- Why do you care about what happens to a character?
- What do you care about that happens to the character?

Shadow of Mordor (nemesis)

The game puts a lot of focus on the moments when these characters initiate combat with you, as well as when either one of you kills the other.

Some of them will return again and again to harass you, leveling up and running away or killing you or getting killed and then reviving somehow... You see a familiar face in a game full of generic enemies. Even if they're another enemy, they're not generic.

The camera pulls in and shows you their name and face, and they say a voice clip that relates to your shared history. "Ha ha I killed you!" or "Grr you killed me!" Do you care more because they appear to care?

- Why do you care about what happens to a character?
- What do you care about that happens to the character?

Animal Crossing (villagers)

The villagers can move in or out, they say things about their lives and state opinions, they might appear in different locations and interact with different parts of your town or island, and their friendship with you increases and decreases. They sometimes give you gifts or ask to buy things. They also participate in various events with you, taking on various different roles depending on what's currently going on.

In earlier Animal Crossing games, they might move out if you aren't paying attention every day, and this made caring feel more vital - you had to show your connection by talking to them every day and telling them to stay, if you wanted them to stay.

Sometimes you're called upon to resolve arguments or crises. "Do I move out?" is one of them, but so is "Hey, X other villager is mad at me! What do I do?"

You care about them because they are a relatable mainstay of your town/island. Every minigame and event that happens features them in some kind of role, so they become familiar, and you can become attached...

CARING FOR NPCS - You need the ILLUSION OF LIFE, and then it's just a matter of giving opportunities for caring...
ILLUSION OF LIFE - This is "Internal Logic" + "Internal Chaos" arranged just so.
INTERNAL LOGIC - How do you create this?
INTERNAL CHAOS - I think I really need to define this one

Yes, I need some more patterns for relying on NPCs - there's illusion of life but also "RELYING ON SYSTEMS" or something like that? Hmm

- Why do you care about what happens to a character?
- What happens to the character that you care about?

Tamagotchi

Why do you care about a Tamagotchi? They are kinda cute and you can solve their problems for them - clean up their poop, heal them when they're sick, feed them when they're hungry.

You can play games with them for fun (I think they want to do it sometimes?), especially when they're happy (?)

If you succeed at caring for them, they grow up and take on newer and more diverse forms as their age increases. (There is 1 baby form, but I think something like 8 adult forms.) Older Tamagotchi will eventually die of old age, but newer ones will live forever.

If you fail to care for them, they will die -- You have a sense of responsibility to this thing that you have chosen to care for, and which you have played games with, but also this thing that might have showed you a new Tamagotchi adult form.

- Caring about what happens to a character (without authored narrative)
- What happens to the character that you care about?

Pokémon (the Pokémon)

Pokemon can faint.
- If all of your Pokemon faint, you are sent to the last Pokecenter. Also, if you were battling a trainer, you lose some money.
- If one of your Pokemon faints, you can't use them in battle anymore.
- Fainted Pokemon don't/can't gain experience points.

Pokemon can gain experience points, level up, and evolve.
- These are all good things for the player's game... When the Pokemon are doing well, they become more powerful, gain new moves, and can entirely transform state (into something more powerful and interesting in almost all cases). For a new player, these forms may be totally unexpected!

The player directs their Pokemon and is responsible for when the group goes back and gets healed.

- Caring about what happens to a character (without authored narrative)
- What happens to the character that you care about?

X-COM

Your soldiers (idk if they're called soldiers by the game - I will call them soldiers here) level up over the course of the game from unspecialized rookies to entry-level specialists to experts. As the game gets harder, their improved stats and special abilities increase your ability to succeed.

[WELL-OFF CHARACTER = SUCCESS]

If a soldier dies, your chance of success on the current level falls, since you're down one person. Your chance of success for the rest of the game may fall as well; a downed soldier may die or at least be out of commission for a while, and you may have to use a lower-levelled soldier.

[SUFFERING CHARACTER = FAILURE]

The player controls these soldiers directly and wrong decisions will lead to quick deaths, but there is a lot of randomness too.

[CONTROL OVER FATE]
[SEMI-CHAOTIC, UNKNOWN FATE]

- Caring about what happens to a character (without authored narrative)
- What happens to the character that you care about?

The Sims

Sims have relatable needs like "Hunger" and "Social" and when those needs go unsatisfied for a long time they throw little tantrums which indicate that they are not just upset, but really suffering because of those unmet needs.

The sims will act on their own but the player can directly control what individual sims do, if they want. A player spends their time decorating a sim's house, spending their money for them, directing them. The player has a lot of control over what happens to the sim.

What can happen to them? Emotional suffering, as above. But the sim can also lose money (which is used by the player to purchase things), they can also get old and die.

Most bad things that happen to a sim cause the player to lose agency. If the sim is emotionally suffering, they may act against the player's wishes to resolve their need. If the sim loses money, the player cannot buy as many things. If the sim dies, the player can no longer control them. -- The player cares about the sim's well being and the better off the sim is, the more ability the player has to influence that.

- Caring about what happens to a character (without authored narrative)
- What happens to the character that you care about?

Heat Signature

Your character has a mini storyline with a goal, which you care about completing. If you die, you can never complete that character's goal.

The game is quite lethal, so you might die at any time.

Your character builds up an inventory of items but this doesn't make you care about the character.

The player has direct control over the character. The game is quite lethal. If the player messes up their planning, their character's death feels like their fault.

I've shuffled the list. Another side question is "what happens to the character that you care about?"

- Heat Signature
- The Sims
- X-COM
- Pokémon (the Pokémon)
- Tamagotchi
- Animal Crossing (villagers)
- Shadow of Mordor (nemesis)
- Disgaea
- Dwarf Fortress
- Etrian Odyssey

I guess the core here is the emotional experience of "caring about what happens to a character (without authored narrative)".

So, how do these 10 games create this effect?

10 games chosen based on relevance, personal familiarity, and finally diversity of design/genre.

- Tamagotchi
- X-COM
- Etrian Odyssey
- Animal Crossing (villagers)
- Shadow of Mordor (nemesis)
- Pokémon (the Pokémon)
- Dwarf Fortress
- Disgaea
- Heat Signature
- The Sims

Quote from: 26:43when I asked if there was anything in the fridge, it was implied that I meant anything TO EAT.

By arguing that the empty fridge is not REALLY empty, I was using the word "thing" in what Thomasson calls a "neutral stance". I used it to mean any and all entities that could possibly be described.

^ But, no, you didn't even use the word thing at all. You said empty.

Quote from: 23:40What do you MEAN "a chair IS simples arranged chair-wise?"

This quote has it exactly backwards. A chair is a word we use to describe this thing.

The problem with Vsauce's arguments about symbols and real things is that it's made of words. "If you believe that there are some simples arranged chair-wise" he says at 23:23. But what are simples? What does it to mean to believe that there are things? Yes, I believe chairs and simples exist. They both exist. Can I count them? Sure, if I decide that I want to count 'chairs and simples' for some reason. These words just refer to ideas which we use to understand reality.

Quote from: 15:52If I take a knife and scrape off a tiny part of this chair ... is it still a chair? I think most of us would say yes, it's still a chair. And it would still be a chair even if I removed a tiny bit again. And again.

A series of tiny innocuous removals is called a sorites sequence.

[..] it seems we must accept that each individual step doesn't annihilate the chair, clearly enough minute removals will leave us with no chair. nothing at all in fact.

but how can that be? how can subtracting zero over and over again EVER give a different result?

clearly, there must be a point at which a tiny change DOES make a difference

The problem is not in the reality of the chair but in the construction of our argument; we ask, "is it a chair?" as if something must either be a chair or not a chair. But some things exist in a middle state, where someone would not really say with confidence either way that it is definitely a chair, or not a chair. However, we have defined the problem to disallow this ambiguity.

Suppose I have a hundred D6 dice. "If I roll them, will the result be over 100?" With confidence, I can say yes.

If I remove a single die at a time, Sorites Sequencing* my collection of a hundred dice down to zero,

* look up the actual definition of this droqen

of course that answer will eventually become a confident No. However when it comes to "chair" we have generally decided that chair is a boolean thing, and not a maybe-floaty-thing.

The issue is the construction of the problem -- it's made out of a false linguistic assumption that a thing must either be something or not, an assumption that we hold because it's generally true and useful and convenient to build our language along those lines.