Ce n'est pas un monde virtuel
Although this has been discussed once or twice before, it is clearly time to charge fearlessly into the breach.
Are graphical digital worlds just text worlds with pretty graphics? After all, people get all excited about sales of virtual items, weddings, stalking, gender bending, and governance, yet all of these behaviors happened in earlier text-based worlds and were probably discussed on MUD-Dev in 1997. Several of these comments touch on this topic in the context that creativity in Second Life is no different than MOOs, so I wanted to put a stake in the ground and then duck and cover:
Physically simulated 3D worlds are fundamentally different from text worlds.
Read on for why
#1 Place matters
Thoughts on place articulated here. More than those arguments, see the next point.
#2 Reading is not doing
Reading a description of a place plugs into very different parts of your brain than seeing it, hearing it, and interacting with it. I've just started reading Steven Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good for You" and one of the early discussion enumerates the differences between reading and playing games.
Sure, text games could have a beautiful description of a sunset that could only be reached after reading a description of racing several competitors to the beach and another description of the long and dangerous climb to the top of a cliff, but claiming it is the same experience as driving a simulated car against other people and then fighting them up the cliff face is just silly.
#3 Avatars matter
Jeremy Bailenson and our own Nick Yee are doing amazing work analyzing the impact of virtual actors on our brains. Avatars are perceived as real and plug into the many parts of our brains that have evolved to handle interpersonal communication. While there are certainly experiments that show that we can personify IRC chat, the range of behaviors and communication possible with avatars far exceeds text.
As an aside, remember that text is a subset of 3D. There was an assertion that 3D couldn't impart smell to an object. Not true, since you can easily have text within a 3D world to cue the many concepts, senses, and factors that don't yet lend themselves to 3D visualization. Similarly, just because the primary communication method is avatars doesn't mean that IM doesn't have its place. Anything that can be done in a text world can be done within a 3D world. The converse is certainly not true.
#4 Simulation matters
Text worlds allow creators to write code and text to generate an interactive text description of skydiving. Simulated worlds allow that and also allow creators to build parachutes and airplanes that enable skydiving in a 3D world. 'Nuff said.
So, pulling this all together, why is creativity in collaborative 3D worlds better than text? First of all, let's all agree that collaboration in text is (technologically) much easier. Everyone on a computer has a keyboard and can type, so creating text is easy. It also has no technological barriers to entry, requires (approximately) no storage space or bandwidth, and it easily crosses the membrane between the real and the virtual.
Despite all of those advantages, creating text collaboratively is hard. New technologies keep getting created to help, but group text creation is hampered by the lack of many cues we take for granted. Precedence, position, who's turn is it, do they agree, what mode is the conversation taking are all obvious in the real world, but very hard to translate into text. But they can be translated into 3D (again, read why place matters).
Moving beyond this, take the piano example I use in many of my talks. I show the screen shot sequence needed to construct a piano in Ultima Online. Sure, it looks like a piano, but it isn't a piano in any useful way. In the same way, even the most evocative description of a piano isn't a piano. But a suitably constructed and simulated piano in a 3D world is a piano in every meaningful way. You can compose a symphony on it, play it to entertain friends, use it to separate space in a room, provide seating at parties, provide a dance platform for Michelle Pfeiffer, etc. In fact, one could easily see the smooth curve from a Korg piano synthesizer all the way to a Cubey Terra's piano in Second Life. That virtual piano, an impressive act of creation on its own, has enabled further acts of creation that exactly mimic the real world. Moreover, those acts can occur in a social setting, so some fine jamming at the digital jazz club can be experienced live by 30 people in the virtual room.
So, the gauntlet has been thrown upon the (digital) ground. I can already sense disagreement and arguments, but -- with luck -- all of our worlds will be better for the discussion.
Posted by Cory Ondrejka on June 18, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
A quick question, and not much feedback: Did you take this name from Rene Margrite's painting? Delicious, if so.
A stimulating discussion must surely follow. Here's my two cents:
I've never played a MUD or text-based multi-user online game. The only things I've been exposed to are three-dimensional games, and I feel that if I were to switch completely to text-based games, I am positive that the experience would not be as entertaining or as engrossing as a "fully realized" world. I also find interesting parallels to Dungeons and Dragons--a very social and, in some ways, immersive game, but at the same time, very flat and two-dimensional. I saw Johnson on the Daily Show the other night and what he said seemed to tie a lot into this sort of discussion: it's the INTERACTION with something tangible that has caused everything "bad" (or mainstream/popular culture) to become "good" (rising IQ test scores, for example) for you. I'm left wondering, then, is D&D (or tabletop games) on the same level as the MUD, or is it a step higher? (Or any other variation)
Posted Jun 18, 2005 11:55:10 PM | link
It would be wrong to talk about this topic without referencing Magritte in some way :-)
Posted Jun 19, 2005 12:19:09 AM | link
I've long been a fan of Magritte's work as well.
"Ceci n'est pas un pipe," indeed. :-)
As to the assertion that "Physically simulated 3D worlds are fundamentally different from text worlds", while I might quibble with the word "fundamentally," I'm not sure many people are going to disagree in any substantial way.
> kill dwarf with knife
The dwarf disappears in a puff of greasy black smoke.
Compare that experience from an early text-mode game to the experience of "firing" a BFG 9000. You're no longer just being told what happens -- you get to see pretty weapon fire effects, simulated blood spraying and body parts flying, and positional audio coming out of your 5.1 surround sound system that shakes the room.
The former experience is evocative. The latter is visceral.
Writers are often told to "show, don't tell." A text game tells. A graphical game shows.
But I still fire up Crowther and Woods's "Original Adventure" from time to time.
--Flatfingers
Posted Jun 19, 2005 12:34:09 AM | link
Analogies:
- text game || 3D game
- newspaper || TV news
- fantasy novel || anime
Paradox:
I believe there's a study that says people who read news get more than those who watch news. Do text-gamers get more (because they have to process more - a more subjective experience perhaps)?
Good point:
However, you (Cory) are right about the shared (piano) bit - people may intepret texts differently but their interpretations of images should be more or less the same.
Posted Jun 19, 2005 1:16:18 AM | link
I agree with the proposition (from the argument concerning collaboration spaces, mostly) , but I think a couple of arguments need challenging in detail.
Thus far Cory: Sure, text games could have a beautiful description of a sunset that could only be reached after reading a description of racing several competitors to the beach and another description of the long and dangerous climb to the top of a cliff, but claiming it is the same experience as driving a simulated car against other people and then fighting them up the cliff face is just silly.
With all respect, you're setting up strawman arguments here. A 3D world can just as easily have static objects that represent your "competitors" as scenery, in the manner you describe text games as doing, and text games can (and do) allow real competitors to engage in real competition using their (textual) avatars. You can't race a shopkeeping NPC any more than you can race a room description, but other players have the same abilities and inclinations as you do.
If MOOs (and the LP codebase rather than Diku) proved one thing, it's that nothing -has- to be scenery. Flat-panel backgrounds are a shortcut, not a law of nature. Any sufficiently complex assemblage of, well, Stuff can in theory support physics-and-engineering systems - look at what you can do with real-world Lego. The experience of doing it is different, especially from a real-world usability point of view, but the processes involved for an immersed player are similar.
Thus far Flatfingers: Writers are often told to "show, don't tell." A text game tells. A graphical game shows.
Bad text games tell, bad graphical games tell. Bad writers make bad games. Good text games show, in the literary sense - "don't impose your opinions on the reader, don't rub their noses in facts, give them some hints and let them work it out and integrate everything for themselves".
But it's also possible to see "show" as "here's an object, this is what it's like, take it or leave it" whereas "tell" would be saying to them "This is what the object is like, imagine it for yourself", and it seems to me that this is how you're trying to use it. However, we're looking at different levels here. You aren't showing players an object as distinct from telling them about it, you're showing players a 3D picture of an object as distinct from letting them read what a good writer wants them to know so they can build a mental picture of that object. Immersion lets people treat that manipulable, interactable 3D picture as though it were a real thing, and that's good, but that level of immersion can be, and is, achieved in textual worlds too, with the same result. You "see" the "object" only in the same way that your world supports "seeing".
Posted Jun 19, 2005 3:16:16 AM | link
Well, you've got some things right, and some things wrong I think. Are 3d worlds fundamentally different? Generally no, though they do allow for movement that seems much more analog than text does (although it is not actually analog movement, it is close enough for our purposes). Are they different? Of course. Anything that is not that exact thing is different.
One of your main assumptions has problems from the start. You assume that text is a subset of 3d. It makes as much sense to claim that 3d is a subset of text, using the same logic you use. A "3d game" can have text just as easily as a "text game" can have 3d. Purely a matter of semantics. They are both methods of communicating information. They may be combined, but neither is a subset of the other unless you simply assume that one is a subset of the other.
Sure, text games could have a beautiful description of a sunset that could only be reached after reading a description of racing several competitors to the beach and another description of the long and dangerous climb to the top of a cliff, but claiming it is the same experience as driving a simulated car against other people and then fighting them up the cliff face is just silly.
This makes no sense. You are as much 'doing' something when you issue commands in a text world by hitting keys as you are when you issue commands in a graphical world by hitting keys or mouse buttons. In neither case are you experiencing climbing a cliff or fighting them up the cliff face. In both cases your brain is building images for you constructed out of data you receive. In neither case are you actually climbing a cliff or fighting up a cliff, at all, and the image your brain actually experiences is going to depend on the person involved. For instance, I may find that a text description of the result of my actions results in a much richer image in my head, whereas you may find that a graphical description of the result of your actions results in the richer image. Different strokes, that's all.
Of the four things you list, I think only #4 has any validity, but only in theory. I personally find that all of the graphical MUDs I've ever played feel extremely restrictive in terms of my range of expression compared to text. I'll grant that graphical MUDs have the potential to simulate face to face conversation, with the richness of body language and tonal variation and whatnot, far better than text MUDs, but I also think that currently none of them even come close to surpassing the range of expression available in some text MUDs precisely because of the need/desire of designers to show everything graphically.
Incidentally, a piano in 3d isn't a piano if you're playing it with a qwerty keyboard. In that case, all it is is something that can synthesize the tones of a piano given the correct input. That input could be graphical. That input could be textual. You could hook up a controller to it that plays just like an 88 key piano keyboard, and it still wouldn't make a difference what the screen displayed, because what matters with a piano is the input, which can be the same regardless of graphical or text output, and the audio output, which can also be the same.
--matt
Posted Jun 19, 2005 10:57:55 AM | link
Flatfingers wrote:
Compare that experience from an early text-mode game to the experience of "firing" a BFG 9000. You're no longer just being told what happens -- you get to see pretty weapon fire effects, simulated blood spraying and body parts flying, and positional audio coming out of your 5.1 surround sound system that shakes the room.
Well first of all, the positional audio has nothing to do with 3d graphics. Positional audio could be done in text as well. 2nd, you're not seeing a gun fire when you fire a BFG in a graphical game. You're getting a representation of a gun firing. How close to the reality of a BFG firing your brain is willing to believe that representation is is going to differ from person to person. It is similar with text.
--matt
Posted Jun 19, 2005 11:23:28 AM | link
Oh boy, yet another iteration of the medium/method debate.
Cory: Physically simulated 3D worlds are fundamentally different from text worlds.
This strikes me as a really bad way of framing this issue. Are 3D worlds different from text-based worlds? Of course! A better question to ask though is how are they different rather than to propose some claim that they are fundamentally different and we can effectively throw out our understandings based on what came before.
The entire point of looking at the continuity of history is that while technology changes (not as fast as we would like to think) human behavior tends to be fairly conserved. My favorite virtual gender-bender in history happens to be Marie-Sophie Germain, who in the early 19th century obtained university lecture notes and collaborated with Gauss by spoofing her identity.
Cory: #1 Place matters
Of course place matters! Barker and Schoggen figured this out in the 1950s with the concept of "behavior settings." Of course, we in the "social sciences" feel the need to reinvent the wheel every generation, so the notion that you get different behavior depending on if you stick a piano or a hot tub in a room sounds really radical now.
Cory in the linked article: Rather than the generally asynchronous nature of blogs or wikis, groups working together in digital worlds are able to engage each other in real time, leading to more learning, greater cooperation, and a much richer experience.
Well, I have an objection to this on two counts. First of all, there are some pretty huge differences between synchronous and asynchronous settings. And yes, I do believe that we should talk about asynchronous sites as behavior settings with different structures, behavior, and communities. Wikipedia is a bad contrast to address the issue of text vs. 3d graphics.
Secondly, the "more learning" claim sounds a lot like selling snake-oil. There are advantages and disadvantages to both synchronous and asynchronous modes. With synchronous, you have a person right there willing to help you through a task, or practice a skill. With asynchronous, you can reduce the barriers of shared time and space, and have access to an archive of previous community knowledge.
In practice, actually showing that you get strong learning gains from either has been problematic. Synchronicity or asynchronicity on their own do very little to promote learning. It's what you DO in those environments that promotes learning.
Cory: #4 Simulation matters
To which, I would say, yes. Simulation matters. But to what degree?
I'll throw down the gauntlet and make an equally (but in my opinion, better-supported claim.) The paradigms by which human beings interact with other human beings has not changed in the last 100 years. Much less in the 20 years between MUDs and virtual worlds. The fundamental lesson of 20 years of CMC research is "same shit, different mode."
Posted Jun 19, 2005 12:25:50 PM | link
Kyle K: I think the big advantage of tabletop roleplaying games especially if you have a good gamemaster, is that you can ad lib not only details of your character, but details of the setting as well as you go along. As an actual example, my dwarven siege engineer is the rear-guard in a fight down a stairwell to rescue a kidnap victim. Since he has nothing to do, he starts looking at how humans build their houses.
"So, what's that wall made of?" I ask.
"Wood planking."
"What's preventing me from going through that wall with my axe?"
The DM thinks about it, "oh, about three rounds."
"Well, heck, I got nothing better to do."
It is impossible to think of every possible way that a player might try to solve a problem in advance. D&D gives the GM the option of ad libbing through unanticipated situations or strategies posed by the player.
I agree with Matt in that text MUDs offered an amazing range of expression through emote commands. It does not matter if, everyone in the room got a different image in their minds in reading: "Jora waves goodbye and leaves, her body fading away piece by peice, until her waving hand vanishes with an audible *pop.*" I suspect there would be quite a cognitive dissonance between the text description and what the person actually sees on screen.
Posted Jun 19, 2005 12:54:00 PM | link
My typical stance has always been "Text is better; graphics must die." But for some reason, when I read Cory's provocation, I realized that I agreed with it.
So.. this is why:
First, his list ("sales of virtual items, weddings, stalking, gender bending, and governance") of similarities are all sociological phenomena. (Economical and political stuff is arguably sociological, for the purposes of this thrust.) It's the virtual aspect that makes them possible uniquely. The medium is utterly irrelevant except in specific applicative scenarios.
Second, the very preference I have for text over graphics makes it clear that somewhere in my subconscious, I have them fundamentally split: otherwise why would it matter?
However, I'm not sure I agree with Cory's four points. Instead, I'd put forward that text is fundamentally different from graphics simply because they're built for different personality types. Text appears to favor introspection; graphics seem to favor extroversion. That is to say that the imagination invoked by text happens from the text to the mind, whereas graphics-invoked imagination happens from the mind to the graphics.
Posted Jun 19, 2005 3:28:21 PM | link
Oh wow, a text versus graphics argument! I haven't had one of those for ages!
I prefer text: the pictures are better.
Cory>Physically simulated 3D worlds are fundamentally different from text worlds.
What do you mean, "fundamentally"? They're both worlds, they both try to reproduce themselves in the imaginations of the players, but they use different methods: text talks to the mind through the language of the mind, ie. words; 3D graphics talk to the mind through the language of the senses, ie. pictures.
3D graphics and text certainly have a "fundamental" difference in interface, by definition, but you seem to be saying that the worlds are fundamentally different because of the interface. Certainly the range of what can be expressed in the worlds is different, but 3D comes off worse in that regard (text is far more expressive than graphics, which is why we're posting here using text and not pictures).
OK, so you explain why you feel that there's a fundamental difference between worlds that are 3D graphics and worlds that are text. I'll take your points one by one:
>#1 Place matters
Yes it does, but place isn't the sole province of 3D. Textual worlds have place; indeed, it would be hard to call them "worlds" if they didn't.
>#2 Reading is not doing
Correct, but neither is looking. Typing is doing, as is clicking a mouse.
>Reading a description of a place plugs into very different parts of your brain than seeing it, hearing it, and interacting with it.
I agree. Reading allows the author to connect with the imagination of the reader; images allow the author to connect with the senses of the reader, which must then be interpreted before they can reach the imagination. The imagination is where all the action is. Because the human mind is wired up to process visual patterns very easily, it can be less work to understand a scene from a picture than from a description; however, because images must nevertheless be interpreted, they can't touch the mind as well as words can.
If you want a simple world lacking in emotional content for people who don't want their imaginations exercised (ie. a world for the majority of the population) then graphics is the superior interface. If you want a simple or complex world with emotional depth or shallowness for people who do want their imagination fired, text is the superior interface.
It's just an interface, though. It doesn't make the worlds fundamentally different, any more than being real-world blind makes the real world different; it only affects your experience of the world, not the world itself.
>but claiming it is the same experience as driving a simulated car against other people and then fighting them up the cliff face is just silly.
It is if you've never been immersed in a textual world. If you have been, your statement is also pales alongside the experience of driving an actual car, which is what you feel you're doing when you're immersed.
(I have to confess, I haven't actually driven a virtual car in a text world, but I have sailed a few boats across rough, shark-infested seas and I can tell you it's far more thrilling than watching 4 pixels in the middle of the screen, which sums up all that is 3D virtual car racing).
>#3 Avatars matter
Yes, they do. They're 3D graphical worlds' way of representing characters, which matter even more.
>Avatars are perceived as real and plug into the many parts of our brains that have evolved to handle interpersonal communication.
Yes, but then again, characters are perceived as real, too.
>the range of behaviors and communication possible with avatars far exceeds text.
What?! Tell me anything you can make an avatar do in SL that it would be impossible ever to make a character do in a textual world. Go on, anything.
As an example of the reverse, my MUD2 arch-wiz arrives with a puff of thunder and disappears in a crash of smoke (as opposed to arriving with a crash of thunder and disappearing in a puff of smoke, which is the default). SL can't do that, because images are less expressive than text, not more.
I'm prepared to accept that SL avatars can produce behaviours that are recognised quicker than textual ones, but you weren't claiming that.
>As an aside, remember that text is a subset of 3D. There was an assertion that 3D couldn't impart smell to an object. Not true, since you can easily have text within a 3D world to cue the many concepts, senses, and factors that don't yet lend themselves to 3D visualization.
OK, two points here.
Firstly, if your only defence that text is more expressive than graphics is that you can put text into graphics, you're basically conceding the argument.
Secondly, if you feel that text is indeed a mere subset of graphics, how can you sustain your assertion that there's a "fundamental" difference between the two?
>Anything that can be done in a text world can be done within a 3D world. The converse is certainly not true.
In a textual world, I can stand in my own mouth, seeing my surroundings get light and dark as I open and close it. I can be part of a painting I am carrying under my arm. I can appear as a frog to one person and a beautiful princess to another. I can have internal organs. I can photograph an opinion. I can share control of my body with another player. I can drink from a Klein bottle. I can be of no gender. I can unerupt a volcano, store the world in a box, hold a soul in the palm of my hand, dance with the colour cyan.
Do that in your 3D world.
>#4 Simulation matters
Yes it does, but simulating what? You're simulating the real world, but the world of the imagination is so much greater. 3D? What happened to 4D? What's so great about tying us to physicality?
Simulation matters, because the human brain is wired up to process the real world quickly. If you present a simulation of the real world, that means the brain can accept it as fact more easily, thus aiding immersion (at least in the early stages). Simulation is therefore a good thing. Textual worlds simulate, too, but it takes more effort to get started with text. This is why textual worlds lose out against graphical ones.
However, there's a difference between being able to simulate and being only able to simulate. Text can do things 3D can't. Simulation matters, but the ability to break out of the simulation may matter more.
>Text worlds allow creators to write code and text to generate an interactive text description of skydiving.
Oh, they don't have to do that. They can stay up in the sky and have the ground rush up to meet them.
>Simulated worlds allow that
No, you can't mix media that way. Showing someone an image of the ground while scrolling text past them saying how they're hurtling towards it is giving conflicting messages. It's not the same as either showing them hurtling towards the ground without the text or describing their hurtling towards the ground without the image.
>and also allow creators to build parachutes and airplanes that enable skydiving in a 3D world. 'Nuff said.
'Nuff to expose a 3D simulation as a constraint on the human imagination, yes.
Parachutes, airplanes, chariots of fire... You can't even build a TARDIS.
There is a fundamental difference between textual and graphical virtual worlds: people prefer the latter. The interface restricts the world's functionality, but not by enough that many players care. Graphic win because of their familiarity and immediacy.
Basically, though, graphical worlds are just textal worlds with pretty pictures.
Richard
Posted Jun 19, 2005 4:57:40 PM | link
Richard wrote:
Cory:>Anything that can be done in a text world can be done within a 3D world. The converse is certainly not true.
In a textual world, I can stand in my own mouth, seeing my surroundings get light and dark as I open and close it. I can be part of a painting I am carrying under my arm. I can appear as a frog to one person and a beautiful princess to another. I can have internal organs. I can photograph an opinion. I can share control of my body with another player. I can drink from a Klein bottle. I can be of no gender. I can unerupt a volcano, store the world in a box, hold a soul in the palm of my hand, dance with the colour cyan.
I think what Cory means is that because he considers text to be a subset of graphical worlds, a graphical world can just use text to do anything that graphics can't. It's a meaningless statement though, as the reverse is also true: A text world can simply use 3d graphics to do anything text can't do. I don't really know any pure graphical worlds. I know worlds that are composed of text and graphics together. I think there might be some pure text worlds, but I can't actually name any offhand (though I can name a lot that don't have 3d graphics. I wonder how Cory feels about UO? Is 2d UO fundamentally different from Everquest because it isn't 3d?)
I personally will play both text and graphical MUDs, but no graphical MUD has even come close to giving me the immersive experience I used to get when I still had the time to play text MUDs 8 hours a day. Doesn't mean they won't someday, but as Richard correctly points out, there is an infinite range of things that can be depicted with text but can never be depicted with 3d graphics or literal visual data of any kind.
--matt
Posted Jun 19, 2005 5:42:25 PM | link
I agree there's not much of a clear dilineation between textual and graphical worlds. I'm one of the N3w Sch00l gamers though. :)
Richard Bartle wrote: In a textual world, I can stand in my own mouth, seeing my surroundings get light and dark as I open and close it. I can be part of a painting I am carrying under my arm. I can appear as a frog to one person and a beautiful princess to another. I can have internal organs. I can photograph an opinion. I can share control of my body with another player. I can drink from a Klein bottle. I can be of no gender. I can unerupt a volcano, store the world in a box, hold a soul in the palm of my hand, dance with the colour cyan.
Would you say this is because the mind can fill in from words more than the eyes can fill in what is lacking in what they say? I ask because I've always felt as good the graphics (and necessary sound) get, the mind can always imagine far better.
Text, to me, gets the mind started on doing that. Graphics never even give that opportunity.
Posted Jun 19, 2005 6:55:22 PM | link
Matt> There is an infinite range of things that can be depicted with text but can never be depicted with 3d graphics or literal visual data of any kind.
And vice versa. The reason I commented on the skateboarding game and flocking fish was because they are both impossible to do with a text game. The skateboarding game is fundamentally a 3D game as it involves judging and timing jumps in 3D space. You could do something in a text game which described the environment in text and allowed you to type "jump", but the experience would be completely different. Similarly you could describe a shoal of fish in text and even describe them swim away as you approach, but it's not the same as having a shoal of fish reacting to you in a 3D world. In both cases 3D is superior as both examples are fundamentally 3D.
For all the more abstract examples which cannot be represented in 3D, then text is clearly the better interface and appealing to the imagination is the only option.
Taken further this argument suggests that pen and paper D&D is superior still. Not only is human language able to represent everything that a text world can, but the human generating the virtual world can describe it at any detail and respond to any desire of the players inhabiting the world. I'd love to the D&D wish spell in a computer game.
Taken to it's logical conclusion, the argument argues away all technology and ends up saying that the human imagination free of all constraint is the ultimate virtual world technology. Which may well be the case.
Posted Jun 19, 2005 8:07:37 PM | link
Ricahrd> Basically, though, graphical worlds are just textal worlds with pretty pictures.
This has the benefit of being concise :-)!
Matt> You are as much 'doing' something when you issue commands in a text world by hitting keys as you are when you issue commands in a graphical world by hitting keys or mouse buttons.
Richard> Typing is doing, as is clicking a mouse.
Just to be clear, the assertion that you're making is that the experience of playing a text skateboarding game is essentially the same as playing Tony Hawk. Hopefully some of the cognitive folks can weigh in (and that I can find time to finish "Everything Bad is Good for You" so that I can pick through his sources).
On a related note, there seems to be an implicit assertion that text generates more imagination.
Richard> No, you can't mix media that way. Showing someone an image of the ground while scrolling text past them saying how they're hurtling towards it is giving conflicting messages. It's not the same as either showing them hurtling towards the ground without the text or describing their hurtling towards the ground without the image.
We play text games within a 3D world so I'm pretty sure that we integrate text more smoothly if we wanted to.
Richard> What?! Tell me anything you can make an avatar do in SL that it would be impossible ever to make a character do in a textual world. Go on, anything.
If you and I are speaking, I could sit down and make eye contact, both of which signal that I'm paying attention to you without interrupting the flow of your conversation. Sure, you could type "I sit down and I'm listening to you" but especially if twenty people did that, it would interfere with everyone else listening to you.
Another way to approach this discussion might be to think about it terms of learning. Let's say you wanted to learn about how to perform an appendectomy. You could choose 1) to learn in the real world, 2) learn from a haptic VR system, 3) learn from an interactive PC simulation, 4) learn from a video, 5) learn from interactive text, or 6) learn by reading text. Each has some advantages and in a perfect world I bet that all of us would choose a mix. After all, once I've actually done something, reviewing a description of activity helps we to review what I did. This why we visualize giving speeches, skiing moguls, etc. What I suspect, however, is that this visualization is far more effective as a rehearsal method when building on the broadest possible set of memories.
Anyway, forced to choose only one -- and assuming equal quality -- I would choose them in the order listed. Would any of you choose interactive text over any of the lower numbers?
Jim> Taken to it's logical conclusion, the argument argues away all technology and ends up saying that the human imagination free of all constraint is the ultimate virtual world technology.
Of course, but I don't think that it necessarily follows that less technology generates better imagination.
Posted Jun 19, 2005 10:11:05 PM | link
Cory: On a related note, there seems to be an implicit assertion that text generates more imagination.
I don't think we have enough evidence to make that claim. I can say that I've not seen a 3d engine in which the avatar gestures provided by the software engineers offered as much of a capability to express myself as the open-ended emotes of text-based muds.
Another way to approach this discussion might be to think about it terms of learning. Let's say you wanted to learn about how to perform an appendectomy. You could choose.... Each has some advantages and in a perfect world I bet that all of us would choose a mix. After all, once I've actually done something, reviewing a description of activity helps we to review what I did. This why we visualize giving speeches, skiing moguls, etc. What I suspect, however, is that this visualization is far more effective as a rehearsal method when building on the broadest possible set of memories.
Anyway, forced to choose only one -- and assuming equal quality -- I would choose them in the order listed. Would any of you choose interactive text over any of the lower numbers?
I'm going to pull a John Stewart and say stop. Just stop. You are hurting us all by engaging in this vaporware hype-pushing.
There has been tons of research on this topic over the last 40 years and this notion that more technological complexity, more fidelity, and more synchronicity produces better learning has not been supported on the grand scale. In many cases, "high technology" does even WORSE than the "low technology" alternatives.
If you are concerned about human learning, if you are concerned about *helping* people learn, answer these three questions before you even think about media:
1: What you you want to help people learn?
2: What methods are you going to use to teach? What learning behaviors should the students practice?
3: What are the economic, political and cultural constraints?
Once you answer these three questions, the media choice will be obivous:
If you want to help people learn comparative anatomy by giving them access to a large number of exemplars, having them construct hypotheses, and constrained by animal rights concerns and cost of specimens, then VR is the way to go.
If you want to help people learn creative writing by sharing and engaging in guided constructive critique, constrained by a lack of a common meeting time, then text-based bulletin board systems are the way to go.
You seem to be suffering from the psychological problem that when you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail. By all means, 3d virtual worlds are great and getting better all the time. That doesn't mean that we should start with them as the first solution for every learning goal.
Posted Jun 19, 2005 11:44:56 PM | link
I have always contended that they are all the same.
In the end, the arguments come down to simulation. But the simulation is serverside; we're really talking about the ideal representation for a given sim. Graphics does better at the skateboarding; text does better at other things. Neither is particularly good at pianos, frankly, because the music is a different sense that has nothing to do with text OR graphics.
Arguing that ease of representation of a given sim means that one delivery method is superior to the other is silly; are street signs with the text for a street name inferior to traffic signs with an icon?
Avatars, seamlessness, etc, these are all issues of representation. A textual avatar is far MORE expressive in many ways than a graphical one; and far LESS expressive in others. For example, the graphical avatar tends to be very bad at body language and emotional expression, at background (hence textual profiles)... and very good at hair, facial features, and other descriptive characteristics.
Likewise, there have been seamless textual environments and room-based graphical ones. One technique is better at one, the other technique is better at the other. And each can even embed the other within its chosen primary metaphor (isn't SL introducing node-based textual spaces via an embedded web browser?).
I would argue that it is untrue that everything that can be done within a textual world can be done within a graphical world. This is only the case because the graphical world embeds significant elements of text in order to accomplish it. Starting with the obvious--chat. But going on towards names (graphical worlds still have a ways to go before they can convey physical identity as well as a textual name, for example). Even in the real world, we don't make use of merely one medium to provide our understanding of the environment.
The urge to separate out the constituent media used to DISPLAY a virtual world and consering definitional in some manner strikes me as putting the emphasis on the client, which is the wrong place to put it. One can imagine a stunningly capable natural language parser that can provide a suitable textual interface to SL--or create an on-the-fly graphical depiction of a text world. Neither will be ideal, because the world is too complicated to display in only one way.
I also would argue that there's true artistic opportunity to be mined in choosing to represent a given world in ONLY one medium. Graphical worlds haven't actually tried to make use of their core representational strength to the degree that text was obliged to do. Strip out all the text and all sound, and then we'll see a true graphical world. Might be really interesting to see what can be done with it.
Posted Jun 20, 2005 12:03:27 AM | link
I think it's also a big mistake to frame learning, creativity, and imagination as technological concerns instead of social concerns. You don't get curious, creative, and imaginative communities by dumping software on them, you get it by creating social structures to support member creativity.
With that in mind, most muds turned out to be failures even when running the exact same software as the great successful muds. Those muds that did create great structures for supporting member creativity were hugely successful.
Posted Jun 20, 2005 12:33:28 AM | link
Very much enjoying this discussion, everybody. Here are a few more quick thoughts on significant differences to stir the pot:
•Young children, illiterate people, and people speaking different languages can participate in graphical worlds, but not in text worlds. A graphical world like Second Life allows for intuitive and globalizing situations like the one described by James Au in "The Flat World Dancers of China" (if you follow the link you'll see a pic of Chinese text in SL :-) and csven's follow-up, "The Flat World's Shaky Virtual Ground" (which will get you thinking about low wage virtual labor as a possible force for good by teaching practical skills--a situation we'll see more of that's impossible in text worlds). Check these links out if you've got time, otherwise the elevator pitch is: graphical digital worlds are becoming a world-flattening force, integrating people from all nations in a common social and business environment that amplifies our collective imagination about what's possible. This will not happen in text. Ask yourself why that is. (I understand that real world connections sever the true virtualness that many of us here want, so if that perks your ears, I'm sorry. Just adding another perspective.)
•I'm looking forward to reading Steven Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good for You" for more of the youth, learning, and preparing for the future perspective. I remember seeing Steven on the "Roots of the Matrix" DVD (break out your Matrix boxsets! Second Life, There, and The Sims are also featured among lots more) and he made a comment to the effect that the most interesting thing happening on the planet right now is that young people all over the world are innocuously learning how to deal with, create, and manage the graphical virtual agents and environments that will increasingly come to populate the Web and behave more intelligently and autonomously. On that educational side of graphical simulation and interaction, e-learning professional Clark Aldrich recently gave a talk and read from his new book "Learning by Doing" which you can hear and see slides of right here (15 minute talk with the conclusion from the book). Slide #2 in particular might raise your eyebrow: it's a graph of "infatuation with books" with the stages of pre-literate, literate, and post-literate filled by fast food workers, academics, and enterprise leaders, respectively. Paraphrasing Clark with a wink, 'Yea, academics love that one' :-D
•3D worlds can make you more skilled and imaginative because you can actually build your ideas* (complete with scripted behavior if you'd like). Think of the gap between building an intricate castle and describing how lovely it is in a few lines of text. I love books and good writing, and this isn't meant to say that an amazing description isn't valuable and immersive, but maybe the kind of deep, structural understanding that atomistic graphical worlds can express make better authors. 3D is new and people are still freaked out by it. I'm 23 and totally surprised by how hands-off friends my age can be about building in 3D, like it's not something that's really for them. Makes me feel old already! So we have to think of 3D as a valuable skill set to aquire that text can't provide us. *(I'm guessing they can also make you more "socially skilled" because they free up more of your brain to see through to the relationships--you don't need to clog up your cortex supporting a world that isn't there :-)
Again, look at this picture of Bedazzle's Abraxas Winter Castle next to a MOO text description of a comparable place (pulled from Google):
"You are in a small Northumbrian Village dominated by the huge, red edifice of Bamburgh Castle. Opposite the shops on the village green, is a Victorian church, standing on the windswept headland. The church and the castle are separated by a row of houses built of the same red stone as the castle. Between the houses and the cricket pitch is a narrow opening, the Wynding, which leads to the beach, from where there is a very good view of the Farne Islands. If you look very carefully, you can see a dark alley beside the tearooms. If you need more help, type "
This doesn't demonstrate that one is Better than the other, but different, yes. If the party-line is really that there is no difference between text and graphics, then this is the biggest academic/philosophical sausage party on Earth! (ha, I kid ;-)
•I love Will Wright's definition of simulations as "prosthetics for the imagination". Having a visible simulation mezzanine to build on frees up your cortex to understand the system and ask new questions about what's possible. And maybe there's something in that extension over immersion metaphor that's causing this rift here. We're all agreeing on the differences, we just have different virtual values. :-)
•Eventually we'll be moving 3D data out of our graphical worlds and manufacturing virtually prototyped things for real (art, houses, clothes, vehicles, etc.) (the idea is making new rounds). There's no data like that we can take from text. You can say that just because you build it in 3D doesn't make you more creative or imaginative, but mass-customization via designs prototyped in 3D will certainly make us collectively more creative and imaginative. Look at what open creative markets like Threadless are already beginning to do with simple t-shirts. These aren't people aren't describing the shirts they'd like to have. They're going out and designing them, entering them into what's essentially an imagination market, and, if the idea is strong enough, perhaps having them built for real. So markets like this and the atomistic, user-created ones in Second Life most certainly excercise the imagination to the extreme.
In a closing vote/request, I would also like to hear someone chime in with differences happening in the brain when people are doing things in graphical versus reading and imagining in text worlds. That's where a lot (most?) of the honey is.
Posted Jun 20, 2005 12:49:44 AM | link
> Basically, though, graphical worlds are just textal
> worlds with pretty pictures.
I dunno, Richard. On that logic, the worlds depicted in film and TV are just textal worlds with pretty pictures, and worlds depicted in radio narratives are just textal worlds with pretty audio effects, and worlds depicted in comics are just textal worlds with pretty pictures. Or devolving technology *Ubik*-style all the way down to the birth of communication, before the written word, worlds described by the village storyteller around the bonfire are just textal worlds with pretty vocal delivery. At which point, it becomes totally unclear to me what is so meaningful about the original formulation.
Posted Jun 20, 2005 1:08:56 AM | link
•3D worlds can make you more skilled and imaginative because you can actually build your ideas* (complete with scripted behavior if you'd like). Think of the gap between building an intricate castle and describing how lovely it is in a few lines of text.
Well, actually most spaces in textual worlds consisted of several pages of hypertext (hypetext before html, imagine that!) with scripted interaction. So mud building is not just about a set of nodes with pretty descriptions, but anticipating every object that "lives" in that space on a regular basis, and every action that a player might take in regards to that space.
Now that is not to say that 3D modeling and construction is not a creative skill, or a valuable skill, or a skill that will be needed in the future. But I think that text muds were quite a bit more complex than you are presenting here.
In a closing vote/request, I would also like to hear someone chime in with differences happening in the brain when people are doing things in graphical versus reading and imagining in text worlds. That's where a lot (most?) of the honey is.
I think where a lot of the honey is in whether the ways in which people interact with each other radically change as a result. At one time, it was "nobody knows that you are a dog." Now we know better, and find that much of the issues of power and control that exist offline, manage to be repeated online.
Who wins? Who looses? What kinds of harassment exist? Who gets high status and how? Who is put in low status and how? What does that mean? How do participants signal their identities? How deep is the collaboration? What does the participant structure really look like? (Too many of these articles fail to deal with the Pareto's law of online participation, or fail to acknowledge how they are sampling from an elite.) Given that people are people, what warrant do we have for assuming that we need to start all over again in learning how to answer these questions for 3D virtual worlds?
Or to put it another way, are these differences revolutionary, or evolutionary? By asserting that the shift to 3d environments makes them fundamentally different, you end up reinventing the wheel all over again. Perhaps I'm merely a pre-post-literate academic, but I think that a lot of what Barker and Shoggen said about the old fashioned drug stores and banks, applies quite well to the new-fangled virtual worlds.
Posted Jun 20, 2005 1:37:09 AM | link
Kirk Job-Sluder > ...mud building is not just about a set of nodes with pretty descriptions, but anticipating every object that "lives" in that space on a regular basis, and every action that a player might take in regards to that space... I think that text muds were quite a bit more complex than you are presenting here.
Yes. Thanks for pointing that out, Kirk. Totally agreed, and your points here are well taken.
Posted Jun 20, 2005 1:45:56 AM | link
While there are certainly experiments that show that we can personify IRC chat, the range of behaviors and communication possible with avatars far exceeds text.
As a long time IRC addict, I'd be curious for a cite.. :)
=darwin
Posted Jun 20, 2005 1:57:28 AM | link
Cory Ondrejka>Just to be clear, the assertion that you're making is that the experience of playing a text skateboarding game is essentially the same as playing Tony Hawk.
No, the assertion I'm making is that for someone immersed in a textual world the experience of skateboarding can be closer to what the player understands to be skateboarding than Tony Hawk. However, given that most of them probably got their notions of what skateboarding involves from playing Tony Hawk anyway, there probably isn't all that much of a difference...
>On a related note, there seems to be an implicit assertion that text generates more imagination.
It doesn't generate it, it uses it.
>We play text games within a 3D world so I'm pretty sure that we integrate text more smoothly if we wanted to.
If you wanted, you could implement MUD1 in SL merely by displaying the text on a static background. But then as Matt Says, hey, guess what? I could implement SL in MUD1 merely by showing the pictures over static text.
SL has text because you can't do everything with graphics. However, there are some things you can't do with both. In a textual world, I can put my character inside a box that my character is holding. You can't implement that in a 3D graphical world, because the world model isn't up to it. Thus, any physical consequences of it (eg. what happens if I shake the box) can't be read off the physics. Would an observer standing next to me as I shook the box also shake? What if I were inside the box but they weren't? The nodal world model you get from a textual world can handle this, but the 3D graphical world model can't. You'd have to layer the nodal model atop the graphical one to access its physics - but then you couldn't use the graphical model to render the image.
>If you and I are speaking, I could sit down and make eye contact, both of which signal that I'm paying attention to you without interrupting the flow of your conversation.
Can I sit down and not make eye contact, or does that happen automatically?
>Sure, you could type "I sit down and I'm listening to you" but especially if twenty people did that, it would interfere with everyone else listening to you.
What, and it's beyond the wit of a programmer to convert 20 "[name] sits down and listens" into "The audience sits down and listens"?
>Anyway, forced to choose only one -- and assuming equal quality -- I would choose them in the order listed. Would any of you choose interactive text over any of the lower numbers?
So you're saying that 3D graphics are better than text because training a surgeon using only 3D graphics is only slightly less a bad idea than training them using text? That's hardly a ringing endorsement...
Besides, it depends on the surgeon and the quality of the simulation. Current 3D systems are lousy at modelling interiors, and if the surgeon had actually seen the inside of a patient before then an interactive text might be more suited to their training than 3D graphics. As you say, a mixture is going to be best.
>Of course, but I don't think that it necessarily follows that less technology generates better imagination.
Nor does it follow that more technology generates better imagination. The difference is that I'm not claiming the former, but the pro-3Ders seem to be claiming the latter.
Richard
Posted Jun 20, 2005 4:58:38 AM | link
Jerry P>Young children, illiterate people, and people speaking different languages can participate in graphical worlds, but not in text worlds.
Well tra-la-la. Blind people can play textual worlds but not graphical worlds. This is just an interface issue.
>A graphical world like Second Life allows for intuitive and globalizing situations like the one described by James Au in "The Flat World Dancers of China"
I should have kept transcripts from the Norwegian incarnation of MUD1, where some people would speak to each other in English and others would use (gosh!) Norwegian.
>graphical digital worlds are becoming a world-flattening force, integrating people from all nations in a common social and business environment that amplifies our collective imagination about what's possible.
That's true, they are (or, given that it's only SL doing this, I suppose we should say "it is"). You're confusing causalities, though. It's nothing specific to 3D graphics that's doing this - after all, WoW has 50 times the number of players that SL has but it's not doing it); rather, it's SL's deliberate lack of a magic circle and its developers' conscious attempt to connect the real and the virtual in a newbie-friendly manner.
>This will not happen in text. Ask yourself why that is.
Text isn't newbie-friendly.
>•3D worlds can make you more skilled and imaginative because you can actually build your ideas*
More skilled, yes; more imaginative, no. They teach craft, not imagination.
If you want to create 3D objects then a 3D world is clearly a better place to learn the necessary skills than is a textual world, because the interface better matches your medium. Then again, if you want to write stories you'd be better off in a StoryMOO, because the interface is made of the very stuff of your trade.
I can't build my ideas in 3D because 3D isn't expressive enough for me. Now any medium constrains that which can be created in it, and working within those constraints can lead to creative solutions and art. It can fire imagination, but it can also limit it. For some people, 3D is their medium, and SL will be perfect for them. For other people, manipulating objects in space is not what they want to do, and SL would be useless to them. That's because the interface is more appropriate for them (note that's interface, not world).
>Think of the gap between building an intricate castle and describing how lovely it is in a few lines of text.
No no no, when you build a castle in a textual world you really do build it, you don't merely describe it. You have to put together components in a structured fashion in order to realise (virtualise?) the object. The castle is reflected in data structures, not just text. If you think building a textual castle isn't building, then neither is gluing triangles together to make a graphical representation of a castle.
>maybe the kind of deep, structural understanding that atomistic graphical worlds can express make better authors.
And maybe they make worse authors, or prevent people from becoming authors altogether. It's just a medium; you're making claims for it way beyond its reach.
>*(I'm guessing they can also make you more "socially skilled" because they free up more of your brain to see through to the relationships--you don't need to clog up your cortex supporting a world that isn't there :-)
I'm staggered by this remark. Would I be right in suggesting that you have never read any papers on Cognitive Maps?
>This doesn't demonstrate that one is Better than the other, but different, yes.
It demonstrates that the interface is different, but not that the world is different. The assertion Cory was making is that physically simulated 3D worlds are fundamentally different to textual worlds. All you're saying, however, is that they're different because one uses pictures and one uses words, which is kinda obvious.
>Having a visible simulation mezzanine to build on frees up your cortex to understand the system and ask new questions about what's possible.
No, the imagination is the crucible here, where the new questions must go to be asked. You can only test the system predictively when you've internalised it, which means you have to get it into your imagination - you can't rely on having it as a "real", testable physicality that will satisfy all your speculative needs.
>Eventually we'll be moving 3D data out of our graphical worlds and manufacturing virtually prototyped things for real.
Again, why does that make the world fundamentally different? Different data can be taken from textual worlds and used in the real world, but that doesn't make the worlds different, just how they're depicted on the screen.
>You can say that just because you build it in 3D doesn't make you more creative or imaginative, but mass-customization via designs prototyped in 3D will certainly make us collectively more creative and imaginative.
I disagree. It will give us more opportunity for our imaginations to blossom, and it may allow collaborations that wouldn't happen in real space, but it won't make us more creative or imaginative than we were anyway. It enables the expression of imagination in ways which might previously have not been open to so many people, but I'm not going to let you claim that the glories of SL will make the unimaginative imaginative, or the imaginative even more imaginative. You're overstating your case.
>In a closing vote/request, I would also like to hear someone chime in with differences happening in the brain when people are doing things in graphical versus reading and imagining in text worlds.
Be careful what you wish for: any evidence that 3D virtual images affect the brain chemically will be picked up by the ban-the-games crowd and used against you..!
Richard
Posted Jun 20, 2005 5:51:33 AM | link
Darwin> As a long time IRC addict, I'd be curious for a cite
http://www.citeulike.org/user/klouie/article/216057
As part of the experiment, the subjects were sometimes trading with other people via text and sometimes with a computer via text. The impact of oxytocin on increased trust only appeared when people were told that they were trading with other people. They used it to test if oxytocin was driving overall risk tolerance or trust.
Posted Jun 20, 2005 7:17:53 AM | link
Think how contentious this thread would be if half of Terra Nova wasn't getting over DiGRA hangovers :-)?
Richard> Can I sit down and not make eye contact, or does that happen automatically?
No, you can choose where to look.
Richard> What, and it's beyond the wit of a programmer to convert 20 "[name] sits down and listens" into "The audience sits down and listens"?
Actually, I was thinking about the case of people entering an area to listen to a speaker over time. And, yes, I'm sure that you say "well, the programmer would just . . ." but we're now drifting into the combinatorial explosion of stage magic versus simulation, which will be future (equaly contentious) post.
Kirk> I'm going to pull a John Stewart and say stop. Just stop.
Wow, I've always wanted to be "John Stewart"-ed :-) So, you'd rather learn surgery straight from a book? I only ask, because, having a) actually flown planes, b) having flown full motion simulators, c) having played flight simulators, d) having seen videos about flying planes, and e) having read books about flying, I'm still pretty comfortable with the order I listed them.
Raph> [several good points about the hybrid nature of current graphical worlds]
Yes, although nowhere was I arguing that we would want (or should) abandon text, audio, etc.
Raph> are street signs with the text for a street name inferior to traffic signs with an icon?
Well, usually the opposite is the case, right? On the other hand, do you want your map to be a test description of the streets "As you walk down Oak Grove you will cross 2nd Street" or would you prefer a map? I realize that we probably wouldn't get a universal preference here, but the fact that different people would choose different options is likely a peek into some of the different cognitive functions at work.
Also, to be clear, I'm generally *not* making normative claims about whether text or graphics are better. The assertion is that they are fundamentally different in how they are perceived and experienced and those differences lead to differences in subsystems likes communications, collaboration, or creation. I am not arguing -- nor do I believe -- that text games suck.
I also find it interesting to now read the "text is less user-friendly than 3D" posts. During SL development, when amateur-to-amateur creation was still controversial (you know, way back in 2003) the big arguments against something like Second Life were rooted in designer arrogance. You needed professionals to make this stuff. In response, people would turn to MUDs, MOOs, and the web to point out how prolific and pervasive user creation was. The nay sayers would then nod and say, "sure, but that's text, everyone knows how to type" but for 3D creation you still need professionals. Now that we see that people really enjoy creation in 3D spaces -- and, given the availability of tools and a community to support and teach them how to use them -- that they can produce some exquisitely crafted content, the argument now flips that 3D is actually easier.
I agree with Raph and Richard -- people are creative independent of medium or media. But I do feel that it is important to look at both the positive and negative differences between them, as well as the different opportunities they offer. And, yes, to think about whether they are transformative or not.
Posted Jun 20, 2005 7:53:44 AM | link
Could the fundamental difference be the amount and type of information communicated over the net? Could the fundamental difference be the way we process the information received?
Cory’s four factors all points to physicality as the fundamental difference. This is an argument that show is different from tell, different from write.
Philosophically, I recall a couple of old sayings and phrases:
“A picture is worth a thousand words”
“A single word can kill”
“Jumping off the pages”
My 2 cents,
Frank
Posted Jun 20, 2005 9:05:18 AM | link
Matt > For instance, I may find that a text description of the result of my actions results in a much richer image in my head, whereas you may find that a graphical description of the result of your actions results in the richer image. Different strokes, that's all.
This is an empirical proposition, and someday we'll have cognitive psychologists writing papers about it. (I imagine there's a somewhat related literature out there, but I would question whether it really pertains. It's probably about cyberspace in general, and has not develop metrics for this immersio' thing that's so important in fantasy world-building.)
Here's a theory rests on two key variables. The first has been emphasized here, and we might call it 'imaginitive scope.' Tolkien wrote that Secondary Worlds should only appear in text, because drama (and film) fix the image and thus prevent the mind from developing the subjectively most accurate image. Thus you might say that text has more imaginative scope than graphics.
My colleague Annie Lang has done some work (can't give you a URL yet - it's in press) that points to a second variable, which we might call 'cognitive processing load.' She shows that the brain has to make some meta-level decisions about what to pay attention to, and this involves a resource-constrained choice problem. In milliseconds, the brain has to choose how to respond to a stimulus, sending orders to muscle groups ('look at that flashing, curvy thing'), calling up matching patterns from storage, invoking reasoning and judgment cycles and so on. Something that really stimulates the system gets a big fat load of resources, and so you can conjure up in your head a Mordor that's more terrifying than anything depicted on screen. But it takes time and effort to conjure that image. A 3D image gets you to the guts of the image much more quickly, with less brainwork. You can get your mind into the state of the world almost without thinking about it, and that makes it feel real.
When we shift from text to 3D, we lower imaginitive scope, but we also lower the processing load. The first decreases immersion, the second increases it. There's a sweet spot in there, but I suspect, as Matt says, that it's different for different people.
I think that moving from 3D to a multiplayer 3D may raise or lower processing load. When you're by yourself, you have to do a bunch of suspension-of-disbelief activity, which is a pain. Put yourself in a group of role-players, though, and your 'society-knows-truth' functions will help you with your disbelief suspension. OTOH, put yourself in a group of non-RPers, and the the 'society-knows-truth' function works the other way. Or, it encourages you to immerse yourself in the game mechanics, not so much the fantasy atmosphere.
Posted Jun 20, 2005 10:05:47 AM | link
Cory:
I'm still wondering if you feel there's also a fundamental difference between 2d UO and 3d Everquest, as your assertion is that it's 3d, not just graphics, that makes a fundamental difference. I suspect you don't want to go there, because you know that what you call text MUDs rarely lack graphics. They just lack 3d graphics.
--matt
Posted Jun 20, 2005 11:27:17 AM | link
Cory: Wow, I've always wanted to be "John Stewart"-ed :-) So, you'd rather learn surgery straight from a book? I only ask, because, having a) actually flown planes, b) having flown full motion simulators, c) having played flight simulators, d) having seen videos about flying planes, and e) having read books about flying, I'm still pretty comfortable with the order I listed them.
This is completely avoiding the points I made in my post. I learned to ride a motorcycle by taking a class that put a bunch of novices on top of 50cc training bikes on a big vacant parking lot, so I agree with you for that particular domain of cognitive-motor tasks. But you are making a huge leap of faith in saying that what is good for learning to fly a plane, is good for learning a programming language, learning to read Spanish, understanding WWII as a temporal sequence of events, or identifying the motifs in Japanese film.
One of the keys here is dealing with abstraction. You can create a piano, but how do you express the structure of a gavotte, or a concerto using 3d iconography with a low degree of ambiguity? How do you communicate the role of a narrative "hook" in drawing people into a story? How do you support the creation and peristance of extended narratives in a communications medium that lacks long-term history and pushes the user towards short utterances? How do you deal with learning tasks such as abstraction and generalization?
Humans are visual animals, but they are also storytelling animals. In many cases, we learn something by struggling how to put concepts into words.
Cory: Well, usually the opposite is the case, right? On the other hand, do you want your map to be a test description of the streets "As you walk down Oak Grove you will cross 2nd Street" or would you prefer a map? I realize that we probably wouldn't get a universal preference here, but the fact that different people would choose different options is likely a peek into some of the different cognitive functions at work.
Certainly, there are different cognitive functions involved in following a narrative map, vs. following an 2D iconic map. The fact that there are differences would suggest that we should tailor the medium to fit the cognitive function we want for learners to practice, does it not?
Cory: Also, to be clear, I'm generally *not* making normative claims about whether text or graphics are better. The assertion is that they are fundamentally different in how they are perceived and experienced and those differences lead to differences in subsystems likes communications, collaboration, or creation. I am not arguing -- nor do I believe -- that text games suck.
*WOW*. I think this is really the core of this debate. Not whether 3D communication is different from 2D communication, but what is the system, and what is the subsystem. To me, communication, collaboration, and creation are the core of what should be happening in building online worlds, and the choices of what kinds of text or VR presence should be built around that.
I'm also thinking that your medium->perception->communications model has very little validity, and that the kinds of social structures you build in a space will have an extremely strong influence on how signs (whether video, audio or text) are preceived.
Third, I'm actually investigating synchronous discussion in a 3D virtual world, and while there are differences, just dropping kids into a 3D space does not magically change their discourse into something radically new, creative and innovative.
Edward: When we shift from text to 3D, we lower imaginitive scope, but we also lower the processing load. The first decreases immersion, the second increases it. There's a sweet spot in there, but I suspect, as Matt says, that it's different for different people.
Well, I think there are other loads to think about as well. I'm certainly in agreement that 3D lowers the processing load from being able to comprehend one's environment. However, I suspect the management load of just dealing with synchronous messaging is going to be a bigger factor in communication and society.
Most 3D evironments I've seen require mode-switching when you want to "say" something to another user. We know that mode-switching is bad. Heck, recent studies suggest that we've replaced the martini lunch with Microsoft Outlook. I suspect (based on experience) that once you've switched into a synchronous text-messaging mode that they are all very similar.
Posted Jun 20, 2005 11:58:21 AM | link
Text is just one form of pretty graphics.
I tend to find a broader array of graphical representation to be more immersive. And I also generally find simulation to be more immersive.
Most textual worlds (not all) are defined at a very high granularity. Nodes are limited to those explicitly defined, with a predetermined number of connections. In a simulated world you have connections / actions which are implicit as well as the ones explicity defined. For example, jumping from a cliff or tree into a courtyard instead of walking through the gate.
I find it far more constraining to be limited to options which an author thought to fill in. Simulations generally ofter a much wider range of choice than a narrative world.
One of the biggest appeals of PnP gaming is being able to step outside the narrative options. The GM is your simulator, for extending the world beyond what was explicitly defined.
In a textual world, I can stand in my own mouth, seeing my surroundings get light and dark as I open and close it. I can be part of a painting I am carrying under my arm. I can appear as a frog to one person and a beautiful princess to another. I can have internal organs. I can photograph an opinion. I can share control of my body with another player. I can drink from a Klein bottle. I can be of no gender. I can unerupt a volcano, store the world in a box, hold a soul in the palm of my hand, dance with the colour cyan.
The Klien bottle may be a difficult one, but otherwise sure they can be done. It seems to be that Richard's gripe is more about the ability to creatively and easily author than it is truely about the ability to experience, and immersiveness.
Posted Jun 20, 2005 12:15:09 PM | link
Flatfingers> I'm not sure many people are going to disagree in any substantial way.
/wince
Should have known better, shouldn't I?
Matt> positional audio has nothing to do with 3d graphics.
Look at these words in the original proposition: "Physically simulated 3D worlds".
People have assumed this to mean "graphics," but where is that a requirement?
Audio is an additional channel for physically transmitting information energy. And as noted, so is smell. So are tactile feedback controllers. I'd suggest the word "multisensory" to describe entertainment experiences that use multiple sensory channels to communicate with the consumer, rather than using the single channel of text.
So to recast the question: would Game X presented wholly as text be experienced by most people in a fundamentally different way from Game X presented over multisensory channels?
In other words, does the medium define the message?
1. As Raph pointed out, despite some exceptions, most text games have "seams," while most multisensory games are seamless.
I interpret this as meaning that the granularity of place is usually finer in multisensory games than in text games. Text games usually implement place as "rooms" -- moving one's sense of place occurs like a scene change or a jump cut in a movie. Multisensory games, with much finer granularity of place, give the appearance of smooth motion over many tiny steps taken very rapidly, as a master shot in a film gives the perception of continuous motion (although each frame of the film is a discrete image).
It's reasonable to think that perceiving motion as continuous is a different (I would say "more realistic") kind of experience than perceiving motion as stepwise.
2. Text is imaginatively active; multisensory is imaginatively passive.
This is what I meant when I said that text is evocative. It evokes a whole image by describing the key aspects of that image (the "telling details"), and then expects the reader to participate in the creation of the image by actively filling in everything else that matters.
Multisensory experiences do more of the imaginative work for the consumer. You don't have to imagine the moonlight gleaming on the castle's towers, or the pennons snapping in the wind, or the palpable thunder of approaching hoofbeats -- those aspects of reality are created for you.
This distinction between active and passive imagination requirements makes different communication forms more or less appealing to different people. Some people prefer movies to books because the former, through engaging more of the senses, require less imaginative effort. Some people prefer books to movies because the required exercise of imagination allows a more personalized experience.
If a text game is more like a book than a movie, and a multisensory game is more like a movie than a book, then doesn't the preference of some people for books and other people for movies suggest that the form of a computer game also matters?
Or is there no "fundamental difference" between a book and a movie?
...
Finally, like Cory I'm not really coming at any of this from a "better/worse" perspective. Better/worse depends on effectiveness at producing a desired effect; so the first question ought to be whether there's any difference of effectiveness at all.
--Flatfingers
Posted Jun 20, 2005 1:16:25 PM | link
Just to throw another petrol bomb:
Richard> In a textual world, I can put my character inside a box that my character is holding. You can't implement that in a 3D graphical world, because the world model isn't up to it.
The MASSIVE-3 and SPLINE 3D virtual environment systems can both implement this and the TARDIS example you mentioned earlier by linking together multiple locales. 3D doesn't imply a single euclidean coordinate system.
I still think that text worlds are better for some things, 3D worlds are better for others and that creativity is independent of medium though.
Posted Jun 20, 2005 1:28:44 PM | link
Kirk> . . . good for learning a programming language
You have read about MUPPETS, right? They talk at length about the pedagogical benefits of teaching Java within 3D.
Krik> I'm actually investigating synchronous discussion in a 3D virtual world
Great, I look forward to seeing your results!
Matt> I'm still wondering if you feel there's also a fundamental difference between 2d UO and 3d Everquest
I think that this will have to wait for the "simulation versus stage magic" post . . .
Posted Jun 20, 2005 2:05:04 PM | link
I think the distinction that is relevant here is a (gasp) philosophical one. Since Smartbomb (my book coming out in November 2005, shameless plug ;) deals with this very issue I'll give my 5 cents, which are drawn from the Introduction:
The difference between text (and even movies) and virtual worlds (by virtue of being videogames) is like the difference between getting directions and using a map.
Put more bluntly, text (and arguably even streams of images) are descriptive, that is they function largely by using propositional content to describe states of affairs: eg, "It is raining," "You are bleeding," etc.
Videogames, on the other hand, are fundamentally models--dynamic computer models to be precise. Models do not rely on descriptions to communicate. They are not propositional in nature. Rather, models function by directly instantiating the very properties they seek to represent.
Consider the following:
If someone wanted to learn about the orbits of planets in the solar system, they could consult books, watch educational movies, or even attend lectures. Each of these sources would teach about planetary motion by describing them, using words and/or a stream of sound and image.
Another way to learn about the solar system, however, would be to use an orrery, a collection of spheres mounted on a system of armatures and gears. The orrery represents the solar system not by describing it, but by serving as a model of it.
Each videogame from Pong to single-player Tetris to the most sophisticated virtual world, where thousands of players interact in a fully 3D world at the same time, is ultimately a model. Videogames allow players not simply to tour a space but to influence what happens in that space. And while one can learn about the solar system both from books or films, learning from a model like an orrery or a videogame, or even simply playing with one, requires and encourages very different cognitive skills and imparts a different kind of knowledge (which philosophers have cunningly dubbed, 'model knowledge').
In a society in which entertainment has nearly become a secondary education system – studies consistently show that people today spend more time consuming entertainment than they do with either their families or in school - this shift to model-based entertainment will have an undeniable impact on the way people think and communicate. The invasion of the videogame, then, gives new life to the anthropologic saw: “Show me the games of your children, and I’ll show you the next hundred years.”
So what does this do for our discussion?
To the extent that a virtual world employs text, it is abandoning (I mean that neutrally) it's function as a model and adverting to the power of description. When text is used, it is used as a descriptor. Further, text used in such a fashion means that some part of the model in which it is contained is either incapable of, or not desired to, serve the designer adequately.
Interestingly text-as-object is capable of serving both functions: as text, its content is descriptive, as an object (that is, if the text is treated as an object in the model) it can become part of the model itself.
Of final note, there is nothing essential about models that requires 3D. A map is a model, even if it is only rendered in two dimensions.
What I hope to accomplish here is to provide a bit more solid framework and common ground for discussing the ways in which text and objects are used in virtual worlds.
Cheers
Posted Jun 20, 2005 2:39:12 PM | link
I think there are a large number of fundamental issues that separate the applicability of each realm. I don't accept that either realm (text worlds versus 3D worlds) is a subset of the other... each has areas where the other will not work as effectively.
That doesn't, however, mean that I think they are equally effective at creating "worlds", since the term has different boundaries in each case.
One of the fundamental issues is that of information bandwidth. Basic information theory as elucidated by Shannon tells us that bandwidth limitations will constrain what we can communicate per unit time. In general, visual and audio channels can carry a vastly greater bandwidth of largely non-subjective information than can be achieved with serially reading an attempted textual description of the same circumstance.
Textual descriptions can carry a "shorthand" description, and that's fine when you're talking about a situation where you just don't care whether multiple participants substitute their own personal interpretations.
There are, however, a large number of situations where the artist is attempting to convey something where the temporal relationship between the components is an integral part of the experience that they are attempting to convey. Converting that experience to text and then having users read it at their own personally-constrained pace can greatly decouple (if not outright destroy) that temporal relationship.
The impact is therefore not the same. Visual and audio media can provide a concrete temporal relationship that is often much less subjective and non-consensual... the participant often doesn't have the OPTION of choosing to read (or re-read) the description at their leisure.
For me, this breaks down into a split regarding the degree of "shared experience" that the artist is attempting to convey. Kirk wrote:
I agree with Matt in that text MUDs offered an amazing range of expression through emote commands. It does not matter if, everyone in the room got a different image in their minds in reading: "Jora waves goodbye and leaves, her body fading away piece by peice, until her waving hand vanishes with an audible *pop.*" I suspect there would be quite a cognitive dissonance between the text description and what the person actually sees on screen.
It might not matter to you that everyone in the room got a different image from that description, but it might matter immensely to an artist that wants to make a PARTICULAR image associated with an event have a specific meaning. If the set of messages that are being conveyed don't carry the same impact without specificity, then allowing users to substitute their own imagined images leads to experiences that deviate substantially from the expression that the artist wanted to achieve.
The more shorthand that is required in a textual description, the greater the difference in experiences that are being conveyed to the readers. In a real-time application, there's simply not the available bandwidth in text to convey a SPECIFIC and detailed vision to a large number of parties and know that they are all operating from the same basic experience.
That's why there are experiences that can be conveyed in film, where any textual description of that experience will simply fail to convey anything even close to the same message. If you don't care whether the message is the same, that's fine. Some people do care, immensely.
I have a player experience that's being built into my current project that relies very, very heavily on the 3-D nature of visual perception in humans. The meaning of the experience leverages very strongly off of the "aha" gestalt experience, and I don't see any method where the same experience could be conveyed textually. We don't process text information in the same way.
Players substituting their own imagined versions of the images I'm creating would utterly fail to get the point... the point would have to be given to them rather than discovered organically. That would wreck a major aspect of experiential nature of the story arc, IMO.
Richard wrote:
Reading allows the author to connect with the imagination of the reader; images allow the author to connect with the senses of the reader, which must then be interpreted before they can reach the imagination. The imagination is where all the action is. Because the human mind is wired up to process visual patterns very easily, it can be less work to understand a scene from a picture than from a description; however, because images must nevertheless be interpreted, they can't touch the mind as well as words can.
Err... wait a tick. Are you alleging here that the words somehow don't have to be interpreted, and therefore touch the mind directly somehow? If so, I think you're grossly off-base. In general, I would suspect that there is vastly more ambiguity and interpretation in conveying concepts with words. That's why we tend to suck at it. When you abstract away the visual and audio clues that come from interpersonal information conveyance via speech, you increase the ambiguity further still... as a natural function of stripping away communications bandwidth.
As to the "imagination versus senses" dichotomy, I would state it along the lines that text is far more intrinsically intellectual in nature, whereas visual/audio conveyance is more intrinsically experiential in nature.
Each have different functions and applicable domains. I would suspect that the choice would come down to whether you're trying to convey a largely open-ended free-form set of concepts, where every individual's take-away is likely to be quite different, or if you're looking to convey something very specific as a shared experience.
When it comes to which is more world-like, the choice seems natural to me (but is largely so because of my philosophical disposition). For the most part, my interactions with others in the real world are a shared experience with (I suspect) rather little deviation from the fundamental reality. Since the world (reality) is my fundamental yardstick for measuring the concept of "world-like", it seems like the shared experience is vastly more world-like than everyone making up their own versions with billions of (sometimes major) inconsistencies between them.
(And yes, I'm deliberately ignoring the individual and minor differences in personal information processing that each of our bodies performs, and the selective interpretations and meanings we each apply to those experiences... because the same thing happens when two people read the same text passage, only more so.)
Richard>
It's just an interface, though. It doesn't make the worlds fundamentally different, any more than being real-world blind makes the real world different; it only affects your experience of the world, not the world itself.
As politically incorrect as it might be to say, I contend that there are experiences that the blind simply cannot share effectively with the sighted, because they cannot share the same inputs... and any textual or verbal description of that input will be far enough removed to have it be a different experience entirely.
When you limit the interface to a given reality, you constrain what you can accurately share with others (per unit time). A disembodied brain with only enough nerve attachments to receive a sequential Braille feed of a description of what's going on around it will probably not be able to share a common world experience with you in a meaningfully aligned way.
Richard>
It is if you've never been immersed in a textual world. If you have been, your statement is also pales alongside the experience of driving an actual car, which is what you feel you're doing when you're immersed.
Again, I think this is the fundamental divide between imaginary/intellectual versus experiential. I contend that we are, for the most part, wired for experiential interaction with the world. The closer the interface comes to our signal processing mechanisms, the more accurately we can map to the set of experiences we might experience if the virtual were actually real. That's why I see virtual world software moving towards integration with our sensory appartus, rather than towards our intellect.
I suspect that the most world-like virtual interface that is every achieved by mankind will most definitely NOT be anything like a text-world interface. I do believe it will contain a strong 3-D visual component, because that's how we're wired to perceive the world... we're not wired to perceive the world as a serial string of written words, IMO.
Richard>
What?! Tell me anything you can make an avatar do in SL that it would be impossible ever to make a character do in a textual world. Go on, anything.
I'll give it a shot, but I'll address what I see as the fundamentally more important question... what I as