Kid Scientist uses D&D To Advance Understanding of Human Brain

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/n...scientist-dad-with-his-research/#.UMyuJW_kjX6


In short, a scientist was stumped at how to determine whether we look at other people's faces because we're looking for their eyes or because we like looking at faces. His son suggesting the Monster Manual as a way of showing people a bunch of predefined creatures whose eyes weren't necessarily on their faces. They did a complex experiment that involved exposing a bunch of non-nerds to the Monster Manual and tracking their eye motions, and discovered that we really do look for eyes, not for faces.

Go nerd kids!

 

This is actually one of the reasons that Rodenberry gives for the Rubber Forehead Alien when explaining why they're used so much in Star Trek. In tests run by Hollyweird people they found that aleins with no eyes (or mouth) were much less popular and understood than those with. One reason, beyond budget and the need to employ actual actors, for the prevelance of Aliens Are All Humanoids in scifi.

 

One of the great big problems with test audiences is that they tend to define your target audience rather than allowing your target audience to arise from the nature of the show itself. The show was pitched as "wagon train in space" which is something that allowed him to sell the show. But westerns were popular at the time, so that only allowed him to convince the money guys that the show was viable. They never asked the question though, is there a potential audience for science fiction, and what would THEY think about it. A lot of the people that found STar Trek and fell in love with it, turns out they were people who didn't generally like ANYTHING on television at the time.

Do you know which aliens were considered one of the audience's favorites? The Horta -- they had no eyes, no actual face even. And yet, they are a fan favorite. The writing was very clever, though, because Spock, essentially, became their voice. It's one of the more popular episodes of TOS, in fact.

TEst audiences be damned.

 

I didn't say anything about test audiences. I said "in tests", much like the one described in the OP. Sure, there will always be the vocal fandom minorities who love X. That doesn't mean that X is therefore the best part of the show. Often times when creators start chasing that kind of thing, a story jumps the shark and looses its focus.

 

I was NOT disagreeing with anything you said. But test audiences are one of the reasons why innovative television often never makes it past the pilot stage, or dies on the vine.

 

I suppose that much I can't argue with. It's true after all. On the other hand, it's important to remember that studios, editors and executives are all a vital part of the modern creative process. Compare the early Steven King, when he had to fight with, and occasionally lose to, his editors over plot points, to his more recent works, which many agree have not shown the same level of polish. Once Steven King could write no wrong, his bad ideas got less scrutiny. Yes, it's a two edged sword, and we may never know if it does more harm than good, but at least it's not all bad.

 

As someone who's read Stephen King and is not a fan (I won't argue about it here -- I've had enough arguing with a friend of mine who's a fanatic, collects King first editions, etc.) I don't need to open up that can of worms. Just saying that I'm the wrong person to use King as an example with.

And I won't argue that authors make mistakes and do need push-back at times. But that's why we need to demand better writers. Television used to be called the great wasteland. And it still is to a large extent. Part of what is making it better are cable networks where the network does NOT push back against the writer -- that's why cable series are dominating nowadays in quality, because they hire good writers who they KNOW deserve trust. That's why you can't have series like Homeland, and The Wire, and Breaking Bad on major networks -- you don't have the 'too many cooks' problem with those kinds of shows.

Art is NOT a democratic process. You can't end up with a consistent vision if you farm out the decisions to other people. Too often, when artists have TRIED to use reader feedback to guide their wrigin, you end up a lot of crap. It may be crap which is very appealing to the fans, but it still is crap. That's great for the writer who makes the money, but not great for the audience who deserves better. The problem is that people want the same sort of stuff that they are familiar with. It's popcorn. Nothing wrong with popcorn. Popcorn sells. But a diet of only popcorn will make you stupid. It will narrow your vision so that you confuse popcorn with a gourmet meal. I eat popcorn myself. I just don't want that to be the only thing on the menu.

There are some stand-outs. But most of them nowadays end up on cable networks, where the network DOESN'T push back on the artistic process. They don't tell the creators that they show needs more sex or less sex, or more action or less violence, as they do so often in network television.

 

Soapbox time - if good writing is what you want, you should actually abandoned TV entirely. This is partly the fault of TV being so highly dependant of ad revenue, so it almost has to pander or go under. The medium has significant difficulties, particularly in America where shows can be no longer than an hour (minus time for commercials.)

While I agree that Art is not a democratic process, Story and Art are two different things. The nature of stories, being things that must survive being passed from one person to another, requires that an author cannot simply set things down and call his vision complete. The size and scope of a good story invariable creates problems to that approach. There are plot holes. There are unfortunate implications. There are lines, or even scenes, that do not make sense even when standing alone.

Nothing is ever good on the first draft. Nothing is ever good on the third draft. By the fifth draft, you might have something decent, but don't count on it. (Incidentally, one of the flaws in TV - there's rarely enough lead time for more then two or three drafts.) You can't fix writers needing pushback by getting better writiers. I've known several writers who thought they didn't need pushback and trust me, they were all abysmal. What you need is people who will actively try to understand the author's vision and tell them when they're missing the mark.

Sadly, many editors and many authors cannot tell the difference and wind up demonizing each other. Then people outside the industry take sides and you wind up with a lot of heat and little light...

EDIT: Oh, and as someone who's not a fan of Stephen King, let me just say that I use him as a high profile example, not as a fan. He really does have a masterful writer's voice, but I could take or leave what he actually writes. Just his writing did decay after he hit The Big Time.

 

I think you are wrong about television. The Wire was well written. Breaking Bad is well-written. Homeland is really good, as is Boardwalk Empire. Treme is actually excellent by any standard, and its certainly not the kind of show that you'd ever see on network TV, not because of any verbotten subject matter or content, but mostly because network television always goes with purely formulaic stuff. With the exception of Breaking Bad, they are shows that are not on commercial television, and there are no sponsors to speak of, other than the cable network themselves and their customers.

Especially today, television does not have to be beholden to sponsors. Network television is no longer the be all and end all that it used to be.

And the truth is, even on the networks, every so often, a real quality show manages to sneak in --Seinfeld was one. The West Wing was another (there was even some actual talk about giving it a Hugo award for best science fiction dramatic series because, after all, at that time, the concept of having an intelligent, competent president seemed like science fiction).

 

Just to throw it out there, I believe that writers have a limited amount of content worth writing about they can dictate in a lifetime. One of the reasons early SK novels that were made into movies were good is that they were before he may have started running out of good ideas. Then when no-one would dare contest his style, he may have been using the last of his ammo so to speak.

So in short, I believe in the Hunter Thompson style of writing. Simply put, do whatever suits you and to hell with anyone who disagrees. And if you make an error on page #45, leave it intact. Sometimes errors in context, grammar, and even narrative background help the books to be better overall.

I edit my posts here, but the works I dictate on my own outside of these forums is left largely unedited. I consider it a signature of sorts.
(BTW, without spell checking, this would be largely unreadable by machine. My spelling sucks ass.)

*Edit* By machine meaning TTS. (Text to Speech) Most such implementations have loads of trouble with the many ways people compound simple words into one word and use that awful apostrophe symbol where one letter and a space would mean the same thing. For example, I use the words "I will" rather than "I'll". I hate using those little wastes of words to further dilute our languages.

Damn. I am way off topic here. Aborting....

 

I don't think that's the issue -- I don't have any problem with SK's subject matter, just some of his decisions and writing style. The book that ultimately turned me off to him was Misery (and that WAS made into a movie, a movie that I felt was far better than the book it was based on, probably a better movie than the book deserved). The protagonist has almost no characterization, you get torture porn inflicted on a character that you hardly even know. The movie actually puts a face on the victim which makes it a bit better than porn.

I have to admit that I haven't been able to get through some of the stuff of his that I've started (The Dark Tower, for example). His style does seem to be better suited for shorter works, and that may be the problem. I did kind of like Jerusalem's Lot (or whatever that short story was called), and that's why I read a bit more (also because the friend I mentioned urged me to do so).

BTW, not based on the novel, but based on the made-for-TV miniseries, I LOVED "The Stand"... up until the end of it. The story has such a HUGE build-up, and then (and I understand from my friend that the book ends in the same way) I felt completely betrayed and cheated. The story was fairly contrived, but ok -- that's probably the nature of the subject matter. That said, it was well-acted and (at least the miniseries) was well written, much better characterization than I would have expected based on my readings (then again, read above). And then, literally, deus ex machina. He ought to be ashamed of himself.

I have few problems with the movies/dramatic series (though Haven is SO badly contrived that I doubt the writers knew where the story was going when they started writing it). The Shining (the movie, not the abomination that was the miniseries) was GENIUS. Salem's Lot was underrated. Anyway, so his ideas are fine. I just think others handle his ideas better than he does.

 

This stood out for me.

So my question (if I may address this part and not the main gist of the last few posts for a minute) is this:

Are games art?

Lately there have been overwhelming examples of kickstarters and other games that allow backers or those who bought the game (in the case of Endless Space for example) to actively participate in the creative process.
Does this destroy the soul any really good and outstanding game has?

Ironically, many kickstarters name publishers as guys who care only about the majority of people and thus think their project isn't viable/profitable enough for them WHILE THEY THEN allow the majority of people who sign up to determine the direction their project is taking.
So in fact they're only taking a smaller subset of people but do the exact same thing as movies with target audiences and pilots try to do: create something for a group of people and let the wishes of that group influence the whole.

On the other hand... making a game that only you and 5 people like might be... well... "Meh.", for lack of a better term (or maybe it's actually awesomely courageous and people like it more because you are 100% fan of it yourself?)

 

I think that games can include things that are certainly art -- music, graphics, story, etc.. I'm not sure though if the game itself can be considered art, though, since the art was created outside of the game and just put together in a certain way (which is more of a craft than art). That's not to say that the actual graphics aren't art, or the music or the writing.

The closest I've seen a video game approach the category of 'art' would be "Dear Esther". I'm not sure, but I think a good argument may be made for calling it art. What you may not be able to call it, though, truly, is a 'Game'. And that's the weak link I think, in using it as an example of a game as art, because I truly believe that it isn't a game, even though it is labeled as such. It IS though interactive art, imho.

When I said that Art is not a democratic process, what I meant was that democracy is not an effective way of creating GOOD art. You lose a unity of vision, you risk losing consistency, you risk sacrificing profundity for the sake of mass appeal. Good art is SUPPOSED to be transgressive, it's supposed to go against the grain because you can't say anything new if you are merely saying what everyone else is thinking in the way that they are thinking it, because that's what you usually get out of democracy. It's good for determining, perhaps, whether you build a new school, but less good when trying to write Hamlet. I probably should have said it in another way, that Democracy is not a good way to create art. Or at least, is not conducive to creating good art.

BTW, there was a discussion on NPR today that I didn't hear in its entirety (Because I had to leave the car for a doctor's appontment). But the discussion was about how people today want to rewrite Shakespeare to give the plays happier endings. But you kind of lose the whole point of the play, if you change Hamlet so that he goes off on a killing rampage and offs his stepfather. You certainly lose all the poetry of it. But that's kind of typical of what you get when you try to democratize the creation of art.

 

I agree. And I don't think you worded it poorly as that's exactly what I took it to mean.
I like your words about how art is supposed to be transgressive. nice.
Do think that games could be considered art. Some. ... Come to think of it... I think HOW something is made can decide whether something is art as well. For example the master Zen painter who at the end of his life has such a high and sophisticated understanding of the art of painting that he swipes his brush over the canvas in one stroke and it's art.
On the other hand the person who's annoyed at having to paint something for class and he just swipes the brush over the canvas and with an attitude professes he's done.

 

You have to communicate something in art, so if that zen painter swipes his brush over the canvas, then odds are the only person he's communicating with is himself. That's fine, on the level that many artists do what they do to express their feelings, and it may be in a very personal way. But it kind of lessens the value of that when the artist is the only one who gets the message. So I definitely have some problems with Art that is so vague that it really leaves no real reference. I get some abstract art, when I get the emotions coming through it. Sometimes it may remind me of something else. But much of abstract art, I have to admit, doesn't do anything for me. I'm not saying that it isn't art, but I am saying that if it really is art, I don't get it, and for some pieces, I personally am skeptical that anyone else who claims he gets it is telling the truth.

I don't know if that zen painter really has created art -- it depends on your definition. But I would be deeply skeptical, because the only evidence that you would have that it is art is the word of the artist, and that is hardly proof of anything.

 

I made this image five or six years ago in response to my uncle asking if I had any artistic talent.


Yeah. I have loads of artistic talent.

 

I've thought about that question before -- I know that Roger Ebert took a whole lot of heat for his insistence that video games could never be art. And though I don't always agree with him, I'm always interested in his opinions, and the reasoning behind it.

My answer is that I don't know. The question isn't just 'what is art', but also 'what is a game'. What is it about something that makes it a game as opposed to an interactive experience? There's a lot of interactive stuff in the world that are not games. Some of it is even fun.

You can play with a drawing program, but it isn't a game. Why not? You could argue that it isn't a game because you can't win or lose. But technically then, you'll have to omit all interactive fiction because generally speaking, you can't win or lose in them. You can make mistakes and have to try over again, but truly you can have the same problem with an art program.

A pure game, in my mind, is one that has a definite start, and a goal, and once you reach the goal, you've won the game, and if you are prevented from reaching that goal, you have lost the game. You can be prevented from reaching the goal by the circumstances of the game, or by the fact that the game ended prematurely due to some competitor reaching their goal first. This description fits things like board games, competitive sports, and strategy games. It doesn't fit interactive fiction of any kind though. It doesn't fit most rpgs, or most MMOs, or most Adventure 'games'. It certainly doesn't fit something like "Dear Esther".

Then I thought about it some more and I see something like an MMO not actually being a game, but it has games within it. Every time you engage in a combat within that MMO, that is a game. Every time you delve into a Dungeon, that is a different game. So an MMO or an RPG is not a game, but players can engage in games within it. Overall, the MMO is not a game, beause if you die you come back, and there's no definite goal. But you have sub goals which you can fail at. If you fail and retry, then you are essentially, just replaying the game again. Because cheating is an essential part of it, there's no real way to lose so the overall context is not at all game-like.

And it's that whole aspect that kind of destroys it as art as well. If you are trying to tell a story, but there's a possibility that the player can lose and ends your story unsatisfactorily, then it's not very good art. Romeo tries to sneak into Juliet's room, but is ambushed and killed by Capulets, so he has to reload a save and try again -- that's not a very good story.

I'm not saying that it can't be done and it can't be good. I just can't conceive of how it would work.

 

Everything in the whole Universe is relative. Art is in the Universe too, so it must also be relative.

If anyone wants to say something is or is not art, then fine. To them at that moment it is or is not. And a moment later it may change.

Games are art in all cases by my definition. Only a few that I have ever heard of did not have visual art in them anyway. And most have music and sound effects. A person may even have an artful style of playing a game.

Anyone who says video games are not art is an Ostrich. They can bury their head and deny the world exists all they want.

Art is also subjective. But I may as well just leave that out and repeat that it is relative.

I absolutely do not think that for a game to be art it must have specific win conditions and the chance to lose. Abstract art may not always be easy to understand, but you can say a bowel movement is an art form too. I do not want to know about that style of art nor see any examples, but relative is relative. Believe what you want.

 

The problem with labeling everything as art is that if you make it too inclusive, it becomes meaningless. Is Tic Tac Toe art? I hope not, because then the word loses any real meaning. You I think are using the weakest of all definitions of art -- the more inclusive it is, the weaker the definition is.

I know one thing and that is Art is generally used as a distinction from another category, 'Craft'. Generally speaking, when you talk about a craft, you are talking about a skill for creating something where that item you are creating has a specific utility, and is generally based on one of a few fixed patterns. On the other hand, Art is generally created for an aesthetic purpose. They can overlap, but the fact that something is created doesn't necessarily make it artistic. If I make one chair and it's different than all chairs that came before it and it serves an aesthetic purpose, then that chair might be art -- it may not be good art, but if it communicates something beyond it's chairness (chairnicity? lol), then it might be art. But if I make 2 dozen identical chairs, that's no longer art. That's mass production.

I don't think something like Civilization is Art, although it certainly is a game. Essentially, it took the game of Empire, a totally non artful, but still fun game, and piled on some additional elements of complexity to make it more interesting, but I don't think it has any real aesthetics to it. Civ 5 has some Aesthetics but it's not intrinsic to the game. There are pictures within Civ 5 that you might be able to argue are artistic, but they are separate and not intrinsic to the game. (Sometimes a picture is just what it looks like, and if so, drawing it is not art, it's a craft). It has to communicate more than itself.

Don't get me wrong, a good craftsman can be more impressive than a good artist at times. But you have to make a distinction at some point.

 

I think as long as you capitalize Art, there is no reasonable definition that most people will agree on. 'art' is already defined: "The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination." By that definition, however, games are obviously art, and so is kung fu and cooking and this post. 'Art', however, is always going to be subjective. I went to a Rembrant exhibit over the summer, and I was damn sure in the presence of Art. Then I went to see the King Tut exhibit at the Seattle Science Center, and I was damn sure in the presence of Art. Then I went to see a Jackson Pollock exhibit, and I wasn't sure at all. All three were radically different, all three definitely were 'art', but that capital A just plain doesn't exist for some people where it exists for others.