Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
and they are the worst when the action is truncated because it could not
continue.
20
In task-oriented environments, the trick is to defi ne the “whole”
activity as something that can provide satisfaction and closure when it is
achieved. This depends in part on being able to determine what a person
is trying to do and striving to enable them to do
all
of it, even when they
opt to do it in defi nable chunks. In simulation-based activities, the need for
catharsis strongly implies that what goes on be structured as a whole action
with a dramatic “shape.” If I am fl ying a simulated jet fi ghter, then either
I will land successfully or be blown out of the sky, hopefully after some
action of a duration that is suffi cient to provide pleasure has had a chance
to unfold. Flight simulators shouldn't stop in the middle, unless the train-
ing goal is simply to help a pilot learn to accomplish some mid-fl ight task.
Catharsis can be accomplished, as we have seen, through a proper under-
standing of the nature of the whole action and the deployment of dramatic
probability. If the end of an activity is the result of a causally related and
well-crafted series of events, then the experience of catharsis is the natural
result of the moment at which probability becomes necessity.
In this chapter we have analyzed various ways in which dramatic ideas
and techniques can be employed to infl uence the way human-computer ac-
tivities
feel
to people who take part in them. Hopefully, it has illustrated
some of the benefi ts of a dramatic approach in terms of engagement and
emotion. The chapter has emphasized the need to delineate and represent
human-computer activities as organic wholes with dramatic structural char-
acteristics. It has also suggested means whereby people experience agency
and involvement naturally and effortlessly. The next chapter explores struc-
tural techniques more deeply, returning to Aristotle's six elements, and sug-
gesting principles and rules of thumb for designing each of them in the
computer domain.
20. Here again, it seems that the designers at Lucasfi lm were in the forefront. Ron Gilbert
(1989) counseled game designers to avoid situations in which a player must “die in order to
learn what not to do next time.” In a presentation at SIGGRAPH 1990, LucasArts Entertain-
ment's research director Doug Crockford showed a re-edited version of Star Wars in which
Luke Skywalker was killed in his fi rst battle with Darth Vader. The story was over inside
of 30 seconds.
