Rationality and Video Games

Related: The LessWrong Wiki Puzzle Game Index, The LessWrong Video Game, Better thinking through experiential games.

To stay with the metaphor, I think the ocean is really big and raising the waterline is a waste of time relative to making fountains in key places.

One rationality related message that I've long wanted to see incorporated into video games...

While it's important to look for creative solutions to dilemmas, sometimes you really just have to shut up and multiply. I mostly follow RPGs, and both Eastern and Western types tend to reward idealism; whenever you're given the option to refuse to make a sacrifice, or to accept anything less than perfect achievement of all your goals, the refusal leaves your characters better off, no matter how risky a plan it requires them to enact. Your characters are never punished for taking million to one chances to achieve more complete victory.

Of course, the ability to succeed against long odds is part of what makes heroes interesting, but this doesn't mean reality will bend over backwards to accommodate you if you're sufficiently heroic, so I'd like to create a scenario which gets the message across to players, "No, there doesn't Have To Be Another Way, reality was never obligated to provide you with a single way in the first place, so don't be so quick to pass it up."

Unfortunately, I'm not a programmer in any capacity, but my sister's boyfriend is, and is studying to design games, and I've agreed to provide writing for a game in the event that we can find someone suitable who's willing to do the graphics.

If anyone else wants my writing services, I'd be happy to provide them.

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Point two: Using games to raise the sanity waterline.

My first game was/will be a bust in terms of this, but the idea itself is not without merit, but I don't want to start discussing game design in this post. What I am looking for are people who are interested in making this happen, whether by doing art, programming, design, PR, or contributing resources: connections, expertise, and/or funding.

I have:

• a brain
• advanced math skills
• an ability to do physics and teaching for food
• basic programming skills (C, Pascal, Python)
• a strong interest in the nascent ways in which rationality may be measured and cognitive tests in general
• a strong interest in software that could help in rationality or rationality related skill training
• some knowledge of computer science
• extensive familiarity with most of LW material.
• moderate people skills
• no art skills

I'm currently on an autodidactic track to learn more advanced programming skills over the next three months. I am also thinking of learning and then working to master a new language, most likley Haskell (though I still have an unresolved crush on Lisp so perhaps I'll go with that). I also enrolled this fall in the free AI and machine learning classes offered by some Stanford profs, so in six months time I should have basic skills there as well.

I am intelligent, young but inexperienced in game design, I thrive on working in groups and I have several related skill sets. I hope that by working on such projects, in any capacity, I will get experience and learn more than I would have otherwise (also hopefully get my name in there among awesome finished projects/products).

I would be interested in any open source project or commercial thingy (will work for peanuts or free there to get xp and do something that has really caught my imagination).

How does that sound? Remember, free brains are neat.

Nice-looking graphics, looks like it took a lot of work, congrats! It's not my favorite genre of games, but it looks nice.

I've jotted down a dozen rationality-teaching game concepts, and may implement some if time allows - someday, maybe (It's not very high priority at the moment, and I still need to flesh out some stuff and figure out some snags). I'm much more interested in using game mechanics to teach specific thinking skills (I agree poker is a good example).

Well, what a coincidence, I'm making a game to promote rationality as well: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/7ow/gameplay_art/

also an older post: http://lesswrong.com/lw/55z/a_gameplay_exploration_of_yudkowskys_twelve/

We are taking an "expression through gameplay" approach to ensure that the game remains fun. There won't be any text whatsoever outside of maybe titling the level when you enter it. It's a puzzle game, so it's going to ask the player to think in a variety of different ways. Thinking about how to solve problems is an important starting point for learning about rationality, and so we are trying to make the solution to the puzzle more meaningful than just "you succeed!"

visit our site http://shinyogre.com/

My first game was/will be a bust in terms of this

Do you mind explaining why you think that was the case?

I am officially trained in computer animation. I've put in at least 10,000 hours of self-motivated practice in board games/card games/role-playing games. Eventually I met Dave Arneson (co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons) and asked him what he thought about designing RPGs as a career choice. And he said "heh, kid, make video games."

This... was sad. But basically matched up with a nagging doubt I had had for a while (pen-and-paper games is a grossly saturated market and hard to economically get lots of playtesters for). So I started working on computer games. I've spent the past two years working on an independent game project on-and-off.

But right now I have a full time job at an advertising agency, and I've found that it's not very healthy for me to try to and work on my game while I'm also working full time. It ends up exhausting both my creative faculties and my eyeballs (staring at computer screens for 12+ hours a day is... not smart). So lately I've been doing more hands-on art that involves social interaction in my spare time. I'd like to get back to game art/design, but it would require an actual paycheck so that I'm not also working full time elsewhere.

My portfolio and (work-in-progress) game site are available at www.psycosmworlds.com

I'll be moving to the Bay Area in the next month, so I would love to meet up with anyone who is sincerely interested in working on this.

I'd be interested in this, although I'm not sure whether I will have time or how useful I would be. I'm good at math, and adept at programming algorithms (novice on Project Euler), but I have almost no game or software design experience.

It would take a lot of prodding to get me to play a game with such unprofessional graphics. What I'm saying is that if you want this game to be taken seriously at all, it needs better art. Maybe have more retro pixely stuff as an option, it might cut down the workload a bit for whatever artist you decide to hire.

I have one suggestion. I would change the name to simply, "Girl with a Heart" or something similar. Having the syntactically incomplete phrase "Girl with a Heart of" is really awkward for me to read and handle, as my brain is looking for it to be completed, in an annoying way. I get that it's part of the gameplay, but having a name like that is very uncommon, and could cause problem with the game spreading. For example, if someone says to their friend, "Hey, I just found this game called 'Girl with a Heart of' ", then the listener will immediately notice the incompleteness and either believe they misheard or that their friend didn't finish. Also I'd bet that they will explicitly mention it, like "...Just 'Girl with a Heart of'? That's weird.", or something. It will put an extra step between them playing it or asking about the game itself.

Also, will the OS X version work for a PPC processor? If so, I'll buy it!

Have you considered making a game about HPMoR? I think this would get a few hundred plays, no matter how good it was. You couldn't sell it, but it would help raise the waterline. Maybe people could donate?