I am not really sure about how a language *by itself* might shape my perception of the world, but the journey of acquiring another language does have a significant effect. Knowing another language also opens a direct door to a whole new world’s worth of concepts for assimilation (when one’s willing to be open enough about it). If a language learner refuses to integrate new perceptions (usually cultural) while learning a new language, significant mastery will never be attained.

I guess one reason why many people find it an uphill battle to learn foreign languages that are totally ‘alien’ to their mind, is because they subconsciously refuse to think differently.

Unifying games and other things cannot be not disparate. If a game is something with rules and goals, then the supposedly disparate things presented are just instances of games already.

My argument is dependent on the interpretation of the words ‘games’. I could see Raph’s point if his intended meaning for “games” was something like “novel but pointless time-wasting activity” which admittedly is a lot like the meaning that the general populace gives it. But it’s not very useful for a game designer.

StGabe your argument about language and understanding is very good, but Sapir-Whorf uses ‘perception’ not ‘understanding’. I suppose you could argue they are the same, but that is non-obvious.

Immediately, however, I would say they are not, given my interpretations of the words. My meaning for ‘perception’ is somethign like “the method by which we incorporate new information into our models of reality” whereas ‘understanding’ would be more like “the state of having incorporated new information into our models of reailty”.

Regarding the question: “What do games model?”. This question is about an nonsensical as “What do models model?”. Different games are models (and contain models) of different things.

Language can (theoretically) be codified using mathematics. (ref: Chomsky) Mathematics is necessarily described by language. Language is a method of descriptive expression. Mathematics is necessarily descriptive. (ref: Godel)

It’s been, maybe, what… a month? since Raph asked what it is that games model. I believe I have an answer to that: they model Change. Or, if you prefer, Dynamics. The most critical element of a game is the potential for difference between two points of time. If you could call that an element. Dunno.

I haven’t thought this out, so I won’t defend it and can’t elaborate it. But it’d be nice to hear feedback.

The whole point of this post was that there isn’t a Platonic ideal under all that, but that changing the perspective from which we view things often teaches us things about stuff we thought we knew.

That I agree with. I just think that playing language games almost always just gets in the way. Like I said, you are arguing during part of the article that progress comes through the meetings of very different ideas and conceptual models. I agree. However, if we build language to be inclusive and to confuse those who come from different areas then aren’t we just closing doors?

I’m not saying that discussing language is bad. We do need to figure out where our mental models for words are different but when we hit something that is already well-understood, let’s leave that well alone, and find other ways to express ourselves.

Perhaps he will decide he’s right and that B is completely wrong.

The thing with this example is that the word does not have a meaning yet. It is prior to definition of terms. As Wittgenstein would have it, meaning is what a word is understood to be. If these two people aren’t conveying correctly what they mean by a word then they don’t have a common language yet, there is no meaning being transferred. They do need to, at that point, come to some agreement about what they mean.

You are saying that a word has meaning before it is used to communicate something. I am saying that it only has meaning after it has successfully communicates something.

There is a difference between:

1) I understand what you and your culture mean by word “X” but you are wrong.
2) I don’t understand what you and your culture mean by word “X” and we need to come to some understanding of what it does mean.

The dialogue I am concerned with is dialogue of the former sense. That’s what is going on with words like “singleplayer”, “multiplayer”, “MMORPG” and “MUD”. It is very clear how they are used in practice by our culture of gamers and while certainly different people have some slightly different perceptions, there is already a core of understanding there and it isn’t like your example where it is unclear to the parties involved what a term means in their context.

I personally think a great video game should be more than an exercersise program based on walkthrough connect the dots or who can develop a grindathon the fastest. Where have the truely thinking mini games gone? The old Bards tale the might and magic puzzle mysteries the math games! When I go to play a game I want to think I can have an edge on the competition based on my learned skills and not on my twitch ability. Right now because limits of my entertainment dollars best thinking game I have installed is freecell. Sad but true.. it has twitch.. and you have to think 3 moves in advance.

Change is good. It keeps the playerbase paying to figgure out new systems.

creativity is most often the result of two disparate things being brought together, rather than divine inspiration.

A professor of mine once said that creativity is the chance encounter between an umbrella and a sewing machine on an operating table.

No.

Example: Person B defines “space” to be “anywhere where there isn’t stuff”, whereas Person A defines it as “anywhere outside the Earth’s atmosphere”. B says to A, “I think space should be filled up.” A thinks this is absurd; how can you fill up all of space? Maybe he doesn’t mean the same thing I do. I should think about this, perhaps ask questions, and I’ll learn something from the mental exercise.

Perhaps he will decide he’s right and that B is completely wrong. In this case, he’d have to convince B. Perhaps he decides he’s wrong and throws out his own definition for B’s. Or, perhaps he decides that they’re both right and expands the definition of “space” to include B’s, and further suggests to B that he include A’s definition.

A word does not have meaning by itself. A word is mapped to a concept space. A word can change its mapping if its user changes his worldview, even slightly. There is no Platonic ideal if there is no meaning outside of a single subjective perspective. If a word is not mapped to a concept, it is definitively gibberish, or meaningless, to you.

Think of it in terms of physics. Let’s say you have a theoretical empty space. Put a mass there. It’s a term. It’s what you mean when you say Term A. Now, put a second mass. This is what Person B means when he says Term A. These two masses will now exert a force upon each other. This interaction will cause their shape and their position to change. Now, in the simple world of physics, this generally means they’ll come closer together; this isn’t necessarily true in language, but the point is that their position changes.

Nothing absolutely determines their position. Position is always relative.

Using tangible objects as examples makes it harder to see; try defining an abstract concept under this method and see if you still think there’s a Platonic ideal underlying it.

Yes, and I’ve waited a long time for this point to come.

I think you’re right about the chocolate/peanut butter analogy when thinking about innovation. Few ideas are truelly new, most come from previous ideas and are either joined together like this or expanded on in similar fashion. A mouse trap in the joining of mechanical springs with older versions of trapping. A better mouse trap is one that expands on the old, but catches them alive for that humane effect. (Note from personal experiance, this scares the pee out of them, don’t tip the trap when checking for captives. However, this can be wildly amusing to little boys.)

It seems to me, as it has for a long time, that MMORPGs have been staring at innovation in the eyes for as long as they’ve been around. The idea of a persistent world, coupled with the idea of massive social encounters, has been there all along. Yet, these ideas were barely expanded on when the industry stepped backwards into the single player mental model. Swept away were the beginnings of advances towards these two ideas. The reasons for why were easy to see. There were problems, both technically and socially. But it was easier to simply take out the causes of the problems than to fix them. But that model is being worn out. And it never was enough, as you can witness the complaints of boredom and lack of “content”.

Expectations are a big thing in all this. Raph says that MUDs and MMOs are the same thing, yet I expect an MMO to have moving graphics, and MUDs not to. But if I take out the expectation of mine in what Raph was trying to say, and look at it from his perspective, related to what he was trying to say, I suddenly understood him. Language is bad this way. Trying to shape what our minds can do into words can have an effect like this. Especially if people aren’t “on the same page”.

Expectations have to be considered in designing innovations too. A game world where humans can fly, well, that’s expected to be magic (or sci-fi equipment), not a natural thing. My point here is that players are going to expect the games to relate to them in an expected manner, from experiances in real life combined with those from literature and other games. Mooshing all this together in a proper way, and meeting players expectations in how it’s applied to the game.

Innovative ideas aren’t going to be anything really new, just expanded ideas of expectations. Some expectations just haven’t been attempted effectively yet.