Nils' Blog: What Keeps the Mind Busy

Monday, November 21, 2011

What Keeps the Mind Busy

Analyzing Skyrim allows me to add many new points to what keeps the mind busy.

There is not much logical thinking going on in Skyrim. There are a few riddles which almost always have unreasonable solutions, and you can try to build a powerful character. But that only makes the game less fun.
As a mage, you will rarely find an enemy which is actually too strong or needs any special attention except for running away to heal/recharge mana and using line of sight.

As such, Sykrim is useful to add a lot of 'emotional' points to my list of “what keeps the mind busy”. Here is the latest iteration:

Logical

Information gathering (learning, exploring, ..)
Comprehension
Pattern matching
Analysis
Educated guesses
Memorizing and Recalling
Coming up with courses of actions
Thinking through a course of action
Choices and decisions about efficiency

Emotional

Tension, climaxes
Gain and loss
Anger, happiness, sadness
Anticipation of learning, gaining or losing (curiosity, greed, desire, hope, fear)
Investment, self-restraint, development
(Sinful) consumption
Feedback (in general)
Choices and decisions about style
Emotional attachment (e.g. to a character)
Disappointment / Confirmation
Regret
Disgust
(Sudden) constraint / freedom
Sexual arousal
Surprise (in-context or out-of-context, e.g. "fishes in rivers? woa!")
Amusement, Humor
Annoyance (usually bad for the game)
Cognitive dissonance (in/consistent behaviour)
Morality
Success, Failure
Worry
Beauty (e.g. graphics, music)
Rhythms (keyboard ~ piano)
Acting (e.g. "what if I were him?"), self-exploration
Revelation, wonder (e.g. Civ quotes)