游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

有关游戏设计中的错误共识效应

发布时间:2016-09-13 16:27:24 Tags:,,,,

作者:Elizabeth Sampat

1977年的时候,斯坦福大学社会心理学教授Lee Ross让一组学生进行了一次简单的试验。他让参与者假设自己面临冲突,然后提供给他们解决这一情况的2个可行选择。教授让参与者猜猜大多数人会做出怎样的选择,而他们自己会选择什么,并描述下做出不同选择的人分别是怎样的。

不管参与者做出怎样的选择,最终都能得出一个明确的模板:参与者最有可能假设大多数人会跟自己做出同样的选择。而这也清楚地表现出了Ross教授及其同事所提出的“错误共识效应”,即大多数人相信大多数人都会拥有和自己同样的行动,信念,道德,观点与行为。

除此之外,错误共识效应意味着人们会认为那些和自己所想,所感和行动方式不同的人只是少数人,并且这些人都是有问题的。在第二次试验中,Ross和同事让参与者佩戴一个写着“Eat At Joe’s”的标志。66%同意佩戴这个标志的人假设大多数人也会这么做,而那些拒绝佩戴该标志的人中只有33%的人认为大多数人会这么做。当被问到那些会做出相反选择的人会是怎样的人时,参与者便会对那些人的性格做出非常极端的攻击。

错误共识效应是我们必须应对的最严重的认知偏见之一。它是无处不在的,最近的典例便是2012年美国总统大选中巴拉克·奥巴马稳妥地击败了共和党候选人米特·罗姆尼。选前民调数据便显示奥巴马将稳操胜算,但是保守党却因为下面的情况感到震惊:

公布结果几个小时前在议会中心的街对面,活动的支持者和志愿者都满心期待着罗姆尼将成为这个国家的下任总统。而当福克斯新闻在晚上11点15分的时候宣称奥巴马获胜时,所有罗姆尼的支持者都非常震惊。很多人都表示他们是因为受到保守党关于罗姆尼拥有更大的胜算的预测的影响,他们也满心期待着在周四晚上进行胜利庆祝。

来自希尔顿海德岛的Nan Strauch说道:”我们都相信这个国家的大多数人都拥有共识。而这一结果让我们非常吃惊。我们本来是充满自信的。“

波士顿的Marianne Doherty说道:“这不禁让我开始怀疑我的同胞们。说实话,我觉得自己现在已经不理解美国公民这一身份了。”

特别是随着平面媒体的衰落以及在线新闻的崛起,罗姆尼的竞选更容易加大错误共识效应。他们假设每个认为欧巴马将轻松获胜的选票和权威人士都是带有偏见的,即不管是因为“自由媒体”的无处不在还是因为他们只是过度采样奥巴马的支持者,但这里的问题其实真正在于它们的错误假设。

他们相信公共/媒体投票被扭曲了,他们认为那些选票过度采样了奥巴马的支持者并且未能真正表现出共和党支持者们的热情。而他们这只是以自己的内部调查为依据。这便是非常严重的错误,所以他们才会在那天晚上对那样的结果感到震惊。

而正是这样的假设在推动着他们的竞选策略—-他们的内部调查显示他们在美国几个关键州的票数远远领先,所以他们便决定去获取更广泛的胜利:即拉拢像宾夕法尼亚州等区域并在最后两周保持低调谨慎。

但是这样的假设却是大错特错。

在这种情况下,错误共识效应是由确认偏误(游戏邦注:即倾向于只去获取能够认证自己观点的信息)和选择偏见(当一群人是自我选择的或则非随机的,但是这群人的想法或行动却被选为整体群组的代表)所组合在一起的。因为罗姆尼的团队不能看到自己的偏见(这也是很少有团队能够做到的!),所以他们最终在竞选策略上犯了大错。

从内部看来这种偏见确实是不好的,但是带有这种偏见并不能将一个人变成坏人。实际上,在考虑到偏见而进行设计的游戏系统中如果能够有效操控这种偏见便能够呈现出很不错的效果。也就是在说到基于同感的游戏设计时,克服错误共识效应是很重要的。

这时候你可能会问:如果设计师的想法是设计一款源自我的视角的游戏,那为什么包含我的偏见和假设是与该目标相矛盾的?这是因为我们都太贴近自己的生活所以我们不能真正看清它们。而通过撇去种种假设,也就是那些你所习以为常的限制因素和系统,你便能够更透彻地去看待自己的生活,从而更加清楚如何去模拟它或评价它。

而当我们拒绝去正视自己的偏见时,我们便很难去设计有关与自己不同的体验或视角的游戏,我们也会因此变成“中立性”的牺牲品。为了确保游戏信息足够明确且保持一致,游戏系统所传达的视角就必须与游戏设计师的目标保持一致,所以你就必须想办法拂去遮住你的视野的那些无形的东西。

但并不是说在设计师开始设计游戏之前就必须删除一切偏见:这么做是不大可能的事,并且只会让结果变得更无聊。相反地,删除自己的偏见的目标是为了更好地了解它们,即从中获取真正有用的情感共鸣。

游戏唯一出现中立状态是在有关游戏的唯一决策出现前。就像Brenda Romero所说的PreConception:

PreConception代表的是游戏设计师在考虑一款全新游戏的可能空间时脑子里的中立状态。这将呈现出所有可能游戏环境中可改变的可能空间。首先,每个选择会通过保留概念空间去改变机遇和游戏。每个选择将限制未来全新游戏的可能空间直至开发者公开了这款游戏。如此设计师自己的想法和可能性构造空间将会被唤醒。

游戏设计过程的每一步都是关于限制无限路径和选择的可能性。基于我们的生活,历史,个性和教育,我们前往无限可能空间的各种路径将被关闭。当我设计了自己的第一款桌面游戏时(游戏邦注:即一款名为《It’s Complicated》的角色扮演游戏),一个记者在访问的时候告诉我:“这就像一款由一个之前从未玩过RPG的人所设计的RPG游戏。”那时候我真的觉得很受伤,但通过交谈我才真正意识到他话里的意思。因为游戏的核心机制和故事都非常独特,并且不像我们常玩的角色扮演游戏那样,所以对于他来说我似乎从未受到那些经常被当成游戏设计基础的无意识偏见的侵蚀。

游戏是一种系统,而通常我们所认为的系统都是冰冷无感情的,与之相反的便是情感或刺激。当我们着眼于更广大的世界以及我们在这个世界中的位置时,我们便会意识到系统其实是社会以及人类意识的架构模块,是推动我们的成功与失败的力量。证实系统能够唤醒情感其实与看着驾驶员等待着漫长的红灯一样简单。

比起去追求中立性,设计师首先必须清楚没有什么是真正中立的:我们之所以能够不带偏见地看到某些东西是因为我们对自己所生活的环境感到盲目了。就像人们会不再去闻沐浴露或洗衣粉的味道一样,我们也会逐渐习惯于自己的生活环境并认为这便是“现实”,从而完全忽视与我们身边基于错误共识的人形成鲜明对比的自己生活现状中的独特元素。

different culture(from mandarinmorning)

different culture(from mandarinmorning)

这同时也是人们觉得有必要去创造有关来自自己和生活中的人和情境的艺术内容的原因之一:当我们认为自己是“中立体”时,围绕在其他人周围的努力与系统便会变得更加吸引人,这仅仅只是因为非中立对象所具有的新颖性。而正是这种对于独特性的执着才导致有关其它文化的人及其体验的艺术表达形式会出现各种问题。通常情况下这并不是什么大恶不赦的事,只是一种目光短浅的表现,这也不足以说明“中立”会导致我们识别不出自己所身处的环境的独特性以及以使用扭曲的视角去看待别人的生活。

培养同感的最大障碍便是缺乏自我意识,而我们能够接触到其他人的唯一平台便是自己。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转发,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Extinguishing Neutrality in Game Design

by Elizabeth Sampat

In 1977, Stanford social psychology professor Dr. Lee Ross asked a group of students to do a simple experiment. He explained to the participants a situation in which a conflict arose, and then gave the participants two possible options for resolving the situation. They were then asked to guess which option most people would choose, to choose an option themselves, and to describe the kinds of people who would choose each option.

Regardless of which option the participant chose, a clear pattern emerged: participants were more likely to assume that the majority of people would make the same choice as they did. This shed light on something Dr. Ross and his colleagues called the “false consensus effect”— the idea that most people believe that their actions, beliefs, morals, opinions and habits are those held by the majority of people.

Additionally, the false consensus effect means that people think that those who do not think, feel, or act the way that they do are in the minority, and that those people have something wrong with them. In a second experiment, Ross and his colleagues asked participants to wear a sign that said “Eat At Joe’s.” 66% of those who agreed to wear the sign assumed most people would as well, and of those who refused, only 33% thought most people would agree. And when asked about the kind of person who would make the opposite choice, participants had harsh and extreme judgments about those people’s personalities. (Dean)

The false consensus effect is one of the most powerful cognitive biases we have to work against. It’s everywhere; one of the most potent examples in recent history is that of President Barack Obama’s clear and uneventful defeat of Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. The pre-election poll data made an Obama victory clear, but conservatives were reeling in shock from the loss:

A few hours earlier, across the street at the Convention Center, the campaign’s supporters and volunteers fully expected Romney to be the nation’s next president. Indeed, what was striking after Fox News called the race for Obama, at about 11:15 p.m., was how stunned so many of Romney’s supporters were. Many said they were influenced by the prominent conservatives who predicted a big Romney win, and they fully expected Tuesday night to be a victory celebration.

“I am shocked, I am blown away,” said Joe Sweeney, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “I thought I had a pretty good pulse on this stuff. I thought there was a trend that was going on underground.”

“We were so convinced that the people of this country had more common sense than that,” said Nan Strauch, of Hilton Head, South Carolina. “It was just a very big surprise. We felt so confident.”

“It makes me wonder who my fellow citizens are,” said Marianne Doherty of Boston. “I’ve got to be honest, I feel like I’ve lost touch with what the identity of America is right now. I really do.” (York)

Especially with the decline of print media and the rise of online news and punditry, it was easy for the Romney campaign to double down on the false consensus effect. They assumed that every poll and pundit that said Obama would have an easy victory on election night was biased, either due to the specter of the “liberal media” or because they simply oversampled Obama supporters— but that mistake was the crux of their own false assumptions.

[T]hey believed the public/media polls were skewed – they thought those polls oversampled Democrats and didn’t reflect Republican enthusiasm. They based their own internal polls on turnout levels more favorable to Romney. That was a grave miscalculation, as they would see on election night.

Those assumptions drove their campaign strategy: their internal polling showed them leading in key states, so they decided to make a play for a broad victory: go to places like Pennsylvania while also playing it safe in the last two weeks.

Those assessments were wrong.

They made three key miscalculations, in part because this race bucked historical trends:

1. They misread turnout. They expected it to be between 2004 and 2008 levels, with a plus-2 or plus-3 Democratic electorate, instead of plus-7 as it was in 2008. Their assumptions were wrong on both sides: The president’s base turned out and Romney’s did not. More African-Americans voted in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida than in 2008. And fewer Republicans did: Romney got just over 2 million fewer votes than John McCain.

2. Independents. State polls showed Romney winning big among independents. Historically, any candidate polling that well among independents wins. But as it turned out, many of those independents were former Republicans who now self-identify as independents. The state polls weren’t oversampling Democrats and undersampling Republicans – there just weren’t as many Republicans this time because they were calling themselves independents.

3. Undecided voters. The perception is they always break for the challenger, since people know the incumbent and would have decided already if they were backing him. Romney was counting on that trend to continue. Instead, exit polls show Mr. Obama won among people who made up their minds on Election Day and in the few days before the election. So maybe Romney, after running for six years, was in the same position as the incumbent.

The campaign before the election had expressed confidence in its calculations, and insisted the Obama campaign, with its own confidence and a completely different analysis, was wrong. In the end, it was the other way around. (Crawford)

In this case, the false consensus effect was compounded by the effects of confirmation bias (the tendency to only seek out information that reaffirms our beliefs) and selection bias (when a group of people is self-selected or otherwise non-randomized, but the beliefs or actions of that group is assumed to be an unbiased representation of the whole). Because the Romney team was unable to see their own biases— something few groups are able to do!— they ended up making the exact mistakes they assumed the Obama team were making when it came to their projections.

These kinds of biases aren’t inherently bad, and falling prey to them doesn’t make someone a bad person. In fact, these biases can be manipulated for great rhetorical effect in game systems designed with said biases in mind. That said, the false consensus effect is important to overcome when it comes to personal and empathetic game design.

You might ask: if the idea is to design a game that comes from my perspective, why would including my own biases and assumptions hinder that goal? It is specifically because we are all too close to our own lives that we are unable to see them effectively. By stripping away the assumptions that the constraints and systems you live with are mundane or obvious, you’re able to look at your life with a critical lens— and better understand how to simulate or critique it.

When we refuse to see our own biases, it becomes impossible for us to design games about experiences or perspectives that differ from our own, and we become more likely to fall prey to the lie of “neutrality.” To ensure that the message of the game is clear and consistent, and that the point of view being expressed by the systems of the game is in line with your goals as a designer, it is necessary to dismantle the invisible things that cloud your vision.

This is not to say that all bias needs to be removed before one can begin designing a game: doing so would be impossible, and the result would be boring. Instead, the goal of dismantling our own biases is to interrogate them thoroughly, and see what is useful and emotionally resonant within them.

The only time a game is truly neutral is before a single decision about the game has been made. As Brenda Romero says about her art piece, PreConception (pregame notgame):

PreConception (pregame notgame) represents the neutral state of the game designer’s mind as he or she considers the possibility space of a new game. It makes visible the radically shifting possibility space within the context of all possible permutations of play. Infinite at first, each selection changes the opportunities and play afforded by the remaining conceptual space. A die introduces chance. Counters introduce economy. Each selection constrains the possibility space of an emerging game further until the game is revealed. The mere presence of pieces provokes people toward an idea and a constructed possibility space all their own.

Every step of the game design process is about limiting possibility from an infinite number of paths and choices. Depending on our lives, our histories, our personalities and our educations, we each come to that infinite possibility space with a number of paths already closed off. After I designed my first tabletop game, a roleplaying game called It’s Complicated, a journalist told me in an interview that “it feels like an RPG designed by someone who had never played an RPG before.” I was initially offended, but through discussion I came to realize what he’d meant. Because the core mechanics and the narrative emphasis were so totally unique and unlike what most players expect from a typical roleplaying game, it seemed to him as though I had been untouched by those unconscious biases that often serve as the foundation of game design. The act of interrogation, then, is not just about deciding which paths to cut off— it’s also about stumbling on to paths that may have otherwise remained closed off to you.

Games are systems, and systems are often seen as cold and unfeeling, the opposite of emotional or provocative. When we look at the broader world as it exists, and our place within that world, it becomes clear that systems are the building blocks of society, of human consciousness, and the driving force for our successes and failures. Proof that a system can evoke emotion is as simple as watching a driver stuck at an unusually long red light.

Instead of striving for neutrality, the first step to truly affecting game design is to realize that nothing is neutral: what we see as a lack of bias is our own blindness to the circumstances we live within. Much as people eventually stop smelling the scent of their own shampoo or clothes detergent, we become inured to our own circumstances, and believe that this is just “the way things are,” completely oblivious to the uniqueness of our own situation in contrast to the default conditions of people around us.

This is also one of the reasons people feel compelled to make art about people and situations divorced from themselves and their lives: when we view ourselves as “neutral,” the struggles and systems surrounding the lives of others take on a more fascinating air, simply because of the novelty of something non-neutral. It is this preoccupation with the exotic that leads to fumbling and inaccurate artistic expression about people of other cultures and their experiences. Often it is not malice, but myopia; the inability to acknowledge the lie of “neutrality” leads both to an inability to recognize the uniqueness of one’s own circumstances, and the warped lens through which one views another’s life.

The largest obstacle to fostering empathy is one’s own lack of self-awareness; the only way to reach out to others is through yourself.(source:gamasutra)

 


上一篇:

下一篇: