I don’t think “A Theory of Fun for Game Design” needs updating – it does what it does most excellently. But I do believe the “games as learning” camp needs to be understood in a wider context (I just posted on this on ihobo.com last week).

That learning about rewards is rewarding isn’t new research, but remember that things that are rewarding do not need to entail learning. In your book, visceral rewards are brushed under the carpet… For game designers, those rewards are an important part of the task.

But you said it yourself – you chose “A” as the first word in your title for a reason.

Also, there’s some interesting ground to be explored here in connection with animal training – I touch upon this in the new piece, but there’s more to come when I shake off this damnable cold and can get back to writing.

Best wishes!

Because “trained” as a word is different in it’s connotation. We usually use the word train when there’s some amount of deliberate effort on someone’s part. That sense of effort doesn’t necessarily exist in this case; the brain can pick stuff up by “osmosis”. Simply having stimulus causes a change in pathways, and what you get is closer to a set of rules that evolve over time in a more organic nature than any deliberate attempt to develop a skill or create a set of behaviors. The basic structure is input -> rules are applied -> output. That’s pretty much exactly what computer programmers do. Additionally, training can only be used to refer to the process of development, it cannot be used to express what happens after development has occurred. Programming can cover both, describing both the act by which we adapt to new inputs and the way in which we respond once we’ve developed a given set of pathways.

So the reason I don’t think that trained works as well is because it’s a weaker metaphor. “Programmed” is also a metaphor, as there are still differences between how we program for computers and how the brain works; it just more closely correlates to the actual process. So I’m not sure how that makes *your* point. It’s preferable because it’s less wrong.

If you can suggest another word besides program that encompasses the idea that there are a set of rules that act on input to result in output, we can call it that if you want. I can’t think of anything though, as process doesn’t work there, being too general.

And I’m not sure what your point is with regard to Intelligent Design; there’s no agenda in using a word that’s well suited to explain a process. ID uses fancy words to make a fundamentally unsound proposition sound reasonable. Obviously that doesn’t make it any more sound. But if the proposition is sound though, it doesn’t matter the method by which it’s conveyed. If your brain acts like a dynamic self-adapting program, it’s not wrong to use the word program. And there’s plenty of evidence that it does just that.

If I used the word process, I’d be using the wrong word (there’s a process by which the brain programs itself, but there’s also a process by which it decays, and a process by which it gets oxygen so it can function, and a process by which it processes information, and so on. Which am I talking about?). Training might work, but that has connotations that aren’t wholly appropriate (it works in a literal sense though). Program is much more accurate a verb, and doesn’t have those secondary issues.

Is saying that the heart pumps blood inaccurate because it’s rooted in the idea of a pump, which is a man made object? The fact that language evolves over time to include new words, especially words that are more specific and narrowly defined than their predecessors, hardly means that science is in any way dead.

@cube, programmed may be quite accurate (not saying it definitely is though, just that it could be). The answer to by who would be by the neurons themselves. Exposure to sensory input causes neural pathways to develop in a particular way for example, and that development is not inborn, it’s trained. Until the brain has developed pathways to differentiate tones or colors or tactile sensation from specific nerves, it lacks the ability to tell them apart. You can’t move your hand in a certain way unless your brain has developed the right pathways for that motor action to occur in. It has to actually build a program step by step as you constantly try to do the motion until it’s developed the ability to actually pull it off. Many other things we take for granted are also trained pathways. We see things upside down and our brain flips it in our head, but that’s not an automatic process either; if you wear goggles that invert the image that you’re seeing for a long enough period of time you start seeing rightside up again and when you take them off, there’s a similar adjustment period where everything is upside down. The brain constantly reprograms itself.

Similarly, it’s possible that the dopamine releases are not inborn either, but a side effect of another process or the result of early cultural training (cultural evolution plays a role there too, cultures that can survive better propagate certain lessons that get imprinted at young ages and get passed on to the next generation). Or it could be a evolutionary adaptation, sure. But it’s not necessarily wrong to look at brain function and behavior in terms of programmability. In this specific instance, it’s hard to say; our understanding of the functioning of the brain has a lot of holes in it still, so it’s hard to know where the boundaries are in terms of inherent function and programmable function. But it’s possible.