Self-Determination *Of Self* [SDT & Creativity/Expression]

[droqen]

I forgot this feeling.

[ A. What do I want to use Self-Determination theory for -- how can I apply Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness to get my games to encourage the particular form of creativity that I like? What is this form of creativity?

  B. Apply SDT specifically to the player's internal processes -- not how to win, or even to think about and understand things beyond the boundaries of their self. I am interested in the player's Autonomy, as it pertains to their self-image. I am interested in the player's Competence in understanding and choosing themselves, and in their self-development. And, I am interested in the player's Relatedness regarding their self as it exists in the world. (see page 2)]

[droqen]

Games that create a shared expressive space... it's easy to make a difficult game, I understand the language of challenge and problem and obscurity, but I don't want to use it.

[droqen]

What creates a good creative space?  There are many games that try. Hmm. Why do so many rely on shared struggle to get there? I'm happy to communicate to someone else my work.

A good question—how can I accept any creative work? Importantly, how can I create space for players to accept their own creative work as valid.

[droqen]

I'm creating a context frame within which all creative work is valued. A collective non-judgemental space. Appreciation runs rampant.

source

Autonomy - "feeling of choice and willingly endorsing one's [own] behaviour"
Competence - "experience of mastery and being effective in one's activity" // danc mentioned something about improvement as part of this, too
Relatedness - "feel connected and belongingness with others"

• feeling of choice
• endorsing one's behaviour
• mastery
• effectiveness
• connectedness
• belongingness

[droqen]

Why 'improvement', where does that belong? Consider that people are capable of deriving meaning from past and future events: what is future 'effectiveness' as seen from the present? If I can see improvement, movement in the direction of effectiveness, then I will feel competence.

[droqen]

Supporting a person's basic psychological needs to promote striving
According to this link what can be done to 'promote . . . people's strivings'?
- attempting to grasp and acknowledge the person's wishes, preferences, and perspectives
- conveying understanding of people's points of view
- providing a rationale for engaging in a behaviour (?)
- providing choice in how to behave
- refraining from trying to control or pressure to act in a certain way
- providing the person with optimal challenges and opportunities (we see 'flow' state here)
- encouraging their sense of intuition (Christopher Alexander)
- structure for mobilizing and organizing behaviour
- structure for providing relevant feedback
- others show interest in person's activities
- others respond to their feelings with empathy
- convey that the person is significant, cared for, loved

[droqen]

I question the 'challenges and opportunities (specific goals that are challenging enough, but not overwhelming)', or at least a lot of the game design field's response to it...

Hmm, flow state. I am so bothered by score.

[droqen]

What 'optimal challenges' would you provide to a painter? This is the kind of game that I am actually interested in designing.

[droqen]

Scoring Systems & Approval; Improvement and Sense of Competence Scaffolding
How do you know you're doing better? Rather than provide a metric which seeks to quantify the qualitative (effectively overriding an intrinsic -- intuitive -- reward with an extrinsic one, even if it is opt-in), provide the player with an intuitive means to perceive and measure their own success. Appeal to the player's intuition. Activate it.

How can we do that?

[droqen]

Looking back at this list, which of these items can help us?

- attempting to grasp and acknowledge the person's wishes, preferences, and perspectives
- conveying understanding of people's points of view
- providing a rationale for engaging in a behaviour (?)
- providing choice in how to behave
- refraining from trying to control or pressure to act in a certain way
- providing the person with optimal challenges and opportunities (we see 'flow' state here)
- encouraging their sense of intuition (Christopher Alexander)
- structure for mobilizing and organizing behaviour
- structure for providing relevant feedback
- others show interest in person's activities
- others respond to their feelings with empathy
- convey that the person is significant, cared for, loved

-structure for providing relevant feedback
-another's supportive perspective on my work; "understanding"
-providing the player with optimal challenges and opportunities --> this becomes providing the player with challenges and opportunities, or situations, which give them an intuitive appreciation of how they've improved

compare the present player's ability with the past player's ability
ask the player to set their own goals, show them when/that they've achieved them

[droqen]

- guess at the player's goals and show them how they've improved in that respect?

this becomes strange when it's baked in; as an example look at how gamers at large have responded to achievements: now there are lists of achievements for every moderately popular game. walkthroughs and such for how to achieve what the game has suggested is worth achieving. even vieweing a list like this takes autonomous competency away from the player.

there are two losses:

1. the player no longer has autonomy over their improvement, because the reward is seen ahead of time. the player is not rewarded for something they chose to do... instead they choose to do something because they seek to be rewarded

2. the player no longer achieves competency of how to 'read' or 'explore' the game and find avenues for improvement; the road is laid out in front of them and they do not 'explore' a space. rather they only improve upon execution of a task

[droqen]

The previous message exposes a bias that I have; I suppose I am more interested in this 'reading' and 'exploration' than I am in execution. I like them both! But if I could only have one, it would absolutely not be execution, and I have perhaps experienced enough situations where execution has outshone exploration. How can I handle this dynamic? Do I even understand it?

[droqen]

On the other hand, perhaps there is no improvement gradient necessary. What if competence can acknowledge that the player is already good enough? But, then good enough in what respect? My idea of self-determination includes self-knowledge, self-understanding, self-confidence, identity.

Consider a dating sim with many different branching outcomes for the player to explore. I don't really engage with this genre much, let alone its fandoms, so forgive my potentially ignorant perspective. Often I have seen players express their favourite routes (characters to date/romance). This is an expression of self-knowledge: the player attains external knowledge (an understanding of all routes) and then passes personal judgement on their own opinion of that external knowledge (that possible-route-space). The external knowledge is a prerequisite for understanding what one route means over another, but the end goal is self-expression.

[droqen]

Do Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness look different through this lens?

- attempting to grasp and acknowledge the person's wishes, preferences, and perspectives
- conveying understanding of people's points of view
- providing a rationale for engaging in a behaviour (?)
- providing choice in how to behave
- refraining from trying to control or pressure to act in a certain way
- providing the person with optimal challenges and opportunities (we see 'flow' state here)
- encouraging their sense of intuition (Christopher Alexander)
- structure for mobilizing and organizing behaviour
- structure for providing relevant feedback
- others show interest in person's activities
- others respond to their feelings with empathy
- convey that the person is significant, cared for, loved

Autonomy - "feeling of choice and willingly endorsing one's [own] behaviour"
Competence - "experience of mastery and being effective in one's activity" // danc mentioned something about improvement as part of this, too
Relatedness - "feel connected and belongingness with others"

I understand the language of challenge and problem and obscurity, but I don't want to use it.

how can I create space for players to accept their own creative work as valid.

[droqen]

Autonomy and Relatedness are obvious; separating the player's experience into multiple branches which they must actively pursue, w/r/t Self-Determination Of One's Own Identity...
- provides choice (in terms of identity), and relevant feedback for that choice
- (perhaps) conveys that the person is significant, cared for, loved (in a dating sim specifically, the character you date provides this)
- can provide the person with optimal challenges and opportunities to self-perceive: as you explore a route, it may show the upsides and downsides of this choice -- temptations, perhaps, to move to a different route
- encouraging their sense of intuitition, refraining from controlling/pressuring: especially if there is no 'good route' or 'bad route', simply choices... the player is asked to choose based on their own feeling

Relatedness: choosing a route places the player within a subcategory of others who also choose this route, one can display a form of identification; but also being among others who share their route that they chose means that everyone is engaged in the displaying of identity, which here is the core activity.