Critique Blog 2: The Wisdom and/or Madness of Crowds
Game Metadata
Game Name: The Wisdom and/or Madness of Crowds
Designer/Developer: Nicky Case
Platform: Web browser
High-level Instructional Goal: Gain a breadth understanding of the social network theory and how trends and ideas are spread. It also touches upon how the collective relationships around you can impact your behavior and beliefs.
Link: https://ncase.me/crowds/
Educational Goals
Crowds briefly covers several ideas from the science of human networks, such as the Majority Illusion, Small Worlds, and Social Contagion. The learning objectives of the game are to explore and experiment with how ideas and behaviors can impact individuals within groups and across groups. The game delves into the different ways social networks can shape people, for better or worse. By creating and removing relationships between individuals, players can observe how contagions, such as behaviors and information, spread through the simulations.
The game heavily relies on text and information provided to the player. It assumes that the player is old enough to comprehend complex ideas and has an understanding of American culture and history. The game employs numerous real-world examples, such as the Stock Market Crash in 2008 and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. It expects the player to understand the descriptions of various theories in social network science, even if they are simplified, to experiment and grasp the concepts within the game.
By gaining a somewhat formal background on social networks, players can transfer this knowledge into the real world by examining dynamics within and around their social networks. This transfer of knowledge will help bring new perspectives on how modern trends and manias emerge, as well as recognize behaviors within our social groups.
Game Elements
The core gameplay loop for Crowds revolves around several steps:
- Introduction to a Social Network Phenomenon: Players are presented with a brief introduction to a social network phenomenon. This sets the stage for the subsequent gameplay.
- Observation of Social Network Stimulation: Players observe the simulation of a social network theory provided by the game. This includes using its own representation of social networks to demonstrate how connections between individuals influence various outcomes.
- Application to Puzzles: Players then apply what they’ve learned from the simulation to solve puzzles within the game. The goal is to “contaminate” every individual within the network by strategically drawing connections.
The inner gameplay loop involved the following actions:
- Drawing and Removing Connections: Players engage by drawing and removing connections between individuals within the social network. These connections serve as the primary mechanism through which players influence the spread of behavior/information or ‘infection’ within the network.
- Influence of Connections: As players add or remove connections, they can observe how these connections influence whether an individual meets the threshold for becoming ‘infected’. This provides feedback and encourages strategic thinking in how the connections impact one another.
- Bonding and Bridging: Players have the option to draw connections within groups, known as bonding, or across groups, known as bridging at the end of the game. Here, players must consider the dynamics of different social groups within the network.
By engaging in these actions, players can explore the intricacies of social network dynamics and experiment to achieve the game’s objectives.
Nouns: simple contagion, complex contagion, connection/relationship, bonds, bridges, threshold
Verbs: drawing, removing, infect, bonding, bridging
Overall, the player experience in Crowds was smooth, with the pacing of the information provided to the players. The game did well in dividing the content into individual levels, by starting from simple ideas and progressively advancing to more complex ideas. While the game featured a higher ratio of reading to gameplay, the experience was enhanced by its great visual and sound design. These elements, along with the casual language, made the reading segments more engaging and the gameplay more fun.
Learning Mechanics
The learning mechanism the game is trying to impact is sense-making and understanding.
Anchored Learning
The game engages the player in realistic rather than theoretical problem-solving. It used real examples to introduce the effects of social networks, as well as realistic scenarios for creating puzzles. This is particularly helpful for players to recognize instances where the phenomena can exist in their day-to-day lives and apply this knowledge to how they perceive the contagions and connections they create in the future.
Spatial Contiguity
The game relies on diagrams of social networks to aid in visualizing its substantial amount of text. Each page of the game contains a considerable amount of text, but it effectively positions the diagrams adjacent to the relevant text and provides clear signage to indicate which diagram corresponds to the text description.
Coherence
Crowds do an excellent job of constraining information and visual elements to what is relevant in the current phase of the game. There are no extraneous words or imagery that serve no purpose in the game. When developers believe additional information might interest the player, they implement subtle UI elements that expand into more information if the player is intrigued to learn more.
Overall Critique
The game was enjoyable, with the appealing aesthetics overall. The sound effects enhanced the experience, particularly the ones accompanying the drawing and removing connections mechanics. While the game provided a solid introduction to social network theory, it remained just that — an introduction. The gameplay was relatively short, consisting of only 6 ‘levels’ and lasting around 30 minutes. It introduced a substantial amount of information to its players in the short playtime, which became very overwhelming for me. I appreciate the simplicity of the information as well as the examples provided, but transitioning from one theory to the next felt too fast. I wished there were more examples to practice with for each theory introduced. I think that would have helped break down the information introduced more modularly, allowing players to digest what they just learned before jumping into another theory.
There was a sandbox mode at the end of the game where players were able to experiment and create their own social networks, adjusting the threshold of how complex the contagion was. However, without providing any context or direction in creating groups in the sandbox, it offered little insight into how the network can apply to the real world. I would not consider the game highly replayable due to its limited gameplay. Nonetheless, I appreciated the little tidbits provided throughout, offering further links and information for players interested in learning more. Overall, the game served as a fun introduction to understanding how we can influence the people within our immediate groups and even beyond.
