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)

Social
  • Tribes
  • Fame
  • Guilt
  • Honesty
  • Humiliation
  • Love
  • Obligation
  • Pride (also for others)
  • Embarrassment
  • Reliability
  • Status
  • Envy
  • Loyalty
  • Responsibility 
  • Ownership
  • Joking around
  • Shared Experience
  • Disappointment
  • Deception
  • Individuality 
  • Empathy
  • Spanish Shame (embarassement for sb. else)
  • Schadenfreude
  • Revenge
  • Mercy
  • Contempt
  • Gratitude
  • Hatred
  • Loneliness
  • Pity
  • ...

Execution
  • electronic controllers
  • physical activity
  • body control

2 comments:

  1. interesting...I feel rather inspired by Skyrim myself, but you sure know how to take everything a bit further, Nils. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Syl. Great to have you back! :)

    ReplyDelete