Games and emotions, part 1/3

FUUUDGE!

That's Friday's Unofficial & Uncannily Unrelated Discussions on Games and Emotions. :)

As promised in the last installment, I decided to switch language so Claas can better follow, and at this point I almost prefer English anyway, since jokes can often sound silly in Finnish. And my jokes are serious business!

I will split this topic into two posts, since I expect to come out with a regular wall of text. And no-one likes a wall of text. That's a lie - I do.

So, today I want to finally keep my promise of expanding on machines, other curiosities and our empathy towards them. There'll be some light stuff, for sure, but it's not all airy-fairy sunshine and daisies. I'm probably going to leave you a bit bummed out. That is, if I hadn't planned a surprise twist ending that will make you happy again. I bet you won't see that coming. :o)

First things first, here's something lovely. I sure some of you will find this adorable and, after seeing the video, know exactly what you'd want for christmas but dare not ask:
(SPOILERS - shows bits of the Star Wars: Force Awakens trailer):
http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/3/9253461/star-wars-bb8-droid-toy-video-price-release-date

If we ignore the current restrictions and take a look into the future (I hear there's loads happening by 2017), basically, nothing's stopping this sort of toy from keeping company for your cat when you're at work, or work as a personal helper for your messages, reminders, or act as an alarm clock or kitchen timer, etc. A toy designed to tug your heartstrings might seem like a superfluous, maybe even frivolous concept to many people, and I'll give them that. But there are also so many ways for these kind of interactions to be meaningful. Okay, time for another approach.

At this point it would be appropriate to play WDL - With Blood. Just spotify it! If you don't much care for anything aggressive, Recovery by Rival Consoles will do swimmingly. As long as it's got a sense of progress and speed. :o)

Last time I left you ogling at the Horizon: Zero Dawn trailer (link below for those who didn't see it even though I specifically said the main character was CUTE) and the scene where the girl approaches the creature - a patently mechanical being. What initially intrgued me was that the girl treats it as if it were an animal. That is, a biological, conscious entity operating on its own instincts. I'm a little fuzzy on the details of the world's lore, but from the trailer it seems the tribe don't seem to identify with the creators of these mechanical mammals - that they perhaps don't even know who built them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fkg5UVTsKCE

But they surely know they're synthetic, right? If they did, perhaps the utter lack of knowledge of the inner workings of the creatures has lead the people to think that the mechanical animals possessed their own distinct agencies? That they're legitimate, umm, creatures, and not simply tools, the behaviour of which could be boiled down to more or less predictable scripts?

Then again, what if the people couldn't even make a distinction between biological creatures (who spill blood when poked) and mechanical inventions (who spill oil and bolts when neglected), then ... whoaaa. What would that be like? John Stuart Mill, a philosopher and a wise guy, said that we tend to accept anything that's usual as natural. If you find yourself in a landscape where you saw these shiny robots migrating in large flocks since you were a kid, you're probably not going to take them for something phony, scary or unnatural. They behave as natural creatures do, so they seem like natural creatures, only steel-clad.

I'm not spoiling anything, here, but the Mass Effect trilogy does a fairly good job of exploring these questions. One could even argue it's the main theme of the series. (If you have an Xbox 360, I will try my best to lend you the games, all of them. Just fail to provide a stern enough 'no', and you'll be in Commander Shepard's boots in no time. Even the accompanying books are genuinely wonderful: just slightly pulpy and proud of it.)

Here's a funny distraction, though. We all know the sci-fi trope of AI going all evil and bad, and even though I'm specifically not going into that topic with these posts, I am going to send you on a tangent. One of my favourite youtube channels, It's Okay To Be Smart and its writer Joe Hanson, Ph.D, did a wonderful video of the potential inevitability of the prospect - Is Ultron Inevitable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Irmtk5QG8s

Okay, so AIs can turn sour and pear-shaped, big deal. Now, let's get back to the sunshine and daisies.

The funny thing, though, is that if the notion of treating synthetics as living, breathing things with meaningful agencies feels somehow inherently unrealistic and inhuman, I've got some science for you. Watch this short clip from a psychological study from the 1940's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTNmLt7QX8E

If you sense that the two triangles and circle perform under some semblance of emotions and thoughts, don't panic - that's perfectly normal.

Now that you've seen the effect on yourself, this is good time to take a step back and look at the big picture. Here's an excerpt from an article explaining how our empathy works in a similar way towards humans and, on the other hand, creatures that seem to be autonomous or thinking:

"On the other end of the spectrum, another recent study looked at the response of (non-psychopathic) subjects to either affection or abuse targeted at a person, a robot, and an inanimate object. They found that people had similar brain responses to affection toward a human or robot, but not inanimate object. They also had similar responses to abuse, but the response was stronger for humans than robots.

This study support previous research which indicates that people are capable of reacting toward non-living things as if they were people. Existing research suggests that our brains use an algorithm to decide if something is an “agent” or not. This is not the same thing as being alive, but instead deals with whether or not an object is active as if it has volition and autonomy.

This is interesting, and makes evolutionary sense. It apparently was more important for us to feel whether or not something in our environment was acting as an autonomous agent rather than whether or not is was alive. There [sic] were probably mostly the same thing."

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/empathy/

That's some powerful stuff, right? The capacity of a human mind to care for something that doesn't ask for it, something that only has the slightest resemblance of cognition or agency, or something that's abstract or wildly different from us... That's powerful stuff, alright.

But I promised you I would rain on this parade. I will, but we'll have to wait until the part two. :o)

PS: If you know any games that have raised similar issues or questions, tell us! Most of the games I'm presenting in this and the upcoming post have come from you guys. So keep them coming, and don't be afraid to REPLY ALL. :o)

- Janne