Familiarity and Habituation In Learning Games 14
Gamasutra is running a feature about how the ease of learning new games depends on the types of games a player has seen before. "Pong offers quick pick-up not because it is easier to learn than Computer Space (although that was also true), but because it draws on familiar conventions from that sport. Or better, Pong is 'easy to learn' precisely because it assumes the basic rules and function of a familiar cultural practice." The article goes on to examine how the need to master some games is more akin to the "catchiness" of a song than an addiction. "Familiarity relates to another of Barsom's observations: repetition. Catchy songs often have a 'hook,' a musical phrase where the majority of the catchy payload resides. Indeed, the itch usually lasts only a few bars, sometimes annoyingly so. But games rely on small atoms of interaction even more so than do songs. The catchy part of a game repeats more innately than does a song's chorus. In Tetris it's the fitting together of tetrominoes."
No way! (Score:5, Interesting)
Pong seems like a simplistic example... it's easy to learn because it's... a very simple game. A more interesting way to look at this would be in FPS games... does playing paintball or airsoft in the real world transfer any sort of skill into FPS's?
The comparison of a song's chorus actually is moderately interesting. I wonder if games that we like are structured similarly...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole article is completely devoid of any insight. It's as if they just strung together random adjectives for four pages.
How does spewing "easy to learn, difficult to master" in several different ways then saying "call them 'catchy', not 'addictive'" at the end warrant an article?
Re:No way! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
One of the interesting aspects of trying to carry training across to a different situation is that you sometimes learn lessons in training that aren't just un-useful, they're actually dangerous in the real situation.
Like teabagging the corpse after you kill them?
Tetrominoes? (Score:2)
In Tetris it's the fitting together of tetrominoes.
I doubt it is. It's something more like lego, jigsaws or wooden building blocks. Yes I just looked at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetromino [wikipedia.org] and thought "hey Tetris blocks".
I'm getting old, 30s, so may have come across tetrominoes before I played tetris (and not remembered) but are they as widespread as tetris is? Tetris was based on them originally but the ease of gameplay and popularity isn't, I posit, based on previous familiarity with tetrominoes.
And pentominoes (Score:3, Informative)
I'm getting old, 30s, so may have come across tetrominoes before I played tetris (and not remembered) but are they as widespread as tetris is?
Pentomino puzzles [wikipedia.org] have been around for decades. Tetrominoes are just a simplification of pentominoes such that one can place three of them every second (see this video [youtube.com] and the end of this video [youtube.com]).
Isn't it alanis (Score:1)
It's like 10,000 cubes, when all you need is a line
Note: This doesn't happen in modern Tetris games. They deal out pieces in groups of 7 [pineight.com], where each group contains all seven tetrominoes. So the longest wait for an I is 12 pieces.
Re: (Score:2)
Anonymous Coward channeled Alanis Morissette:
It's like 10,000 cubes, when all you need is a line
Note: This doesn't happen in modern Tetris games. They deal out pieces in groups of 7, where each group contains all seven tetrominoes. So the longest wait for an I is 12 pieces.
That really depends on the programmer. I have a Tetris-clone handheld game, purchased at Radio Shack, that can be induced to give nothing but I pieces, as long as you don't hasten their decent and that they hit the bottom of the playfield standing vertical (not atop any other pieces). You could only start it if this piece and the next piece were both I-pieces. Time of descent was apparently their randomizer for the next piece.
Re: (Score:2)
That really depends on the programmer.
And the release date. Most games since 2002 that carry the "Authentic Tetris Game" seal use the new "bag" randomizer. The Tetris Company maintains a design document defining the rules of Tetris [tetrisconcept.com] and revises it yearly.
I have a Tetris-clone handheld game, purchased at Radio Shack
Clone? In that case, it does depend on the programmer. Some clone programmers are unaware of the Guideline and will implement a randomizer intended to give an uncorrelated uniform distribution like that of the oldest Tetris products. And they often implement it poorly, in the case of the product
Testability (Score:2)
To test this hypothesis, they should go to a country without a history of tennis, and see how long it takes them to "get" pong.
Methinks the author is a bit overblown with the claim that 100 years of ping pong made us ready for the video game.
Re:Testability (Score:5, Interesting)