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Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

pixelpoppers.com

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Re: Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

#11

Post by manvsmachine »

This is what I need to tell people when I try to explain my love for racing games (and motorsports in general). To me, it really is the epitome of a mastery-based genre, especially when dealing with time attacks. Multiple failures with incremental improvements is absolutely required - "I need to do that lap in 1:30 and I did it in 1:36; if I brake later on the second turn, maybe I can bring it down to 1:34.4". Check results, adjust strategy, and repeat.

For a real-life example check Top Gear's visit to the Bonneville Salt Flats: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrKPPdTuk8I. "To reach our targets we'll have to get the wheelspin off the line exactly right. Every gear change, exactly right. We'd have to get our line in the salt, exactly right. Every bit of the run would have to be perfect."

Re: Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

#12

Post by danteembermage »

I think many action-oriented games are just as guilty of this. Instead of leveling up your character, the skilling-up mechanism is memorizing the hazards in the levels; with enough patience the player memorizes the pattern and repeats back the appropriate response and wins. While this may teach a "pocket-simon" memory skill, it still rewards patience over strategy or reflexes or whatever else might be developed.

Re: Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

#13

Post by zephjc »

Here is an article from a few years back that addresses this: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml

It's main points are is games like WoW teach the wrong lessons, like "investing a lot of time in something is worth more than actual skill". This addresses MMOs more specifically, but relates to the larger point raised by the pixelpoppers article.

Re: Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

#14

Post by bantic »

Josh Waitzkin (the kid from Searching for Bobby Fischer) wrote a book called the Art of Learning and he talks a lot about the difference between these two modes of learning. He calls it Entity versus Incremental intelligence. (Really good cliff's notes on the book by Derek Siver are here: http://sivers.org/book/ArtOfLearning). He's even harsher on entity knowledge-ists -- they crumble under the pressure. It's a good theory to explain why some of the brightest kids I knew in high school have done nothing with their lives since: they are afraid to mess up their 'undefeated' academic records.

Re: Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

#15

Post by jerf »

amalcon wrote: post #10

Some types of RPGs do have another attraction, that appeals to the "Master" style: they give you a single system, and steadily tack options onto it. While your character does improve as a result of this, if the game is well-designed, the difficulty remains roughly constant or increases over the course of the game. This gives you the opportunity to master aspects of the system in more manageable chunks. That is, it ta…

There are also other options. I've come to enjoy playing RPGs with the deliberate goal of underleveling. Where a performance-oriented player's idea of an ultimate fight is walking up to the end boss and smacking them down in one hit with damage to spare, my ideal battle is every member of my party down but the mage, every expendable expended, with the only option left for the mage to attack with their staff... and that 1HP hit finishes the boss off.

I've never quite experienced this exact ideal, but I've come close. And I've also been beaten, which makes the next time even sweeter when my adjusted strategies carry the day.

This turns the game into a bit of a puzzle. Despite your mentioning them, Final Fantasies have typically been very good at this, if you take the minimal/"easy" game path. Which does mean not doing all the extras, but as FF games get bigger and bigger via copy&paste questing I'm finding this is less of an issue than it used to be. (You can still do the "postgame" stuff if you're that into it.)

The Persona series also involve some skill and some luck; sometimes I find it hard to believe how one error can be the difference between wiping my party out without me touching the enemy and my wiping out the enemy without them touching me. It doesn't seem like it should work that way, but it has happened to me numerous times, where even a well-leveled party for where they are gets themselves wiped out because I had a momentary brain fart and hit the wrong command in the first round. It's a very mathematically unstable system, vs. FF's very stable/predictable one, but great fun.

Re: Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

#16

Post by klipt »

A good article, but I'm wary of the idea that you can solve the problem by spending just as much time, only on a different kind of solo computer game.

Solo computer games are fun for recreation* but until the AI in them starts approaching humans levels they will never challenge you the way real people can. Learning a martial art, studying math/computer science or playing a team sport (even if it's a LAN strategy game) seems to me a much better way to build muscles (physical, mental, social).

*but playing them too much is probably a sign of akrasia... http://lesswrong.com/lw/15w/experiential_pica/

However games which train actual working memory (e.g. Dual N-Back) may be an exception.

Re: Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

#17

Post by RevRal »

I liked the highly motivational ending, if you lose, in Death Duel for the Sega Genesis:

Your defeat has brought chaos to the Federation. Your cowardice and betrayal shall be known throughout the stars. Your decaying corpse will be an object for ridicule and scorn. Disgrace will follow your family for centuries.

Once adorned and worshipped by all. Your rotting flesh will serve as a reminder of the price of failure.

Oh, the horrible pain of defeat....

Game Over

Re: Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

#19

Post by 10ren »

my grades tended to be either A's or F's, as I either understood things right away (such as, say, calculus) or gave up on them completely (trigonometry)

Me too. I used to think it was cool to make no effort at all but still come first - although, away from school, I put a lot of effort into coding, and was really proud of seeing deeper, solving difficult problems and getting results.

In changing this, one concept I've used is: value inputs, not outputs.

Side note: if one places RPG's in the same category as books and movies (in which the reader identifies with the protagonist), they can be seen as having a mastery orientation...

Re: Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

#20

Post by duskwuff »

danteembermage wrote: post #12

I think many action-oriented games are just as guilty of this. Instead of leveling up your character, the skilling-up mechanism is memorizing the hazards in the levels; with enough patience the player memorizes the pattern and repeats back the appropriate response and wins. While this may teach a "pocket-simon" memory skill, it still rewards patience over strategy or reflexes or whatever else might be developed.

Case in point: Touhou.
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