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Riven said:Yeah I felt a little sorry, but it is really too complicated for me, also due to me not being a native English speaker. I'm sure it is interesting for many other people, just not the guys here.
Ok, it's been four days since I posted this without a response.
I understand it's probably a bit over everyone's head to bother thinking about. Maybe just lack of interest. I guess if I'd like a reply or two about it I should just post it somewhere else.
Or I could assume you guys are too busy to have a chance to respond. Either way it's been a little quiet around here lately and I thought something like this may be interesting enough to draw some talk out of that quietude.
omegaslayer
Riven said:I posted in your quoted text in orange.
I want to know in a basic elementary sort of way, what a model is. And I want to hear people's interpretations on it and reflect for me a bit on my ideas about what exactly a model is and can be. Let us begin a thought experiment!
What is a model? -Well let's start in the dictionary. Dictionary.com to be exact:
dictionary.com has this to say about what a model is (the definition that interested me):
"A standard or example for imitation or comparison."
Here is my transcription of that:
A model is a basis of comparison that represents the aggregate features and traits of a whole.
Now, why am I interested in defining a model? -Well it all ties back to games; this is why you're seeing this kind of discussion here at the SnarkPit. -And to spark some interesting convos.
For me a model is a relationship between variables.
The way I see games, is that they are different because they are models. -And not just because they ARE, but also because they strive to be so. Games are like all the other mediums of communication and storytelling because they use similar faculties to represent themselves (story narrative, music, theater, the arts in general), but they are radically different in a way that goes beyond interaction.
Games, in them selves are similar models, yet different in concept and design. Tetris, is a game as is BattleField, but yet they are two completely different models, yet fall under the model of games or entertainment.
A note about interactivity:
All media are interactive. No one is born knowing the difference between Bach and M&M. You have to listen to these artists' songs and understand their context and meaning to gain a sort of appreciation. -And that takes time to think about them. To think about something is to engage it in the mental arena. To ask about what something means, is to question its relevance to other things in the universe, and therefore to attempt to understand the bigger picture of where these two artists fit in all of this grandeur we marvel at day-to-day.
I disagree you don't need to listen, but hear each to know the difference. One you may like and choose to listen, the other you may not and tune out. I don't need to take time to think about liking or disliking something.. it comes as a natural response... I don't like rap music or hate metal.. I don't need to think about it, once I hear either I rather quickly change the station. Maybe its my Pagan lifestyle where I don't tend to get as deep into the whys and what-nots of two artist and how they fit in the grandeur of the universe... they just are.
You have to follow the story along in a book or movie (a.k.a. interacting with it) to be able to understand it and get your moneys worth for involving yourself with it. In games we do this also, but we go farther into detail and exposure that for many people, the experience is overwhelming and therefore boredom or aggravation set in, preventing them from completing the game (or model) experience.
My problem is I tend to know the ending of movies and books or can foresee how they may end.. and in games, they are too linear, moving along a set path not giving the player a more open way to get to the end. FarCry 2 no matter what you do in the game, you still die in the end.. there is no Capt. Kirk way around it. Here we have a media that we can alter, we can change how the story ends, but yet developers have not engaged in this practice as of yet. sad really.
Now, I've read books and papers, watched talks and interviews and even spoke with people whom I only just met about this kind of topic because it interests me. It ultimately falls into opinion because at the end of the day, that's the relevance towards the practicalities of the implications of the understanding about this kind of matter, -or at least that's how I see it. -But this won't prevent me from surmising about it to begin with.
Right, it does boil down to personal interpolation. Opinion. All shooters fall under the same model, they are shooters. Same with Massive Multi Player games. They are not the same model, but can fall under a more grandiose model of being interactive game models.
Interested yet? -If not, don't expect it to get much better than this.
Why are models important?
I believe models are important, and thus relevant and practical because they teach us things, and they're built to do it. It's part of the inherent nature of something you may call a 'model' That rock over there is a model of a boulder I saw once. "What's the difference?" one may ask, to which I reply: "Only that which you recognize as being real, and thus making the other one not so by order of guilty association" -Is this a loaded response? -I think not.
Models are relative to what they are well, 'modeling'! This is a model of my building, -OR- that building is a model of my diorama.
See now were talking about Models as in the sense of an object that represents a larger object.. something scaled down or used in a non-material plane as is the internet, as is in games. A model of a gun, a person, a building, something built of a real world object and placed in a game to lend a sense of realism to the make believe.
We use computers to do a lot of our modeling today because they are so good at keeping track of many variables. And models are a computer's best friend because that's how computers understand the world.
Computers (like us homo sapien) quantize things in order to deal with them better. Computers (just like brains) 'chunk' things and group them into categories so that we may better cope with them and thus understand them quicker. Models inherently make assumptions about things in order to 'chunk' or group like ideals into certain collaborative mechanisms. All for the purpose of being able to be understood better. A game quantizes the Normandy Invasion to particular sequences that matter to history and the gamer, and present it as relevant to other activities in the world of the game. Games, and thus computer 'simulations' of the real world, attempt to abstract what we already by nature quantize to better understand. But brains are way better at doing it atm because we're able to see big picture trends across many lanes of interests, and creatively connect the dots of those pictures, are we better able to cope and adapt with incoming new information. And a model that can do just that, stands to show us a lot of information and possible trends than we would have cared to have looked at before.
This reminds me of a speed reading class I took... the books we had had most of the letters missing in each word, only enough of the word was there to tell your brain what the word was... so you could skip though a whole page of text in half the time... after reading like this for a semester, I was able to do this to any book. You got the abstract of the text and there fore an understanding of the page/book, being read. Maybe this is why I am so able to guess the ending of a movie or book way prior to its ending?
I think games are the perfect avenue for helping society to understand new and confusing ideas. In fact, they could be used to teach children history, or scientific theories or any number of fields. Games have a potential they're not being used for I believe.
-I've said enough now, it's starting to ramble I think. What do you guys think?
I often wonder if all these movies and TV shows of Alien invasions is not something similar to what your getting at here.. is the system trying to get us ready for something so shocking that by the time it happens were like, BAH what, this is just like TV show X or MOVIE Y... and not shocking at all to us then.
omegaslayer
