Letters To The Editor: Submit A Letter
View All Letters 
| 04.28.2005Postscript to Hejdenberg's The Psychology of Games article
A paper that begins with Maslow's hierarchy of human needs theory will win my favor nearly every time, and Anders Hejdenberg's excellent current article published on Gamasutra.com is no exception.
Once a theory taught in depth at the post-graduate level to introduce certain theories of human communication, Maslow's work is a rock- solid foundation upon which to build a serious and thoughtful article.
From my own area of professional endeavor, and as a life-long student (and professional practitioner) of the arts and sciences of human communications (with its own unique vantage point - akin to that of psychology but without all the Freudian guilt-trips), I write to suggest a few additional areas of study that astute game developers can benefit from mastering. What follows are offered as a supplement to Hejdenberg's excellent and scholarly work. They deal for the most part with the specific area of human communication known as interpersonal communications.
I suggest game developers would benefit by obtaining at least some degree of familiarity with each of the many theories that apply to interpersonal communications. I recommend this because understanding the unique perspective of interpersonal communications is just as important to game developers as the purely psychological aspects discussed by Hejdenberg.
After all, today's computer games with their constantly improving visual and aural components are morphing into interactive mediums for communicating - both on an interpersonal level (through competitive play) and a mass communications level - as a new media for advertising.
The theoretical knowledge of what keeps humans engaged in relationships is important. Relationships are fundamentally dyads - where 2 people are engaged in 2 way communications in an ongoing, satisfactory, even if not completely pleasurable way. Understanding the motivating reasons why we remain in communication with each other is an essential component of game developer knowledge.
A theory that I especially favor is known as the "the exchange theory". As it applies to interpersonal communications: people will stay in relationships (or, communicating with each other, or playing a game)as long as their individual perception is that they are getting more out of it (the relationship, or the game) than they are putting into it. Another way to view it is that human nature is at its very core self-oriented. People engage in random acts of selfishness by their nature, and no bumper sticker is necessary to remind us of it. Ayn Rand, the founder of the philosophy known as Objectivism, and a widely read novelist, is well known for authoring "The Virtues of Selfishness" thirty some years ago.
Another communications tidbit is what this writer first theorized while in graduate school at Western Michigan University - also a good while ago. "Nocera's Theory" came to me as an effort to condense and simplify all I had been exposed to during my years of intense post-graduate study there in Kalamazoo. It is still valid: "everything communicates something."
Because it takes time for a theory to be proven or disproved, and subject to academic processes like peer review, over the years I gave my initial theory more thought. This time, however, I was aiming towards a goal of absolute simplicity - like E=MC2. (Short and sweet and easy to remember.) During that time of additional intense reflection it dawned on me, like the fabled apple falling upon Newton's head, that I could drop the word "something" and leave the world of communications with Nocera's Law: "Everything communicates!
(Note to the studious: the exclamation point is essential. It adds an element of instantaneous proof of the law itself. Therefore, any omission of the exclamation point is not truly representative of Nocera's Law.)
Finally, I will conclude this with two additional recommendations as a bonus for those who are serious enough about their craft to be reading this.
First, get the complete knowledge of left-brain/right-brain function. However, keep in mind that those widely accepted generalities are subject to the ubiquitous 80-20 rule. Thus, while always applying to a majority of gamers, they will never be applicable to all gamers. (And, lefties, as well as those who have evolved (or maybe regressed) into being "whole-brainers," - well, we need love and attention to our needs and proclivities, too!)
One last essential, know that our ears will direct our eyes. This is a critical, but often overlooked part of our human nervous system's hard-wiring and neurological programming. Think of it like this we have descended from the successful mating of survivors. (See: evolutionary theory!) The sense of hearing for early man was essential to survival of our species. It would often serve as our first alert to possible danger, or a possible source of food for early hunters. Happily those who had it obviously survived at least long enough to mate - and we, as their descendents still get along with brains wired that way.
So ears will always tell the eyes where to look, and not vice versa. Therefore, the aural stimulation found in better, or more compelling games should appear not encoded to occur in precise conjunction with a visual event - but, rather as the precursor to the visual. Experiment with triggering the sound a few milliseconds in advance both as an alert and to draw the eyes to where and what might next occur.
-Thomas Nocera, M.A.
|
|
|
|
|
Letters to the Editor
