Memory and Game

Have you played Final Fantasy Tactics? If you have, you must remember how tremendous the number of game element that the game has. Although not every of them is important, but heck, in the end you will try to learn and memorize most of them. Not only in Final Fantasy Tactics, all of the games must have a set of information, whether it the rules or the strategy, that the player must remember. Try to remember how much games that you have played. And if each of them has the information at least a fifth of that Final Fantasy Tactics, the total information that you have remembered must be a billion, or more! And all of them is stored in our tiny greyish brain. Isn’t it awesome? Well, actually, no. Remember again the first time you played Final Fantasy Tactics. If you like me, who played for the first time in the PSP version, you must remember how many section of tutorial that it got. And you can access all of them even at the beginning of the game. At first, I tried to be patience scrolling and watching all the tutorials. But after half an hour, my head start to get hurt, and I went into the state “The hell with the tutorial let’s just start the game!” It shows that even though our brain can store a lot of information, but it cannot do it in one go. This is very important for every game designer. Because by making your player cannot cope with the information that the game provided, it only results with the ditching of the game, or worse, making you as the player’s swore enemy. Before that happen, it would be best for us to know more about our brain.

Memory Processes

There are three main processes that the information goes through when it comes to our brain. First, when we perceive sensory information, our brain will encode it. After that, the information is stored in the brain. Lastly, when the information is needed it will be retrieved from our grey matter.

Not every information is treated the same. Even for the same information it could be different depending on who perceive it, or in what condition it is perceived. That is because when in the encoding process, the information is given a value. The value itself depends on the importance of the information within the self. In some people information that the others think as critically important can be treated as trivial. That is why, the most remembered information is the personal one.

Different than as many people belief, information is not stored in a special place in the brain. The place where the information is stored is the same where the information is perceived. When information comes in our brain, it comes in many specific details that each is processed by a distinct region of our brain cortex (whether it is visual, auditory, etc.). The same region will also be used to store the information. Even so, cortex can only hold the details of the information. They don’t know the value of what they stored (talk about ignorance). The one who defines all of those details as a memory is hippocampus. The only exception is when memory has been consolidated as long term memory. If that happens, hippocampus will cut the relation with the specific cortex regions that contain that memory. Even so, hippocampus doesn’t irresponsible as it seems. Before it terminates the relation with the cortex, it has already taught the cortex to construct the memory by itself. However, this only happens if the communication between hippocampus and cortex has been occurred for a long time which is usually it takes a several year to reach this condition.

The role of hippocampus is very important. Without it, information that is stored in cortex won’t have a meaning. Actually, this role of hippocampus is also what makes the similar information from the same cortex region yet come from different memory is treated different. It looks like there is a unique link that connect the name of the memory (that is contained in hippocampus) and the details of the memory (the information that is stored in cortex). This link does not only connect the appropriate details, but also show the clarity and the amount of resources the brain needed to call the memory. The better quality of the link and the bigger the number of the details it connects, the clearer and the less resources it is used. Which in turn, make the memory easier to be remembered and more resistant to change.

The quality of the link depends on the importance the memory. The more crucial the memory, the stronger is the link. However, there are the other ways to strengthen the memory. Which are by repetition and elaboration.

When we remembered a certain memory, usually the first things that comes up in our mind is not the whole memory. Most of the time they are only the partial of the details, either the visual, auditory, emotion, or anything else. After we remembered those, our brain will quickly traverse through the link that connects those initial details with the memory. After it reached the name of the memory, it traverses back to every details the memory contains. This activity will make the link becomes stronger. And it was not only happened once or twice. Every time the link is being traversed, it grows stronger. That is why repetition is important. By remembering the memory more often, the stronger the link will become.

Not every links that connect the details of the same memory has the same quality. Depend on how good the detail is remembered, the quality of the link can varies. Strengthening a specific link can be achieved through elaboration. By thinking more about what is actually happened from a memory, it will improve the quality of the link that connect a certain detail that previously is pretty weak. For example, Abby and Beck are having a chat about the party last night. Beck said that Carla came at that party. However, Abby denied it, saying that she didn’t see her. To prove it, Beck digging more of his memory, and remember the time Carla came. By doing this, Beck is strengthening the detail of time that was ignored before (because the link is significantly weak that its value is almost not considered).

From those two, the best way to strengthen memory is through elaboration. That is because when we elaborate, we actually also do the repetition. However, because the memory is malleable at that state, elaboration can also change the shape of memory entirely.

Belief creation

The function of memory is not only to remember the past events, but also to value the new probable event that is yet to come. This function is clearly shown when we need to make decision. In that situation, other than looking at the available information about the option, we are also seeking advice from our memory. If for example, in the past we have been in the same situation and we chose a particular option, we believe that if we do the same it will give the same result as the past. Not limited to that, even if we have never been in a similar situation, we will try to predict the consequence by measuring with one or more of our memories. For instance, the event is perceived to have the details of (a), (b), (c), and (d). At the current, we have the memory of [A], which contains the details of (a), (b) and the consequence of (α); and [B], which contains the details of (c), (d) and the consequence of (β). Because of that, we believe that the event will give the amount of consequence of (γ), which comes from (α) + (β). However, when the event passed, the memory that we got is not only [C], which has the consequence of (γ), but also the memory of [D], the actual event that has the consequence of (Ω) and the other details.

The selection of which memory being used to measure the new event depends on the quality of the link. The stronger the link, the bigger chance it will be used rather than the other memories (although they have quite similar or more details).

Cognitive Load Theory

The information that a person must comprehend to solve a problem is very important, especially when it comes to games. Give them too little then the problem will be easily to solve and not be challenging. Giving it too much, then people will have a hard time to finish it. Cognitive load theory (CLT) stated there are three types of load that people will have when he learns something. First is intrinsic load, which is the load that comes from the learning objects. The amount of load from this type is fixed, and cannot be changed. The second is extraneous load. Extraneous load is the load that is not related to learning process. Extraneous load comes from the way the information is presented. Different than intrinsic load, the amount of extraneous load can be changed by making the learning material more easily to understand. The last is germane load. Germane load comes when our mind tries to analyzing, categorizing, and making sense of the information.  Unlike extraneous that is undesired, germane load should be maximized. The reason is because with the increase of the germane load, the more energy the person used to seek the nature of the material. Thus, it leads the person to understand the material better.

Some people said life is a never ending of learning (and so the reason why life is hard). Well, I don’t know about the never ending part, but CLT can also be applied to problem solving.  Let’s look it from chess. In every player’s move, player is confronted with a problem (or challenge depends on how bad the situation). At that time, the intrinsic load comes from the number of element that contribute to the solution, which is the remaining pawns. Actually the pawns interaction (their movement pattern) also increases the intrinsic load. However, it only happens for the player who has just started playing chess. For a chess experts, this information has already memorized, so it won’t become an intrinsic load again. For them, that information works as germane load (will be discussed later). In chess, aside the opponent strategy, all of the information is visible to the player. This nature helps to reduce the extraneous load. Imagine how hard it is if the opponent pawns are not shown, or all the pawns look the same, or every pawn has a health point that must be diminished before it can be captured. However, to come up with a solution, it is not enough just by knowing the elements that shape to the solution. We also need to identify the problem and manipulate the elements. Those activity will contribute to the increase of germane load. Germane load occurs when a person tries to remember the information that can be used to produce the solution. For instance, the decision that the person has made in the similar situation in the past along with its consequences. Because the germane load comes when the person tries to recall the past memory, its amount depends on the memory link quality. Just as explained before, the more strong the link, the more easily it is to be remembered. When a memory is more remembered than the others, it will always appear first and become dominant every time the person seeks a related memory. If that happens, it will drive the person to approach the problem by using more or less similar way with what s/he has done in the past. Before long, this memory will shape how the player plays his/her game, or in the other words, his/her play style.  

Chess and Memory

It’s not argued anymore how brilliant the gameplay of the chess. Through its simple rules, it can create a nearly limitless situation that requires the player to asses each of possible outcome from it. The question is, how can it be? At the start of the writing, I mentioned how hard it was to remember every rule in Final Fantasy Tactics. But why it is not happened with chess? Well, the answer is actually obvious. That was because chess delivers all of those information better. It is better because it complies with how our brain works.

As you know, the action that the player can do in chess is so darn simple. It’s only moving a chess pieces to the next desired square whenever your turn comes. Even so, this action is directly contributed to the outcome of the game. Do a wrong move, then the percentage of your success will change. The cool thing is, the decision of what action that you take is transferrable. Although each game is different, but they can be quite similar with what you have encountered in the past. If you found yourself in that situation, I’m sure what you will do is dig your memories searching the more or less similar situation. If you don’t have it, you will not hesitate to create a prediction based on your available memories. This is exactly what I said previously with belief creation. And chess supports it. That is why, if you want to be a master of chess, just play a lot of games, and try to remember all of the situation that you have encountered. But how can you recall all of those information? Luckily the gameplay of chess is repetitive. Like I stated before, to make the memory become stronger, repetition is required. By facing a similar situation and try to remember the memory again and again, it will make the link of the memory becomes stronger. Before long, the energy that is used to recall that memory is reduced and you can remember it quite instantly!

Have you wondered why you are not stress at the start of the chess game? I mean, compared to at the later game, the possibility that the game can bring at the beginning of the game is greater right? And if the more possibility, the more the load is placed on our brain; why then we are not getting confuse by them? The answer is, to be blunt, because we don’t care! We don’t try to asses all of the possibilities, because not only it is hard, but also because the risk is low. At the start of the game, we still have all our pawns, our king still stand firmly in his position, and the enemy pawns is still far away. So whatever move that we did at that time is not really important. Compare it to at the later of the game, where the risk is bigger, where every move is counted. In that condition we must think every possible option that is available, thus increasing the load to our brain, and when it surpass the brain capacity, we’ll susceptible to stress. From this explanation, we learn that the number of possibility or available option should be in inverse with the risk at hand.

Memory Deliverance in Game

A good game should drive its player to create, store, and retrieve memory at every second of the game. Based on emotion vs time graph (I really need to search a suitable name for it) that I explained in the previous article, we can see that a game is composed of a number of mountains where each of them contains one raise trend and one fall trend.

 When the trend is increasing, the emotion that the player get from the game is also increasing. However, the amount of it is decreasing with the time. This trend starts just after the player found the relief, where s/he has found the right action to solve the problem. Along this trend, the player will mostly repeat a certain action that s/he just found. This behavior makes the raise trend is best used for enhancing the player memory through the repetition. However, just doing the same thing again and again must be dull. Luckily, because at this time the emotion is increasing, it means that there are a low risk that the game gives to the player. Because of that, it is safe to give a lot of option to the player during this time. By giving many options while in the low risk condition will help the player to unconsciously obtain a new memories that will be tested in the next fall trend.

In the fall trend, player will meet a though challenge which give him/her a decrease in emotion. At this state, player will try to seek the best solution for his/her problem. Most of the time, the source of that solution resides in the player memories. Because of that, the fall trend is best used for elaboration. By searching deeper through his/her memories that he got in previous raise trend, he will revisit those memories and make them clearer and stronger. Also, to obtain the solution, the player must not only remember the past memories, but also identifying and analyzing them. This will increase the germane load, and encourage the player to create a certain belief by using his/her memories.

Even so, it doesn’t mean the delivery of information must be strict like that. The graph only shows one of the best ways to do it. After all, we cannot control (directly) what is happening inside the player mind.

Well, that’s all that I could share. Hope you memorized it.