenaline, etc) and variations in oxygen and glucose concentration can also be responsible for moving the brain away from it's optimal operating range.

+ "Air travellers get a robot chauffeur" p19 -

I (and some of my friends) have thought for a while that we could have entirely 'self driven' cars on the roads by now, from a technical stand point. The (good) reason why we actually have none, is that

Reply to a Facebook Note

Original note by James Tipler: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=15871229842&id=506214909&index=0

My reply (too protacted for facebook's comment field!):

I afraid I'm going to have to totally agree with you; the only argument for outlawing created images of child abuse, where no one was actually abused, is the tenuous hypothesis that said graphics may contribute directly to causing actual abuse.

In antiquity there were some good reasons to ban homosexuality: gay couples could sire no children to contribute to the economic growth of a nation, and, before effective prophylactics and medical treatments, where more prone to certain contagious diseases. 

The Wolfenden report (of 1957) eventually turned the tide of public opinion, it stated: "homosexuality cannot legitimately be regarded as a disease, because in many cases it is the only symptom and is compatible with full mental health in other respects." 

It wasn't until 1967 that this more liberal view was legislated, and we've only recently given gay couples full legal rights. But it does finally seem to be widely acknowledged that sexual preference is an oxymoron; there is no concious choice involved. 

The reason that a 16 year old can be branded with the stigma of the sex offenders register, purely for enjoying one of the best, free experiences that this life can offer, with a consensual 15 year old partner, is that the legislation totally misses the point on purpose: defining what 'consent' is and verifying whether or not it was given, is far too bloody hard compared to checking someone's birth date. 

'Paedophile' and 'paedophilia' are also ill defined terms. They can refer to someone who, while having sexual desires for prepubescents, has never acted on then, but is equally used to describe the worst examples of convicted child abusers. While there is this linguistic obscuration of the issue, reasoned debate will always be too handicapped. 

I think the 'ham fisted', age based, policing approach is no long acceptable. It obviously does nothing to protect persons over the age of consent against rape, who's victims must massively outnumber cases of paedophilic rape. Better understanding of consent is needed to help rectify this bigger problem anyway. Also, stigmatising these rare but natural desires is only going to isolate and traumatise those individuals more, reducing the chances of such a person seeking help before reaching the point of abusing a child.

That's not to say that all 'paedosexuals' (to invent a term) are ticking abuse time-bombs. I'm a heterosexual guy who, naturally, lusts after women, but I'm definitely not going to force myself on any vulnerable ladies, just because I'm sexually frustrated. I assume the vast number of 'kiddie fanciers' are closet cases who are otherwise normal, caring members of society. Ironically, they could be an extremely useful asset in finding actual child abusers; They would be more able to flag cases up to authorities if they knew they, themselves will not be tarred with the same brush, just for having (seen) copies of images.

Men having sex with young girls can hardly be a new phenomena: girls used to be married off at any age and, in a fair few parts of the world, probably still are. It's brilliant that our society recognised the need to protect children from such situations and that abuse is now rare. But, as is the case with massive shifts in culture, we went a little too far. It would be nice to be able to take a innocent photo of one of the kids my mum child-minds, for her, without the dreadful and inappropriate worry, gnawing at the back of my mind, that my actions might be horribly misconstrued by someone.

There will come a day when paedophiles (or whatever less loaded name is used) are just another harmless minority. For those (paedophiles) who decided not to re-engineer their minds, there will be adults who choose to re-engineer their bodies, thus meeting demand. Charles Stross came up with a name for these, yet to exist people: “lolitas”. Briefly mentioned in Iron Sunrise, not sure if it's supposed to be specific to girl-women?.

Anyway, while we're reforming laws, age restrictions on media graphically depicting consensual, adult sex should, frankly, be abolished. Parental guidance warnings are appropriate, but stopping a 17 year old from seeing, on screen, the kind of things they are perfectly entitled to do first hand is, at best, idiotic. In contrast, I've been a little shocked by how realistically harrowing some 12 and 15 rated movies are these days....

....Opsy. Got totally carried away there; switched into assessed, online discussion board coursework mode. I was doing a fair bit of it the end of last term, really got into it. And I'd just written a rant to send to Virgin Media about the whole BPI lunacy (posted bellow). Oh well, have an essay!