My first thought is that one of the big departures Dragon Box has, is that it removed the central concept (math), and just kept the patterns (balancing equations).
Second, the problem with probabilities is that if the best you can do is 90% within the rules, then you’ll be failing 10% of the time, and people don’t like that.
The second problem seems easily solved: come up with a situation where you run the experiment N times and reap the rewards of your strategy. Prisoner’s Dilemma tournaments, for example. Given we’re dealing with probabilities, ANY sort of gambling, and just play out the results based on statistical odds (or, at higher levels, larger samples. You could even have the elite level be single-instances :))
The game still focuses on gathering information and learning about the system, and it probably needs to have a fairly concrete UI and mechanic for measuring and representing that. But it removes the social and cultural aspecs, and focuses it on a very simple, easy to understand system.
I’m not sure as to specifics, but a game where the goal is simply to learn how to play the game seems interesting, and then there’s a meta-game that is the UI and mechanics that go in to teaching you and ensuring this isn’t a ridiculously frustrating black box to deal with :)
Having multiple possible rules and permutations is important, of course. An unchanging tutorial is probably a good place to start, though. If you can write that, and it’s interesting and works, you’re probably on to something useful :)
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 :)
I’m not sure as to specifics, but a game where the goal is simply to learn how to play the game seems interesting, and then there’s a meta-game that is the UI and mechanics that go in to teaching you and ensuring this isn’t a ridiculously frustrating black box to deal with :)
My first thought is that one of the big departures Dragon Box has, is that it removed the central concept (math), and just kept the patterns (balancing equations).
Second, the problem with probabilities is that if the best you can do is 90% within the rules, then you’ll be failing 10% of the time, and people don’t like that.
The second problem seems easily solved: come up with a situation where you run the experiment N times and reap the rewards of your strategy. Prisoner’s Dilemma tournaments, for example. Given we’re dealing with probabilities, ANY sort of gambling, and just play out the results based on statistical odds (or, at higher levels, larger samples. You could even have the elite level be single-instances :))
The game still focuses on gathering information and learning about the system, and it probably needs to have a fairly concrete UI and mechanic for measuring and representing that. But it removes the social and cultural aspecs, and focuses it on a very simple, easy to understand system.
I’m not sure as to specifics, but a game where the goal is simply to learn how to play the game seems interesting, and then there’s a meta-game that is the UI and mechanics that go in to teaching you and ensuring this isn’t a ridiculously frustrating black box to deal with :)
Having multiple possible rules and permutations is important, of course. An unchanging tutorial is probably a good place to start, though. If you can write that, and it’s interesting and works, you’re probably on to something useful :)
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 :)
That certainly reminds me of something.