Play a game and catch typos!

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the problem of catching the own typos and methods to help our brains catching them.

Yesterday, I proved a concept that could help us catching our own typos by accident. One of my current jobs is being a translator of a computer game. The task is fairly simple: just translate the English texts to German. However, a lot of creativity and writing is involved in this task and this increases the chance of inserting typos into the text, too.

But why is catching the own typos so difficult? The main reason comes from the fact, that writing complex texts is a very demanding task for our brains. Our brains try to express the meaning of certain facts with words, but because this is a demanding task, our brains start to generalize in order to save brain power. In this case, our brains start to arrange words to create a particular part of the whole content. Once the first part is created, it gets generalized and stored as a complete version in our memory so that we can use more brain power to assemble the next part of the content. In the end, we do have only the generalized content packages in our minds. In order to save brain power, the brain is no longer focussing on every single word we are typing on our keyboards. Instead, the brain focusses just on the meaning of each paragraph.[1]

Finally, the writing process of the article is over and we begin to proof-read it. At this point, the brain has already generalized all the parts of the article to save brain power. These generalized parts are now compared with the article we just have written. The generalization now keeps us away from spending brain power on analyzing every single word, because we expect something to be there. The version is already stored in our brain and is now competing against the version shown in our writing software.[1]

But why is it so easy for other readers to catch the typos? Other readers are reading the text for the very first time. They are new to the content and so the brain had not enough time to generalize the content of the whole article. The brain needs to analyze the words of the article in order to grasp the meaning of it.[1]

But what can we do in order to catch more of our own typos? The best way would be to „reset“ our brains so that the just written article seems to be new to the brain. This in return would allow the brain to move away from the already stored version and to analyze the article as if it would read the article for the very first time. A suggested method to present our brains something new is changing the layout of the article. By changing the color or by changing the font, the article suddenly looks different and this could help our brains to pay more attention on every single word.[1]

Yesterday, I found a good evidence for this idea. After I finished translating the game in my text-editor, I received a running German version of the game and started to play it. Although the text is exactly the same text I just finished writing, it was completely new to me, because the environment of the text has changed. Suddenly, I was able to catch some typos I have overlooked while I was proof-reading my work.

Science, it works!

A brief moment of time

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the glorious moment of time between the end of the data gathering phase and the data evaluation phase.

I am currently in a very exciting phase of my research. After a lot of plannings, preparations and discussions, one of my research projects has finally started. Moreover, I even got the first results out of this project and soon I will be able to take a first look at them in order to analyze and compare these datasets. If I am lucky, then these results will prove my hypotheses or at least provide me with some more insights into my research topic. Unfortunately, other projects are keeping me away from evaluating these results and so I am still excited about this mysterious package of surveys which is lying around on my desk. In this case, I like to share my excitement about this special moment with you.

Personally, I think this is one of the best moments in the whole process of doing research. After many hours of preparation, the experiment finally begins and the first results are created. Once the first datasets are accumulated, it is like having a gift-wrapped surprise. At first, these datasets are just some collections of numbers without a specific meaning. The data could be anything like the gift-wrapped surprise. However, after evaluating and comparing these numbers (or removing the wrapping paper), their secret is suddenly revealed and they can become an evidence for a correlation. Unfortunately, the result of the evaluation can also be the opposite and no correlation was found at all.

Luckily, the brief moment of time between the end of the creative planning phase and the statiscal evaluation is a moment full of dreams, hopes and mysteries. The data gathered during the experiments could mean anything and as long as the data are not analyzed, they will keep their mystery. As soon as the datasets are processed, all the dreams will come true or will be crushed. After the secrets of the datasets are revealed, the usual work process will take over once again. The evaluation is followed by the process of explaining the results and hopefully making them accessible to the whole world.

As already mentioned I am currently in this mysterious phase where everything is possible. It is just exciting to glance at the bundle of surveys lying on my desk and to think about the possible results. Soon, I will remove the wrapping paper, start to analyse these numbers and face the reality of the results. But right now, everything is possible.

Getting into a constant verification loop

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about how computer games could help us to stop forgetting essential things during a preparation phase.

Remembering all the things that need to be prepared in order to perform a certain task can often be a challenge. In most cases, it is not too dramatic if a certain thing is missing. Going on a hiking tour and forgetting some biscuits is mostly not a problem. Preparing a presentation and forgetting to prepare some helpful slides for the follow-up discussion could result in a more complicated approach in order to make the own point clear. However, sometimes it could be even more complicated, if a charger is missing during a week-long vacation.

In most cases, the issue comes from the fact that we are not trained to analyze an upcoming task and to figure out all the eventualities. Moreover, our daily life is relatively relaxed. Even if we forget a thing, it can easily be retrieved. However, sometimes it could be a situation that happens only once and a missing thing could be really problematic. But how to train for such an occasion, if the regular life does not challenge us enough so that we automatically get used to think about every part of the upcoming task?

I found a possible answer in playing computer games. Computer games can put the players into the role of a mission planner requiring them to think about every detail of a mission before starting it. Depending on the complexity of the game, the players need to think about every part of the scheduled mission in order to successful complete it. After the planning phase is finished, the players are commited and have to proceed on even if they have missed to prepare for a certain event.

One of the best mission planning games I have played so far is Kerbal Space Program[1] (KSP). The planning phase is basically the phase during which the players are constructing their space crafts. They have to think about every step of the upcoming mission: launch, flight, a possible landing, return flight and all the desired experiments. Due to the fact that some destinations in KSP are relatively far away and require a lot of play time in order to arrive there, it could be sometimes problematic, if a certain stage is missing and the space craft can not land on the celestial body after a lot of maneuvers were completed in order to get there.

Such a disappointing outcome can teach the players that they need to think about every step before launching a mission. Moreover, even if the players have done this, the game encourages the players to validate their constructions before it is too late. Over time the players get used to a verification loop and they automatically check their planned mission for any flaws. This verification loop can be then transferred on other tasks of the daily life. The players get used to think about every step in advanced and to double check their plan before they will switch to the execution phase.

Game or gamified social platform?

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the transition of a computer game from a game to a social platform. World of Warcraft is a real computer game, but sometimes it can be also seen as a social platform.

No doubt, World of Warcraft (WoW) is a computer game and all the different ways to play this game do have specific game mechanics to distinguish one part from another part. A WoW player needs a different set of skills for each game phase. Exploring the game world without the help of others is a completely different approach to the game than grouping up with others to descent deep into a raid-dungeon to defeat evil creatures. A player who is very active in the area of „Player-vs-Player“ (PvP) needs a completely different set of skills than a player who is more interested in the area of „Player-vs-Environment“ (PvE). Last but not least, there are also different forms like „role playing“. In this specific way of interacting with the game, the players have to act as if they would be the avatar. In all the other ways of playing the game, the avatar can also be seen as a tool to interact with the world. However, the role-playing players are jumping right into their avatar and are no longer the person behind the keyboard.

All these different WoW game phases do have the characteristics of a game: a certain set of rules and a defined area where the action is taking place. Moreover, engaging in one of the game phases allows the players to instantly get into the immersive effects of playing.[1]

The raid-instance content of WoW is mostly requiring the players so form a constant group in order to be successful. In this case, the gameplay receives a social component. Although the group of players still do have the shared goal of playing a game, they are forming social bonds among each other and are becoming friends over time. Depending on the mindset of the players, this social part can become the main reason to continue playing the game: it is more about being together with the friends than actually playing the game. This also leads to the fact, that, in the case of one player quits the game, others will stop playing it, too. However, this will only happen, if the interest in being together with the social group has become more important than the interest of playing the actual game.

At this point, it is interesting to ask, if these players are really playing a game or if the virtual world has become a gamified social platform. However, it could be even a combination of both. On the one hand, the social raid environment still offers the phases of pure gameplay: the group is fighting against an evil enemy. During this phase of the game, the players are only focussing on the action of the game. On the other hand, as soon as this intense phase is over, the game becomes a social platform again.

But what is causing this transition from a pure group based game to a combination of a social platform and a game? At which point are the players developing the social bonds? Which game mechanics are causing the formation of social bonds?

References
[1]Huizinga, Johan (2009): Homo ludens : Vom Ursprung der Kultur im Spiel, Hamburg.