March 4th, 2021
This is the phrase that academics use to discuss what is to them an apparent paradox. That paradox is, in plain English, the fact that stories have plots that are sequences of events, yet interactivity requires that the player be able to determine their own actions. Thus, interactivity makes plots impossible. In academic language, we replace “interactivity” with “ludology” and “plot” with “narrativity”. Using these highly abstract terms allows academics to write lengthy papers bristling with high-falutin’ terminology that makes sense only to other academics.
I solved the problem more than 25 years ago; I published the solution in this article in the Journal of Computer Game Design. Since then I have repeated the solution numerous times in books and lectures. Yet 25 years later, people still don’t get it. They’re still stuck on an imaginary problem.
Why?
I think that it has to do with the fundamental problem of process versus object. I have underestimated just how difficult it is for people to integrate the concept into their thinking. It’s easy to grasp the idea at a superficial level, but redefining one’s thinking in these terms is a much more difficult task. I have encountered few people who have integrated the concept into their thinking.
So why can’t people understand process-intensive thinking? I surmise several contributing factors:
“What’s the go of that?”
The great physicist James Clerk Maxwell tormented his parents as a child by constantly asking this question. Some kids are insatiably curious; perhaps that curiosity is an essential precondition to developing the kind of thinking habits necessary to think in process-intensive terms. If so, then this kind of thinking cannot be taught; you simply must grow up with it. This would definitely be a “dirty ricklefricks” situation.
Math required
You don’t get very far with process-intensive thinking if you can’t bring mathematics to bear. Process-intensive thinking without math is rather like talking about baseball without ever swinging a bat. Sure, you can do it, but you just can’t understand baseball until you’ve actually gotten into the essence of the sport. Mathematics is the language of process; if you can’t speak the language, you’ll never be more than a tourist. The good news is that you don’t need high-powered math to understand most processes; high-school math is more than enough for most purposes. But you must actually UNDERSTAND high school math. I doubt that more than 1% of the population understands high school math.
“Who needs it?”
This is certainly a major factor impeding the understanding of process-intensive thinking in the intellectual community. Most people are so ignorant of the issues that they don’t even see the value of process-intensive thinking. Before Fibonacci came along, not many European merchants understood the value of arithmetic for keeping track of their profits and losses. They played by the seat of their pants, and that seemed to work well enough. The arithmetic revolution of the fourteenth century bred a new generation of merchants who could actually figure out the numbers. They made a lot more money that way.
The computer is a processing machine, so you have to think in terms of processes if you’re going to utilize the computer effectively. People still don’t realize that. Only when people understand what computers really are will they start to see the value of process-intensive thinking.
