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Mind Games via Mirror Neurons

Celia Wagar1 Comment

What’s the difference between a mind game and blind guessing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron#Understanding_intentions

Mirror Neurons. People have a natural capacity to understand and predict other people. This same capacity does not exist with machines (though one time I beat a rock paper scissors neural net with 5 wins, 7 draws, and 0 losses, presumably because it was acting on data from real people). Machines can be way more perfectly random than people. People are very bad at being random.

Picture 2015-02-03 01_00_57.png

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1044840/ https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150226132046.htm http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/Predictive%20coding%20an%20account%20of%20the%20mirror%20neuron%20system.pdf

It’s been shown that humans have a limited ability to predict the actions of other humans under observation, believed to be facilitated with Mirror Neurons, Neurons that fire both when you do something, and when you see someone else do something (or even if you think they’re going to do it, but don’t realize you think it yet). When you expect someone to do something, neurons in your head fire, but you don’t have conscious access to these, rather they bubble up into your conscious mind as a prediction.

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There are some people who have no ability to predict other people, and just choose what they think the most unlikely thing is, like Mew2king. There are others who get inside the other person’s head, like PPMD, Mango, or Daigo. Fun fact, autism is suspected to be at least partially connected to a deficiency in mirror neurons (Editor’s note: History hasn’t borne this one out. Mirror Neurons are mostly considered kind of a dead-end these days).

A mind game is about watching people’s responses to situations, then choosing the response that beats theirs in that situation. A mindgame is about conditioning another player to respond a certain way to a situation, then changing it up on them at a critical moment. Repeat conditioning causes people to act pre-emptively and worsens their reaction time for unexpected stimuli.

Mindgaming is about knowing common reactions to certain situations and preying on those or setting up those situations at a critical moment to eke out a win. The thing is, when you’re playing someone else, they’re adapting to you too. So you need to update your log of opponent reactions as they change their pattern or anticipate when they’re going to change their pattern based on what you know about the player’s adaptation speed.

The difference between a read and a reaction is speed. When you read, you act pre-emptively. For this reason, reads are stronger than reactions, because you have more time to get stuff done, but you sacrifice accuracy. When you read, you’re flying blind.

Emukiller was the dude who taught me to react more in Smash. A lot of scenarios have 100% solutions, but only if you react. If you read pre-emptively all the time, then you’re liable to get screwed up when you could have covered all possible outcomes by just reacting. It’s up to you to figure out what the limits of your reaction time are to determine what’s reactable and what’s not.

This combo video is good for emphasizing mindgames. Notice how Darkrain moves preemptively of his opponent’s action. He’s there ahead of his opponent. He knows what they’ll select.

Or this:

Or here’s a Daigo montage for comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ob6123gOqk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8qm96m7YOs

And this is probably the most clear example of a mind game you’ll see all day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF2S9KeaO2M
(for those wondering what it did, it made Combofiend afraid to act and more defensive, allowing Mike “Mike Ross” Ross to get in and pressure him for the KO)

Try playing someone worse than you and beating them just using basic options. I frequently beat beginners using nothing but light attacks in street fighter, or only sweeps, or only crouching strong. If you know exactly when to throw a move, then unless there’s a pure counter for it, you can win every time, even if it’s a bad or unsuitable move. Knowing when to throw it involves reading. Try this versus a friend who is bad to see what I mean.

See Also: How to Read a Book: Reads in Competitive Games

The Secret Behind Platinum’s Quality?

Celia Wagar6 Comments

If you ever get to the new TMNT game by Platinum, what’s your opinion on it?

I played it briefly.

It’s kinda boring. It doesn’t tell you the sequences for the combos for some reason. I checked all the menus. The sequences are the same on all the turtles, but each one has slightly different attack animations at a difference cadence and range and all. All of them can mash light attack in the air to do an air sequence, and press heavy attack for a diving attack. Then they each have slightly different sets of special attacks that do slightly different things. The game has a unique block/dodge/parry system. You can press R1 to dodge, hold it to block while spinning in shell form, then release right as you’re hit to parry an attack. Dodging perfectly lets you circle behind enemies and jump on their back to deal damage by mashing buttons. Speaking of that, there’s a fuckton of mashing in this game. You gotta mash to interact with things, and mash to revive when you get knocked out.

Each stage is a big cityscape with ninjas all over it. Occasionally objectives pop up that you can complete. You can use see-through-walls-vision to find where shit is going on. Beat up ninjas and eventually you get access to the boss.

So, kind of a disappointment overall. It’s a really simple combat system, and meh enemies, with plenty of filler content all over.

What’s interesting is the director. It was directed by Eiro Shirahama, who you might notice was also the director of Legend of Korra. Legend of Korra was probably Platinum’s biggest miss up to this point, which lead to a surprise when Transformers Devastation was amazing. So why was Transformers Devastation good among these three licensed cartoon games? The director of Devastation was actually Kenji Saito, who you might also know as the director of Metal Gear Rising.

So this makes me wonder, what other recurring directors have we had at Platinum Games? The answer is almost none. Almost every Platinum game has a different director. Even ones you’d think would have the same director like Mad World to Anarchy Reigns, and Bayonetta to Bayonetta 2 have different directors (perhaps this explains the difference in quality between Bayo 1 and 2). I’m only really looking at directors here because I know that a lot of the corporate attitude of Platinum is inherited from what Shinji Mikami established back at Capcom, where it’s all about the director’s vision. You’ll notice there are few repeating people in other roles as well though.

Of the recurring directors we have Hideki Kamiya (Bayo 1, W101, Scalebound), Yusuke Hashimoto (Bayo 2, Star Fox Zero), Eiro Shirahama (Legend of Korra, TMNT), and Kenji Saito (MGR, TD). This leads me to think that Kenji Saito is something really special to the company, he may be an even better director than Kamiya. I’d keep an eye on him in particular in the future. It also leads me to think that Hashimoto and Eiro Shirahama aren’t very good directors.

Wii U

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What are your thoughts on The Wii U?

Bayonetta 2, Wonderful 101, Mario Maker. Don’t care about anything else on the system.

Nintendo doesn’t release good software. They didn’t exploit the potential of the system that everyone originally saw. Nobody wants to put up with the large controller for games that largely only have tacked on functionality for it. Continue reading →

Should We Innovate Controllers?

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Do you think companies should try to innovate controllers or keep the standard DualShocker format?

Dual analog format.

I assume you’re asking because this video was just put out:

I think the dual analog controller is the best controller for the majority of third person games. The trouble with innovating in controllers is you need to come up with one standard that works for a ton of games. In the arcade days, they could and did make controllers unique to every individual game.

What I think needs innovation is the mouse/keyboard, but it’s also the hardest space to sustainably innovate in. Console creators can set controller standards when they make a new console to whatever they want them to be and customers have to comply. PCs have a ton of peripherals, but apart from joysticks like flight sticks, few have really caught on enough to sustain more than niche genres. You can’t even really assume players have extra mouse buttons like a lot of gamer mice have. (I have a Zowie FK, it has 2 extra buttons on both sides, I don’t get a lot of use out of them and am frankly not even used to using them as a result)

If you’ve tried playing a dark souls game on PC, you’d know how weird it can be. The mouse is like the face buttons on a controller, but you only have 3 buttons instead of 4, and one of them isn’t that easily accessible. You need to sacrifice directional control to get more than 2-3 buttons over on the keyboard side. The total number of directly accessible buttons goes down on PC relative to console, so it’s harder to have a large number of directly actionable commands in FPS games. As a result we don’t have FPS weapons that have 6 different attacks, we have 3 different FPS weapons with 2 attacks each. Back on dark souls, it’s really easy to light attack and heavy attack, but functions like blocking and parrying get put on weird keys, especially considering they need to be held or pushed actively to really be effective.

Games with less emphasis on camera movement and more on direct access to face buttons naturally don’t work at all on PC, like DMC4.

Though…

Of course this only works because he abandoned the mouse, and it’s far from an ideal layout.

I think for controlling the types of games that are most popular today, 3rd person 3d and 2d games where the character is like a rigged up pawn that moves through space playing premade animations on top of its rig, current dual analog controllers are best. To make new types of games though, we might have to branch out.

A friend pointed out to me that VR might actually be helpful there for third person games, because it can free up the right analog stick, allowing more attention to be devoted to the face buttons while you can look around your character in third person. Definitely not consistent with the VR immersion dream, but I reluctantly admit that VR might have some uses.

The further problem with innovating in controllers is, you gotta make a game that uses it fully, like Wii Sports, not tacked on.

Precision in VR/AR

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How important do you think precision is in fpses? To increase precision, we have to reduce speed (see Doom to Quake to modern shooters), so where do you stand? How do you feel about a fully-realized AR shooter, like virtual paintball, but with different weapon-types? That would have very slow movement speed, but it would create new types of tactical depth that I think aren’t possible with traditional games.

Blah, there’s that word precision again. And used in such a way that it’s not clear what you mean. I think a better phrasing here might be, “to make aiming easier, we have to reduce speed […]” But it’s still not clear what the overall question is supposed to mean.

Speed was reduced in the move to modern shooters because of console controllers, which cannot aim with 1:1 precision like the mouse can. The mouse does not need slower character movement speeds as a concession to make aiming easier. Controllers have difficulty moving fine distances due to the necessity of dead zones at the center of them, and the difficulty of pushing it a slight amount then releasing the stick before the camera moves too far. Continue reading →

Game Design Book Recommendations

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What do you think of the book on gamefeel?

It’s an awesome book.

Here’s a sample of the types of things it talks about:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1781/principles_of_virtual_sensation.php?print=1

In the book it defines the term precisely, as the confluence of spatial simulation, polish effects, and real-time control (which might be better termed, “real-time direct control”, since starcraft is cited as the defining example of a game that lacks only real-time control and no other elements of game feel). It lays out specifically how each of these things looks like individually, and every combination of them short of the whole thing, and lays out how only all 3 make the full sensation of game feel clear. Continue reading →

Critpoints Glossary

Celia Wagar3 Comments

After some thought, I’ve decided to make a glossary to help people who might not understand some of the terms I use. Some of these are terms I’ve made up myself, those will be noted as such. Rather than being ordered alphabetically like a conventional glossary, I’m ordering this so related terms are closer together, and you can get an idea of a topic from the terms close together.

I’m going to borrow from Critical Gaming’s glossary a little as well as general terminology that is sitting out there. This isn’t meant to be comprehensive, just things that might be a bit out of the way for the common gamer (though I might have gone overboard and included a bunch of obvious entries too). These are the terms you might not know, but probably need to know in order to understand this blog or my writing in general. Continue reading →

First Person Fraud

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How can you write fps articles without having played the seminal contemporary fps series? Or at least the more popular or better games in the series. You need to play the BLOPS trilogy, MW1, MW3, and maybe Advance Warfare so you can be more thorough in laying the smackdown on these games. Or, are you perhaps afraid that you’ll think these games are not as bad as you’d like to think they are? You might even find them… decent. :O

Okay, lets see, I’ve played Modern Warfare 2, CoD 2, Bioshock Infinite, Takedown Red Sabre, Metro 2033, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Planetside 2, Battlefield 2142, Brink, Singularity, Halo 1, Halo Online, Metal Gear Online, Spec Ops The Line, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Vanquish, All Points Bulletin, Section 8 Prejudice, FEAR, Just Cause 2, Prey, Peter Jackson’s King Kong.

I’ve played a fair number of contemporary FPS games (and not all of the above list is bad, only maybe like half or two thirds of it). I don’t think I need to go back through Call of Duty. Sure, they might have neat little things like the exosuit and laser weapons in advanced warfare, but that’s not enough for me to put up with the rest of the bullshit I know this series involves.

The better question is why I haven’t played/finished the following games from my priority list:
FPS: Blood, Serious Sam 1 & 3, Doom, Unreal, Duke Nukem 3d, Jedi Knight series, Bulletstorm, Tribes (ascend and starsiege), NOLF, Wolfenstein: The New Order, another Wolfenstein?, Gears of War, STALKER, the Action ______ mods of various FPS, Descent, Wrack, The Darkness, Max Payne, Kingpin: Life of Crime, Socom?, Riddick, Mafia,

These are much more differentiated and mechanically interesting games than most of the contemporary ones listed above. The FPS section of my priority list is the longest section. How can I dare to write about FPS games without finishing all of these? I honestly feel like a bit of a fraud not having played these, enough to shy away from some FPS questions I’ve been asked, and I feel maybe the slightest tinge of regret for not trying out the CoD AW Exosuit.

I’m not afraid, I’m dismissive. I’m also too lazy to play the games I genuinely want to play. Why would I go into a series of games I know I despise, having already sampled that series? Gears of War is on my priority list despite being something I’m not looking forward to because I’ve never tried it before, so there might be something I’ve genuinely overlooked. Call of Duty hasn’t been a thought in my mind.

Games with Neat Visual Styles

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Can you give examples of gritty serious games whose art style you enjoy, as well as cutesy colorful ones?

Does Zelda Twilight Princess count as gritty and serious? Despite my misgivings about it, the art direction of the twilight realm enemies, wolf link, midna, and the palettes used across the game were pretty great.

Shadow of the Colossus is also pretty great all around for art direction of the Colossi, Wander, Mono, and many of the structures in the environment (as well as the larger landmasses, though they can be pretty ugly up close.)

Metroid Prime has one of the best art directions of any game, which is part of why the graphics have held up so long, mostly thanks to Andrew Jones. Even the shapes used to construct the environmental structures are extremely identifiable to this day.

MGS has always had a solid art direction. I think MGS1 had the most distinct visual style though. Shadow Moses has extremely iconic areas all throughout, and snake’s design is great too. Plus the bosses.

Deus Ex Human Revolution really nailed the future aesthetic, and I think its hallways and doors are generally really identifiable. The guns stand out too, as well as the particular musculature of the augments, the way they look like kevlar muscles essentially.

Bioshock was solidly put together too, art deco was a great pick for it.

Legacy of Kain has good character design, and that’s about it.

Remember Me had a solid artistic direction in a lot of ways, even if it was a really boring game overall.

For cutesy stuff, Touhou has laughably horrible drawings, but I guess the designs themselves are pretty good, they look nice when drawn by practically anyone else.

The Wind Waker look was certainly inspired.

I like Platinum in Blazblue even if I’m not a big fan of the art direction overall.

Darkstalkers was pretty much a masterpiece.

Ghost Trick was cool as well.

Guilty Gear Xrd is so cartoony it’s practically on the cutesy side, especially for May, elphelt and ramlethal (when’s bridget?)

Jet Set Radio is pretty great.

The new Kid Icarus did a great job reinventing the style of the original game.

Kirby’s had solid art direction and spriting in a number of their games. The enemy designs are great too. Especially love Canvas Curse.

Megaman Classic designs are a favorite for me. (Though I think Zero/ZX really revolutionized it)

Loved the Splatoon designs since I first saw them. Lots of spunk, but very cute and I love spats.

Skullgirls has a distinct visual style and great animation all around.

The World Ends with You has a nice style for itself, drawing from graffiti and the modern vector look with nice costume design.

And that’s all I got right now.