Tag Archives: learning

My interest in psychology…

The PolyBlog
October 22 2015

Way back in the dark ages of high school, I took a course that was an introduction to psychology and sociology. I don’t remember what it was called, and I seem to think it was supposed to be one or the other, but ended up being done as a combination when enrolment was low. I don’t remember that much from the course. It was okay, semi-interesting, but it didn’t compel me to want to do a degree in it or anything. Later, when I had electives available in university, it didn’t make my list. Mind you, that was some 30 years ago, when I think they still lobotomized people to let their demons out, so probably not all that useful to me even if I had taken it. 🙂

But as I got older and went through difficult periods in my life, or even just large periods of change and self-reflection, I started to think more and more about how the brain works, how personalities develop, how people misuse their brain to trick themselves into ways of thinking that are not optimal, efficient or even helpful. Self-sabotaging behaviour that your brain either hides or actively encourages vs. ways it helps itself heal. Some moments in my life stand out.

First and foremost was my change in “who I was” going from high school to university to law school to working stiff, through my “tadpole years” of self-reflection and change, and who I became. What pieces were engrained, immutable, part of my bedrock personality and how did they become so? Nature vs. nurture, on a micro-level.

Second, there was the loss of my parents. Similarities in experience yet vast differences too. Was it my age? Change in my support network? Had I just grown more?

Third, the elements of family. I was the youngest of six kids. I discount most of the pop psych about birth order, mostly because I think psych is about individuals, not statistics about groups, but I find one area intriguing. Growing up, I didn’t know my one brother very well. He moved out of the house when I was 5 or 6, and I didn’t interact with him a lot in the next 20 years. It wasn’t like we didn’t see each other, but we were never “close”. In fact, of my five siblings, I would say he was the farthest away in relations. Yet, when we reconnected when I was 30 and he was 40, we experienced a natural bond we had never felt before. It happened over dinner one night — a dinner that almost didn’t happen. He was in town for work, and it wasn’t like “Oh, obviously we’ll do this or that together.” It was more like, “Hey, so, he’s in town. We should probably see each other. Maybe dinner or something?”. Very tentative, like, we *should* do something, shouldn’t we? Wouldn’t most siblings see each other if they were in town? Yeah, we agreed on dinner. And part of the night was like we were finishing each other’s sentences. Even though we have led very different lives — he had been married, had six kids, was very independent early in life, and had been in the military for 20 years; I was the pampered youngest child, not married, no kids, lived at home up until law school — there was an immediate real connection, way beyond friendship, beyond just family. Like somehow our souls knew each other from some other time and place and met up for a beer. Now, I consider him one of my closest siblings and friends. How do our different yet similar beginnings produce vastly different lives and outcomes yet our psyches retain some common elements that look like genetics? Again, nurture vs. nature. Equally, I’ve heard lots of people talk about how they’ve always been close to a sibling, while I’ve been close to different siblings at different parts of my life — close to my next-oldest sibling, a brother, when I was young, say up to age 14; close to my second-oldest sibling in my late teen years; close to my oldest sister and her son when I came back from university and up until my Dad died, and then again more recently; close to my other sister, third oldest, after my dad died and for a number of years afterwards; and closest to my “middle” brother (fourth-oldest) as mentioned above. A wax-and-wane type experience.

Fourth, I became an aspiring writer. I need to know how to access the psyche of a fictional character, how to get into their head and write what THEY would do, not what I would do if I was pretending to be them. To figure out how to flesh the character out fully — the role of hero, villain, mistress, husband — and how to make them real, not names or formulaic archetypes.

Lastly, I became a husband and a father within the same year. Huge changes in my life and in my roles as a person. What role does my behaviour play in my son’s development? He has had some physical challenges, and almost everything he has faced, regardless of what we have done to help him, it really is just him overcoming them on his own. Outgrowing some stuff, ignoring others, figuring out the rest. We help, but the biggest difference over time is just him being awesome. Is it just nature?

All of which has led to a renewed interest in psychology. I don’t want to do a full degree, with electives, exams, papers, etc. I just want the knowledge, not a piece of paper to certify it. And while I can find it just about anywhere (library, internet, Amazon, etc.), what I really wanted is what I always want when looking at a new area — curated content. The fruits of the labour of someone who has already trod the same path before me, who says, “Here is a good framework to understand an issue” and “Here’s some stuff you should read”. I may develop strong interest in certain areas of psychology like child development, but to start, I really wanted a good overview to show me the whole canvas, not the exciting brush strokes in one corner.

Instead of just buying a textbook and reading it, I found a free online psych course, with credentials behind it to reassure me it’s not some quack throwing stuff up on a blog (hey, wait a minute, says my id, but we’ll ignore him for now).

Enter the MOOC…stay tuned.

Understanding Video Games – Week 3 – Emergent and progressive gameplay

The PolyBlog
June 25 2015

Continuing my online learning quest, I’m moving on to week 3 of “Understanding Video Games“, a University of Alberta Course offered by Leah Hackman and Sean Gouglas through Coursera. This week was devoted to the differences between progressive and emergent game play. The basic divergence from the video lecture part of the week seems okay at first.

Progressive game play would be games with relatively linear steps from beginning to end, achieving sub-goal after sub-goal until the final goal is achieved. Not unlike doing a puzzle, progress is limited to exact steps as the designers intended, a linear game with potentially little “replay value” once the puzzles and the game are solved.

Emergent games might also have overall goals or a quest, but unlike in progressive, the player has the ability to set their own goals, or do side quests with the main quest optional. Or, alternatively, there are multiple options on how to complete the overall goal. They use Grand Theft Auto as an example, emphasizing the seamless nature of the quest, with no levels to achieve and realistic simulations (night/day, weather, people with simulated lives in the game). They then expand on emergent games as being about freedom for the gamer where the rules spark creativity vs. progressive that has the rules being limiting.

The reading for this week from Jesper Juul was not that great, in my view. I see what the writer is trying to do, building the argument that Hackman and Gouglas do in the lecture, but it doesn’t work for me. First of all, one of the “tips” to decide if something is progressive or emergent is to look at the guides that people develop afterwards — progressive games have walkthroughs, showing step by step how you can win, while emergent game guides are tips and tricks about possible strategic behaviours. Except that a post-hoc guide is not what defines the categories, just an indicator. People have done strategy guides for Tomb Raider which is mostly progressive, and walk-throughs of one scenario approach to Grand Theft Auto. It didn’t define the genre of the game, just the genre of that person’s approach to the game.

Personally, I like instead the idea of linear and non-linear as the descriptive categories, or linear vs. open. Unfortunately, even that doesn’t work for some games. Tomb Raider, for example, is a 2.5D format and is rather open format. But there are strong goals you have to achieve in each level and an expected way in the game design to achieve it. Some people have found unintended hacks though that you could bounce off a wall in the middle of a jump and land close enough to the final goal to allow you to bypass some jumping sequences, not unlike the hacks mentioned in Deus Ex for proximity mine climbing.

I’m also completely lost in the written article where Juul says “all pre-electronic games are games of emergence” because they are simple rules with multiple complexities afterwards. Really? So Snakes and Ladders would be emergent? Hardly. I think Juul confuses truly emergent (the Harvey Smith talk in 2001 partially nailed it as being situations or player behaviours that were not predicted by the game designers) with just linear games with cascading decision trees of limited options each time but unending variation within those limits.

For me, I think it is more a two-variable matrix for video games:

Linear goals,

single player

(PacMan, Metroid)

Linear goals,

multi-player

(Adventure / fighting games)

Open ended,

single player

(SimCity, etc.)

Open ended,

multi-player

(MMORPGs)

I kind of see the “emergent” games as really only being in the lower right quadrant, and is more related to the fact that it requires multiple players for something beyond the base rules of the game to “emerge” from their interactions — in short, what the players bring to the game.

I don’t think the examples they had in the lecture about griefing (harassing other characters) qualifies as emergent game play because it isn’t really game play so much as frustrating game play. I do think, however, that speed runs are a good area for study because you can do speed runs for multiple quadrants above, transforming even the open-ended into a close-ended game with defined goals … in essence, reducing the open-endedness to say “If we added a specific sub-goal of x, how fast could one achieve it?”.

Understanding Video Games – Week 2 – Play and Games

The PolyBlog
June 6 2015

Continuing my online learning quest, I’m moving on to week 2 of “Understanding Video Games”, a University of Alberta Course offered by Leah Hackman and Sean Gouglas through Coursera. The readings for the week are by Bo Kampmann Walther, “Playing and Gaming: Reflections and Classifications.” (Game Studies 3.1:  http://www.gamestudies.org/0301/walther, 2003). 

I started with the reading, rather than the video lecture, and I liked the article. Like the videos, it is basically predicated on the assumption that if you want to discuss “video games”, you should first define “game” in general, and equally, what is “not game” i.e. “play”. So Walther separates “what is play” (generally open-ended, few rules, malleable by make-believe and the ability to build your own world, if you desire) vs. “what is game” (generally close-ended, with rules and tactics to succeed). Of course, it doesn’t take long to hit the paradox — if play and game are different, how can you “play a game” and is “playing” and “gaming” therefore different? Can you game while playing or play while gaming? There’s a consideration in one of the referenced pieces that reality is kind of the “first order of complexity” and play is the second order; by extension, gaming becomes a third order. Not sure that helps the discussion any though, as I think it is more about the type of complexity (play being more self-imposed rules or few rules, while gaming tends to require submitting oneself to another’s pre-determined set of rules).

When I moved on to the videos, I kind of already knew what to expect from the article. And so, this first week is really about taxonomy i.e. what separates the game from play and play from the game. The video starts with a review of the type of video games that straddle “playing” and “gaming” i.e. simulator games like SimCity, The Sims, and Flight Simulator. SimCity and The Sims were interesting in part because the “game” was to build the world, not to “play” the game once created. I find it most interesting in terms of the history and linguistic elements — some languages like French and Latin use relatively the same word for both games and play. I liked their list of possible elements common to many definitions of a game:

  1. Formal system or rules
  2. Desirable goals
  3. Consequences for cheating
  4. An ending or conclusion
  5. Quantifiable outcome
  6. Balance between risk and reward
  7. Effort on behalf of the players
  8. Fun or whimsical elements.

The video suggests you need rules+goals+outcome+effort to make a game, but I’m not entirely sure about the outcome and effort. Some games are incredibly passive, and would still hold, and others where the game could go on relatively indefinitely without an outcome that “ends” the game. I think #s 3-8 are more about elements that determine if the game is “enjoyable” or repeatable, almost “playable” without the taxonomy in the way, more so than if it was only #1 and 2, it might just be a game to pass the time.

I do like their example from past theorists about breaking games into four types, each of which would have their own play/game spectrum within them:

  1. Agon – competitive types, like sports;
  2. Alea – chance play, like gambling;
  3. Mimicry – roleplaying and simulation;
  4. Illinx – thrill or adrenaline based, like a roller coaster.

Professor Brian Moriarty definition as a series of decision tree nodes is interesting (play is a superfluous action; toy is something that elicits play; game is a toy with rules and a goal; puzzle is a game with a solution), but without the full tree, it’s hard to tell if that gets you any further than the four categories above.

Overall, it was an interesting week’s materials, and while the spectrum idea (game vs. play) is interesting, I suspect it’s more multi-dimensional than that — that axis will let you define something as a basic game, but most games, and video games in particular with their interactive yet solo play, would pull you off that axis pretty quick. I had some quibbles about some of the quizzes. One place, in particular, talked about Moriarty’s theorem and referred to something has having a “purpose”, which was deemed incorrect, but that depends on whether you see purpose and goal as the same thing.

But, on to week 3…

Understanding Video Games – An introduction

The PolyBlog
January 28 2015

One of my goals for the new year is to spend time in some formal “learning” and I opted to sign up for some online courses through Coursera. The short version is that I don’t need a certificate or another degree, this is learning just for me, and I’d like it to be relatively low-intensity, so mostly I’m just accessing the lectures and the reading material for self-directed learning more than taking an interactive class.

I decided to start with one that was potentially interesting more than life-changing, and the first out of the box is “Understanding Video Games” offered by the University of Alberta. Note that these courses are offered for credit too, I’m just not pursuing that option. The professors for the course are Leah Hackman and Sean Gouglas, both at UofA, and the course used a combination of written materials, video lectures, and discussion forum. I passed on the discussion forum part, mostly just interested in the written+videos. Truth be told, the course is “over” at this point, so I’m just accessing the archives, but in order, like the course was run. Hard to tell if I should use “past tense” since the course is over or “present tense” as it is an online course that I’m doing now.

The opening week’s readings are from Game Studies, a journal of game research, and the article is available online (http://gamestudies.org/1202/articles/the_algorithmic_experience). It’s an interesting article that explores how most games, in whatever form, are essentially algorithms with inputs and outputs, and once you give it the right input, you get the desired output. It also debates to some extent the “video game as an art form” that allows for interactive art rather than passive appreciation of art, “video game as sport”, since it has winnable solutions. However, I think of far more interest and yet not explored adequately in the article is how algorithms have evolved from a single window, 4-bit limited gaming (like say Pong) to 8-bit varied gaming (like Super Mario Bros) to 64-bit open gaming (like online systems). The algorithms have progressed from linear A to B storylines towards more multi-nodal storylines that can have innumerable outcomes, albeit with a few main ultimate outcomes.

The intro video pitches the course as looking at video games and how they entertain, inform and challenge us, but I think it is more the interactions between the three that interest me, and how we’re willing to sacrifice some for the other. For example, there are TV shows that are just watching other people play, to see how they do it, and it’s surprising to me that it is actually watchable TV. I enjoy watching my nephew play sometimes, and I follow along, but really I’m just a companion to his quest. The sidekick, not the hero. Yet others love games like Bejewelled and Candy Crush that hold no interest for me at all. There’s no story, it’s just repetition to me. Yet hugely popular — kicking up the challenge, downplaying information, and leveraging entertainment. Hackman notes that some game elements have stayed relatively stable over the years — such as moving around on a screen, using a controller, playing a hero, solving puzzles, finding patterns, and/or following linear processes — and the course will cover three main areas — they’ll start with basic terminology and concepts for the industry, how academics are theorizing about game frameworks, and then apply the theories to more cultural topics (like gender, identify, violence, etc.).

Not a bad start to the course, and I’m looking forward to the rest of it.

More learning opportunities…

The PolyBlog
January 21 2015

One of my goals for 2015 is to take some online courses, and I already wrote about it earlier. I knew of Coursera, and thought it was one of the few decent “biggies” for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Somehow though I completely skipped over EDX, thinking it had merged with Coursera or all of their courses were included. Apparently not. Let’s see, another 409 courses to consider. Oh joy, oh bliss, oh joyful bliss! 🙂 Let’s see what’s out there:

  • PSYCHOLOGY: UC Berkeley has one on the “The Science of Happiness”, part of the positive psychology” field that is self-coalescing / emerging. It is self-paced, start anytime, which is attractive;
  • ECONOMICS: Cornell is offering “Networks, Crowds and Markets”, which combines some of the other areas I looked at earlier – economics, psychology, game theory. It starts in mid-February. Equally, UofT is offering “Behavioural Economics in Action”, although might be just as useful to read one of the texts;
  • A WIRED WORLD: “Wiretaps to Big Data: Privacy and Surveillance in the Age of Interconnection” looks interesting too, also at Cornell but self-paced. Uof Cambridge has one on “Economics of Cybersecurity” and Notre Dame has “Understanding Wireless: Technology, Economics, and Policy”, but it looks a little basic and dry.
  • COMPUTING: I already have plans for computing courses, but Harvard has one called “Introduction to Computer Science” that surprisingly uses C, Java, etc. One of Harvard’s largest courses? Ooook.
  • ASTRONOMY: Near the end of the year, I might aim for “Exoplanets”, a self-paced one offered by Australian National University. It is part of a larger series that starts with “Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe”. There’s also one called “Super-Earths And Life” at Harvard, which is attracting some press as it is one of the new ones with a decent professor.
  • PERSONAL: I could file this under psychology, but it looks much more like a personal power-type course –> “Unlocking the Immunity to Change: A New Approach to Personal Improvement” from Harvard. Not currently active, unfortunately. I also see a course in “Jazz Appreciation” by UTex @ Austin that looks interesting, but I’ll probably stick with the Great Courses version. Given my interest in stress, there’s an interesting course called “Becoming a Resilient Person – The Science of Stress Management” that could be good, but not completely compelling. Heck, I even might consider doing Dante’s Inferno as a personal study of freedom and identity. It would be on the weird side of the plan though.

I’m blown away by a couple of other things I found though.

First, a brilliant version of something that I’ve seen in amateur or “open source” format of course — an online book club. Namely BerkeleyX Book Club. Except it isn’t wine, noshing and conversation, these are discussions of famous titles led by English profs. For example, The Picture of Dorian Gray or Dracula. Looks like they do one a month, with Jane Eyre for this month. Fascinating model, but none of the books were on my list for this year. Might give it a whirl after September though.

For philanthropy, I’ve been on the LearningbyGiving site in the past, and look, they have a course to take — “Giving With Purpose: How to get the most out of your charitable giving”. Perfect for my goals for the year. Not sure when to do it though.

Finally, there is one that looks relevant to the stuff I want to do, and maybe is a sign as I actually thought earlier today about ditching the area from my official list or at least moving it to the bottom. UofT has an extension course starting in just a couple of weeks called “Library Advocacy Unshushed”. Looks pretty cool. Might have to consider committing to it.