Knowledge Keeper: October 8th

So today in class we discussed the more visual or sensory aspect of games and how what we sense in games affects how a player acts and reacts in game.

Visual reactions talked about how certain things we see will give cause us to react in certain ways depending on such things as our own sensitivity, our instincts or primal reactions, as well as what society and other structures have taught us. So its like playing God of War and the scenes of Kratos brutally murdering mythical creatures makes us feel savage or primal.

 This makes me think about, at least what think is, a scary subject call associative conditioning which essentially training beings to associate a certain thing with another thing. For example, training a pigeon to push a button in order to receive bird seeds. This is scary because it also works on humans, it makes you think about all things we have been conditioned to feel, to think because of the stimuli we have been given. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want but its scary none the less. I think this experiment was done by a scientist names Skinner.

We then talked about Alexander's Nameless Quality which are something like characteristics that an architect should strive to include in their buildings or in our case levels. Someone made a comment about "safe" not being mentioned, I think this is because safety can be taken away. A building or level can be beautiful, sublime, transcendent even but put a psychopath with an ax in there and I highly doubt that anyone would consider that place safe.

Dr. Nacke then discussed the 15 Properties of Living such as the levels of scale, boundaries, and positive space. But I had a bit confusion regarding Local Symmetry in that he mentioned relationships and I asked if by relationships he meant something like the relationship between a lock and key? And he agreed. So from that I he explained that Local Symmetry is not just one half matching the other but also covers logical relationships and conditions within the game.

All in all this, this was a very interesting lecture as it deals with the sensory aspect of games and their effect on our psyche.

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110523165949/godofwar/images/e/e8/Cyclops_Berserker_(God_of_War_III).jpg

http://www.skewsme.com/behavior/pigeon.jpg

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