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The act of mimicking something is interesting. It’s one part empathy, another part motivation.

Empathy is of course feeling what someone else feels, often because we have similar personal experiences. Part of our brain is dedicated to this function, and it helps make us the social creatures we are. One side-effect of this is how we anthropomorphize non-human things, such as animals – essentially we bring the feelings we have of empathy and apply them to other objects or creatures that often have certain features we identify with (big sad eyes, non-scary shapes). We then craft our own little story around them – they’re humans, just stuck in a cat’s body, with all the trappings therein (see my lolcats post below).

Mimicry, on the other hand, is about motivation and action. We see an action that looks fun, something that we want to feel in physical form. Where empathy generates automatic feeling (barring any built-up tolerance) in one part of our mind, mimicry generates the automatic compulsion for a different type of feeling in another.

The motivation that induces mimicry is something about an action we’re perceiving that is alluring to us. Some possibilities:

• We question whether we can do that action ourselves (desire to learn)
• We like the external outcome of that action (sights, sounds, etc)
• We like the internal outcome of that action (desire to feel something)
• The action reminds us of our capability and we have an audience (desire to perform)

What’s most fascinating is that mimicry is not interactive, yet it feels like it is. Much like certain online communities where participation isn’t really (I will explore this in another post).

The impetus for this post is a cute little thing called the Yellow Drum Machine… a robot that exudes a ton of toddler-like personality. When I saw it, I said to myself ‘this thing really nails the essence of fun’, yet it was totally non-interactive. Since I had just read the Theory of Fun again, I had ludemes on my mind… so why not ludemes of mimicry? The attitude could be broken down into just two key systems:

1. move the eyes left and right, and
2. bang on things.

What a simple, elegant system.

Note: Of course it needs locomotion, but it’s not strutting around, so there’s no attitude / mimicry there yet.

Checkkit:

nickpunt Games, online communities, psychology

Arthur C Clarke died today, the last of the big 3. We have him to thank for the idea of telecom satellites, and we’ll still be singing his praises when we finally develop space elevators. In the mean time, people can occupy themselves reading his books, such as 2001 and the Rama series.

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We’re now definitely in a new era of game development. No longer is the games industry languishing in perpetual geekdom – it’s going mainstream in a big way. Investment dollars are pouring in, and the hype dial is cranked up very high. A lot of this money is going into massively multiplayer games, for better or worse, and most of these are fairly undifferentiated clones are coming out. Their failures will help set more realistic expectations, and investors will realizing going after the same users (WoW players) with the same gameplay (Dikumud) and probably worse technology is not a recipe for success. I speak mainly of PC-based 3d MMOGs here, as differentiation along tech (e.g. browser-based) and system (platforms) unlock different users and necessitate different gameplay.

Okay, enough history and predictions – there are enough people who do that on the net more eloquently than I do. My personal touch here is my excitement about two properties in particular:

1. Lego Universe. It’s interesting to read this little piece on kotaku on the development choices behind LU. Two big design challenges in making kids games are stereotypes and conflict. In modern mainstream media, it’s easier to perpetuate stereotypes and memes than challenge them, but for kids there are higher expectations (as there should be). As for conflict, violence is the easiest way to communicate, participate in, and overcome conflict in games, yet again we have higher expectations for kids media.

I’m excited about LU because the IP is very unique and can deal with problems in a very unique way. I grew up with Lego, as so many kids did, and what this IP has come to mean is Lego is a way to interpret the world and change it’s rules. We’ve seen this in previous Lego titles (like Lego Star Wars) as well as the variety of Lego sets (Castles, Town, Space, etc). Lego is about Lego-izing things we know and love, applying a uniform look, allowing mixing and matching, and sterilizing their meaning for interpretation by kids. There is no death in the Lego world, there’s merely the parts bin. There is no improper merger of ideas in the assembly of Lego pieces, anything goes because everything fits. These are how violence and stereotype can be overcome with the Lego IP – what fits together is acceptable together (girly lego-heads can be put on top of any uniform), and anything that is taken apart is just part of creative destruction, not real destruction, and it can always be put back together. Cognitively, Lego just occupies a different space in our mind than other toys and other properties.

I’m not sure if any other IP is about this reinterpretation of things, versus just being things. Leveraging offline products and building connections between the two is a very smart thing, and in the kids MMOG space, toy companies will be the ones that beat out others (WebKinz being the first example). Lego has the added advantage of having a unique brand that is well-suited for online worlds, and therefore if they don’t mess up execution, I think Lego is in for a very bright future.

Unrelated side note: I have this visual of how re-spawns (a staple MMOG action, whereby a previously killed enemy comes back after a certain time interval so that other players may fight them) will work in LU, kind of like Terminator 2′s liquid metal terminator. The bad knight is ‘killed’ and his pieces scatter to the wind. But after 10 minutes… those pieces slowly move back together until BAM! The knight is reassembled and glows and cries out with his arms high, ready to challenge a new adventurer! I hope they do something like this

2. PMOG (or at least the concept it demonstrates). This one’s still under the radar, their public beta just started yesterday. This is a toolbar addition for Firefox that lets players drop quests and level up while they’re going about their normal web browsing. Essentially, it’s using game mechanics to force discovery of new web properties, an extremely smart move if you consider advertising implications (the game essentially holds the players hands and takes them from one property to another, like a guided tour in a museum). It’s also a sign of a much larger concept, which is the expansion and diffusion of game mechanics across daily activities. BF Skinner is rolling in his grave at the concept of being able to enforce behavioral reward structures to daily life – what implications! The game isn’t exactly designed as a psychologists research tool, but functions a bit like it whether or not the authors realize it.

I think this class of applications is likely to grow rapidly in the near future – it’s easy to make, has a huge playing field built in, relies on user-user interaction, and could be damn fun.

Specific mechanics I like about this title are that to level up, you must participate in the creation of content. This UGC angle really sells it for me (along with star ratings), because I’m particularly interested in creation software and inducing people to create. Participation is essential to society, yet the last few generations have grown up used to and demanding passive experiences; an ‘entertain me’ mentality. What’s funny about PMOG (which stands for Passively Multiplayer Online Game) is that while it is passive from the perspective of occupying your attention, it is active in the demands for your participation. Very cool.

nickpunt Games, online communities

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