256A Reading Response #6
This is a response to a principle in Ge Wang’s book Artful Design:
“Principle 6.20 The Tofu Burger Principle” (pg. 341)
What good is a perfectly paved 10 lane highway if the onramps are awful? Well it might mean that the highway is incredible for the few folks who know how to get on it, but a waste of tax payer’s money in everyone else’s eyes. (@ knowledge gate keepers…) Familiarity and expectations are such powerful phenomena. Whether it’s a recommendation from a friend or an app that uses a long-press for a special action, these can often feel more important to me at times than the thing itself. If I’m able to be comfortable or brave enough to try the cool new thing, it’s likely because I’ve been given enough previous context and training, or my expectations have been managed appropriately. This is not only true in games and interactive experiences, but in other media as well. Especially temporal ones like music, film, and dance. If the “new” thing is introduced with care and appropriately framed, it can feel like an invitation to engage with it. However, if it is dropped like a bombshell, especially in a “high-art” context, it can make the audience feel like it’s their fault for not “getting-it”. While it is definitely worth celebrating boundary pushers who stretch our expectations, it is also worth pausing and maybe taking stock of the people who will never eat vegetables again because they were just thrown a giant slab of unseasoned tofu.
In the same spirit, what if a trojan horse looks too good? You have to let it through the gates. These same principles can easily be applied to socially engineer situations, behavior patterns, and, most notably, spending habits. Often the “new thing” is not a novel technique or some crazy narrative, but a new way to extract money or attention from people. It is definitely true that most techniques can be leveraged for a variety of purposes, this one seems particularly problematic in how far reaching it is. It can fundamentally shift someone’s core expectations of an entire medium. How do we try our best to make sure this happens as infrequently as possible? Is it training designers, programmers, or gamers themselves? I have no idea, but it is probably a good idea to start separating the tofu from the plastic soon, while we can still tell the difference.
“Principle 6.20 The Tofu Burger Principle” (pg. 341)
What good is a perfectly paved 10 lane highway if the onramps are awful? Well it might mean that the highway is incredible for the few folks who know how to get on it, but a waste of tax payer’s money in everyone else’s eyes. (@ knowledge gate keepers…) Familiarity and expectations are such powerful phenomena. Whether it’s a recommendation from a friend or an app that uses a long-press for a special action, these can often feel more important to me at times than the thing itself. If I’m able to be comfortable or brave enough to try the cool new thing, it’s likely because I’ve been given enough previous context and training, or my expectations have been managed appropriately. This is not only true in games and interactive experiences, but in other media as well. Especially temporal ones like music, film, and dance. If the “new” thing is introduced with care and appropriately framed, it can feel like an invitation to engage with it. However, if it is dropped like a bombshell, especially in a “high-art” context, it can make the audience feel like it’s their fault for not “getting-it”. While it is definitely worth celebrating boundary pushers who stretch our expectations, it is also worth pausing and maybe taking stock of the people who will never eat vegetables again because they were just thrown a giant slab of unseasoned tofu.
In the same spirit, what if a trojan horse looks too good? You have to let it through the gates. These same principles can easily be applied to socially engineer situations, behavior patterns, and, most notably, spending habits. Often the “new thing” is not a novel technique or some crazy narrative, but a new way to extract money or attention from people. It is definitely true that most techniques can be leveraged for a variety of purposes, this one seems particularly problematic in how far reaching it is. It can fundamentally shift someone’s core expectations of an entire medium. How do we try our best to make sure this happens as infrequently as possible? Is it training designers, programmers, or gamers themselves? I have no idea, but it is probably a good idea to start separating the tofu from the plastic soon, while we can still tell the difference.
