DragonBox removing the central concept is both a major strength and weakness—it’s fantastic in teaching people how to solve equations and avoids possible math-phobia, but it also says nothing about the reason why the rules are what they are, or even how they could be applied, so that has to be supplemented by other means. In other words, it’s primarily a teaching aid, not something that would be sufficient by itself. Which is fine for a topic like math, where people are inevitably going to be taught the other stuff as well… but less so for a game about this kind of rationality, which needs to do a lot more, because people might never learn to apply the principles if the game doesn’t suggest them.
If you remove the social and cultural aspects entirely, then the game becomes just that: an abstract exercise which might be fun, but which requires the player to spend a lot of independent effort in order to realize what the real-world significance of it is. For it to be of use, it has to actually put the player in an environment that is sufficiently like the real world that the notion of applying its techniques to real-world situations (e.g. social situations) will occur to the player somewhat automatically. That does make it much harder to design, but also much more useful if we do succeed.
You have a good point about the probabilities, and I like your suggestion of repeated trials. Not sure how to implement it yet, though.
I see your point, but I still think building an abstract base for use as a tutorial and demonstration is probably wise. Social situations are a fairly advanced and complex arena, since you’re dealing with both complex probabilities in complex relationships, but also all sorts of culture-specific social skills. Definitely useful to teach, I just think dropping a player straight in to dealing with lying and deception in a social situation is more suited for Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney :)
DragonBox removing the central concept is both a major strength and weakness—it’s fantastic in teaching people how to solve equations and avoids possible math-phobia, but it also says nothing about the reason why the rules are what they are, or even how they could be applied, so that has to be supplemented by other means. In other words, it’s primarily a teaching aid, not something that would be sufficient by itself. Which is fine for a topic like math, where people are inevitably going to be taught the other stuff as well… but less so for a game about this kind of rationality, which needs to do a lot more, because people might never learn to apply the principles if the game doesn’t suggest them.
If you remove the social and cultural aspects entirely, then the game becomes just that: an abstract exercise which might be fun, but which requires the player to spend a lot of independent effort in order to realize what the real-world significance of it is. For it to be of use, it has to actually put the player in an environment that is sufficiently like the real world that the notion of applying its techniques to real-world situations (e.g. social situations) will occur to the player somewhat automatically. That does make it much harder to design, but also much more useful if we do succeed.
You have a good point about the probabilities, and I like your suggestion of repeated trials. Not sure how to implement it yet, though.
I see your point, but I still think building an abstract base for use as a tutorial and demonstration is probably wise. Social situations are a fairly advanced and complex arena, since you’re dealing with both complex probabilities in complex relationships, but also all sorts of culture-specific social skills. Definitely useful to teach, I just think dropping a player straight in to dealing with lying and deception in a social situation is more suited for Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney :)