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What’s this math teacher going to do to keep busy during summer break? Get back to my coding roots! That’s what!

What?

Over the course of the summer I’m going to experiment with writing music using Python and broadcast the whole adventure live on Twitch!

When?

In the “evenings”, starting around 7pm EDT.  As often as I’m able to. Follow me on Twitch for notifications or watch for updates on Twitter.  If you miss out on the live coding, don’t worry!  I’ll also be editing and uploading “abridged” versions to YouTube.

Why?

Because I think it will be fun!  And there’s math!  It’s fun with math!

As a teacher, I want get better at encouraging students to “play with math”.  However, over the course of the school year I’ve spent so much time trying to prepare students for SOL tests that I’ve forgotten what that looks like.   The only solution I could think of is for me to “play with math” again, and this is my way of doing that.

But why Python?

Several reasons actually.  First, it’s relatively easy to read.  Second, it’s been growing in popularity as a platform for scientific computing.   Third, I’m terrible at it.

Yes. That’s right.  I’m terrible at it.

I’m not exactly a Python “noob”, but it’s been about a decade since I’ve used it for anything and that was relatively simple scripting.  That’s part of the adventure here!   I’m going to make mistakes, spend hours debugging, and be knee deep in technical documentation.  Furthermore, every stupid mistake is going to be broadcast live on the Internet.  But you know what?  I’m okay with that.  It’s part of the learning process and unavoidable when “playing with math”.

How?

You want to follow along and experiment on your own?  Great!

I’m using Anaconda to manage my Python installation.   In addition to that, I also installed the sounddevice library by using the pip command from an Anaconda shell. Everything after that is all done live!  After each live code sessions, an updated source code file will be posted on GitHub.

Video Archive

After each session, I’ve been going back through the recording and editing to speed up through the boring parts.  The resulting “timelapse” videos are being posted to my YouTube channel.

 

 

 

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As a game developer turned teacher, the one most difficult part of the transition was paper. I’m not even talking about the thousands of copies of handouts and worksheets for students. I’m talking about the paper that compromises the layers and layers of bureaucratic processes that any sufficiently large organization develops over time. The forms. The reports. The mundane paperwork that must be done to uphold the laws that govern the operation of a school.

I get it.

It’s stuff that must be done.

The problem isn’t that it exists, it’s how schools deal with it. The school has limited resources available so it needs to get the most out of the resources it has. That makes sense, right? The school administration has ready access to a large number of highly trained, adaptable, resourceful, and intelligent individuals on hand with a wide range of skills covering every discipline imaginable. It has teachers.

I’m always more than happy to help when needed! I just get frustrated when I’m asked to perform work that could be reduced or eliminated by technology.

In my last post, I talked about school being a game and the need to meta-game it. One of the first issues that I think we need to talk about are “opportunity costs”. Every hour that teachers spend on administrative tasks is an hour that is not being spent on teaching. Furthermore, these costs are recurring. If schools could automate 10 minutes worth of administrative tasks each day from a teacher’s workload, they would save each teacher about 30 hours of work over the course of the year. That’s a lot of time that teachers could reallocate towards improving instruction.

Teacher time is a valuable resource and finite one. Education needs to be engineered to get the most out of that time. Based on my short time as a teacher so far, here are some of the systems that I think could be optimized:

We need a complete “Electronic Individualized Educational Plan Record” system overhaul. The current generation of “Student Information Systems” is grossly insufficient to deal with the complexity of our educational legislation. Schools need to keep documented records of adhering to a student’s legally entitled accommodations, and a significant amount this documentation is still being done on paper. We have the technology to design an educational record system that is secure, fault tolerant, and efficient. It would take an substantial initial effort, but imagine the time that it could save school staff in the long run.

We need a better “asset management system” for school property used by students. It’s very frustrating to me as a teacher when I need to fill out carbon copied checkout lists for textbooks by hand in the year 2016. When a student doesn’t return the textbook, I’m required to fill out another carbon copy form, manually address an envelop to the student’s home, and put it in the mail bin for processing. Why isn’t this process electronic yet? I should be able to snap a picture on my phone, press a button to assign it to a student or document its return, and everything else should be taken care of by a computer program. We clearly have the technology to do this.

We need a “behavioral intervention tracking and diagnostic system”. The school keeps paper records of certain student behaviors such as tardy slips and misconduct reports — which again are filled out by hand on carbon copy paper. There are also some cases where the teacher is expected to intervene in certain ways such as contacting the parent. The issue is that there are so many different rules that I need to keep track of and responses that I need to take to that data. We need a system that that can track behavior data from multiple sources and suggest interventions based on a statistical models of what has and has not worked for that student.

On top of moving from antiquated “pen and paper” systems, we also need to improve interoperability between the educational software we already use. There’s some good ideas happening with the Tin Can API, but the support from technology providers just isn’t there yet. I love to see new ideas in educational software! The problem is that some of these applications seem to neglect the teacher’s experience with the product. We need to set higher standards for educational software.

Whenever my students complete a learning activity on the computer, it should automatically go into my grade-book. The grade-book should automatically flag any items that need to be manually graded, and the process of providing feedback to the student should be as stream-lined as possible. More detailed information about the student’s performance should be stored into a database for later statistical analysis.

The other problem is the lack of standards regarding assessment items. For example, my students love Kahoot. I would totally use it way more if it were easier for me import multiple choice questions from an existing database. If I could program randomly generated questions in MyOpenMath, export them to a standardized format, and then import them into Kahoot, I would be one happy teacher.

I don’t think any of these technologies are unrealistic. It’s not like I’m asking for facial recognition software to replace hall passes or an artificially intelligent grader (although those would be kinda awesome too). If schools want to instill “21st Century Skills” in their students, they need to lead by example. In the “21st Century”, knowing what processes can be automated by technology is a crucial skill to have. To do otherwise is a disservice to both teachers and students.

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I love games! I love playing them. I love making them. I love theorizing about them. They’re an essential part of who I am as a person.

I used to think schools needed more games.

I was working as a video game developer and was fascinated by “tutorial levels”. You know, that part of the game that is designed to help you learn how to play the game. Some games neglect their tutorial level and it comes off feeling like a dry lecture. Go here. Push button. Repeat. However, I’ve also been completely awed by some games that take their tutorial levels to a completely different level. Games like The Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars for example. The experience is so seamlessly integrated with the “game” that you don’t even realize you’re playing a tutorial. You just play. By the time you’ve completed the tutorial, you were totally immersed in the game and knew exactly what you needed to.

I used to think schools needed more games.

There’s an certain authenticity to this learning that I never really experienced as a student. I thought if I could design the perfect “tutorial level” for math, then everything else would just fall into place. The students would have fun. They’d learn real mathematical concepts in a natural environment. They’d grow and develop as individuals and as a group. I’d be like a “math teacher” and “guild leader” all rolled into one (although I probably wouldn’t run IWAY).

I used to think schools needed more games…

…and then I started teaching.

The problem is not that school doesn’t have enough games, it’s that school has too many games. Now, I’m not talking about the latest web app: Kahoot, Quizizz, Manga High, etc.. Those are certainly a type of game that has a place in school, although perhaps the number of apps is getting overabundant as well, but I’m talking about the games that are school. School itself is like a “Live Action Role Playing Game”. Everyone invents their character, acts out their role, cooperates with some players, competes with others, and are rewarded or punished in accordance with the game master’s rules.

Now school being RPG isn’t a problem on its own. The problem is that there are a whole bunch of mini-RPGs being played simulatenously, and all of them have conflicting rules. Here is a short list of a few games that might be going on at a given time:

  • The students are playing a game with each other. They compete with each other for social status while cooperating against outside threats to their system.
  • The teachers are playing a game with their students. The teachers are trying to maximize student learning while the students are trying to minimize the work they have to do.
  • The administrators are playing a game with their teachers. The administrators are trying to maximize test scores while minimizing teacher burn-out.
  • The school board is playing a game with their administrators. The school board is trying to maximize community approval while minimizing school funding.
  • The parents are playing a game with their school board. The parents are trying to maximize the quality of education while minimizing the amount of attention paid to local elections.

Within these games, temporary alliances are made to accomplish mutual goals. Teachers and parents might cooperate to get students in for extra tutoring. Administrators and school boards might cooperate for better community awareness. Sometimes these alliances help the system as whole and sometimes they detract from it. It’s one of the most complex network systems I’ve ever seen.

I used to think schools needed more games…

…and now I think schools need to have a closer look at the games that are already being played there.

In most of these games, competition is the dominant strategy. Students that are competing for limited scholarship funds have little incentive to help one another. Schools that receive funding based on standardized test scores have a very strong incentive to focus on instructional strategies that produce short-term results over long-term retention. School boards are underappreciated as a position of political power and tend to just “fly under the radar”. Until we fix the reward systems so that they encourage cooperation, the games will continue to be frustratingly difficult for everyone involved.

We need to start meta-gaming school. We need to look at how the rules affect the relationships between players. We need to look how those rules can be changed to encourage more co-operation and less competition between the parties involved. Until we have these conversations, we’re never going to win.

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Disclosure:  This article is primarily mathematical in nature but the very act of discussing politics makes it difficult to fully remove bias.  I feel obligated to disclose that I’m a member of the Green Party.  While I’m neither a Republican or Democrat, I tend to lean to the north-west section of the Nolan chart.  However, I do intend to try my best to make this analysis as neutral as humanly possible.

During my regular social media browsing the other day, I came across two posts of interest.

The first was a statement from the Green Party of Virginia about why they are not endorsing Bernie Sanders ahead of the primary.  While I had expected this to be the case, there was a section of this statement that really caught my attention: “Whether individual Greens choose to vote for Sanders on March 1st is a choice that will depend on their own calculus of what is best for the country” (emphasis mine).

Since one of the co-chairs of the GPVA is a mathematician, I could reasonably assume that the reference to calculus was intended to mean exactly what it says. The problem is that the general population doesn’t usually look at elections from this perspective.  People tend to vote based on gut feelings rather than mathematical analysis. For this reason, I disagree with the GPVA’s decision. I feel that they have the responsibility to provide party members with information on how to maximize their influence on the election and calculus isn’t a strong point for most voters. If the GPVA refuses to take sides in the primary, then I feel obligated to do so in their place.

The second was a data visualization of how various primary candidates would fare against each other in a general election:

With “Super Tuesday” fast approaching, this was exactly the kind of information that I needed!  This effectively provides a payoff matrix for the primary candidates to which I can apply my “political calculus”.
Continue reading →

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While building up my settlements in Fallout 4, I noticed that there was a “Powered Speaker” and wondered what I could do with it.   Between the “Interval Switch”, “Delayed On Switch” and the “Delayed Off Switch”, I figured I had enough tools to make some some music in my Coastal Cottage.  To start, I decided on remaking one of the first songs I learned on guitar: Nirvana’s Come As You Are.

Despite my best efforts, it’s still not quite perfect.  It seems like the timing on the switches isn’t as exact as I needed it to be for this wiring system, and it seems like some switches will occasionally stay on despite having no power.   I found that the most reliable method was to alternate between two offset interval switches with a slight overlap to form a loop, and use a chain of delays to space out the individual notes.

Resource-wise, I found myself needing tons of copper and ceramic.  The most time consuming part was setting up the delays and notes via terminal.  Below is the diagram I created as a reference so I could set several things at once.

Fallout 4 - Come As You Are

I hope this will inspire some discussion on how to create music in Fallout 4.  If you put one together or have an idea on how to streamline the process, please share in the comments!

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No, this isn’t a raven and writing desk riddle.   Teachers and game developers have more in common than you might think!

You need to assume that any instructions you give will be promptly ignored

The classroom is like a giant sandbox game.  You need to think of every conceivable action that might be taken by the player/student and ensure there are some appropriate consequences in place.  Preferably realistic ones too. You could go with the insta-death lava to restrict movement if you want, but expect some angry phone calls from parents.

For every hour you spend planning you wish you had three

Seriously.  The difference between a well planned project/lesson is night and day.   Unfortunately, I don’t think my principal will go for the 1:1 class period to prep period schedule…

For every hour you spend working, you spend another hour documenting what you did

It’s called CYA: Cover. Your. WE DON’T SAY THAT AT SCHOOL!

Would it be out of line for me to start tracking student behaviors in Bugzilla?

You refer to 60+ hour work weeks as “normal”

Veterans of the video game industry are no strangers to “crunch time”.   It’s the unavoidable time period before the end of a project where “get it out the door” fever starts to set in.  The title ships, you briefly reflect on what worked and what didn’t, then the next project starts and before you know it you’re back in “crunch” mode.  Teachers refer to this cycle as “a school day”.

There’s a ton of little things you’d like to fix, you just don’t have the time

These are things that were probably noticed by some highly caffeinated tester in a poorly lit basement somewhere, added to the bug database, and ultimately stamped with those three fateful letters: WNF.  Will. Not. Fix.  “Yes, there’s a typo in question 4.  GET OVER IT.”

 

 

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Dear friends, fellow math teachers, game developers and artists.

I’ve got this little dilemma I’m wondering if you could help me with. You see, part of my geometry curriculum deals with compass and straightedge constructions. My colleagues have suggested that this is a topic we, not exactly skip, but… I dunno what the appropriate word here is… trim?  They argue that it’s largely irrelevant for our students, is overly difficult, and represents a minimal component of the SOL test. And I don’t think they’re wrong. I haven’t used a compass and straightedge since I left high school either.

However, something about these constructions strikes as beautiful. Part of me thinks that’s enough reason to include them, but it also got me thinking about more practical applications of them.   Where did I use them?  I used them making video games.  Video games build worlds out of “lines” and “spheres”.  Beautiful worlds.

My question is this, do my 3D artist friends feel the same way?  Do you remember your compass and straightedge constructions?  Do you use them, or some derivation thereof, in your everyday work?  Are you glad to have learned them?  Or are the elementary constructions made so trivial in modern 3D modeling software that you don’t even think about them?

Please comment and share.

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It’s been a while since my last post, but I’m still here!  A lot has happened in the past 6 months and I’m not trying to be neglectful of my blogging.  In an effort to give myself some added motivation, I’m going to try to outline some of the things I have planned for this blog.  By making this list public, hopefully I’ll feel pressured to hold myself to it.  So, without further ado, here’s what you have to look forward to in the months to come:

  • I’m currently working on a custom WordPress theme for this blog.  It’s taking a bit longer than anticipated, but it’s coming!
  • I’ve spent a good deal of time transitioning my courses to use OER materials.  I wanted to take some time to reflect on the transition from MyMathLab to MyOpenMath and what the future may hold.
  • I’ve experimented in the past with automating my course syllabus creation.  Now, I’m trying to take this one step further and generate an entire course.  I don’t know how far I’m going to get with this, but would like to at least do an article about how I think LMSs could save instructors a great deal of time through dynamic course data.
  • It’s been a year since my foray into local politics.  I’d like to take a look back on what happened since then.
  • Lately, I’ve been playing a bit of FPS as opposed to my usual RPGs.   It’s given me ideas for some new metagaming posts.
  • Finally, and perhaps the biggest news, I’ve been offered a new job!  I don’t want to give away too much yet, but let’s just say there’s potentially going to be a lot more math lessons here in the future!  I do, however, feel obliged to reiterate that this is my personal blog and the views expressed here do not reflect the positions of any of my employers: past, present or future.

Anyways, I hope there’s some exciting things to come.  Thanks for reading!

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I recently finished reading Michio Kaku’s The Future of the Mind and found it very thought provoking.  A combination of cutting-edge advances in psychology, artificial intelligence and physics, mixed together with numerous pop-culture references made for a very informative and inspiring read.  Many of the ideas presented seemed very reminiscent of the narratives in The Mind’s I, but with a greater emphasis on the practicality of technological advances.  While I would no doubt recommend it to an interested reader, I don’t exactly intend for this post to turn into a book review.  This is more of a personal reflection on some of my thoughts while reading it.

Defining Consciousness: Kaku vs Jaynes

My first point of intrigue begins with Kaku’s definition of consciousness, which he calls the “space-time theory of consciousness”:

Consciousness is the process of creating a model of the world using multiple feedback loops in various parameters (e.g., in temperature, space time, and relation to others), in order to accomplish a goal (e.g. find mates, food, shelter).

Consciousness is a notoriously difficult phenomenon to define, as this is as good of a definition as any in the context of the discussion. What’s interesting about this definition is that it begins with a very broad base and scales upward.  Under Kaku’s definition, even a thermostat has consciousness — although to the lowest possible degree.  In fact, he defines several levels of consciousness and units of measurement within those levels.  Our thermostat is at the lowest end of the scale, Level 0, as it has only a single feedback loop (temperature).  Level 0 also includes other systems with limited mobility but more feedback variables such as plants.  Level 1 consciousness adds spacial awareness reasoning, while Level 2 adds social behaviour.  Level 3 finally includes human consciousness:

Human consciousness is a specific form of consciousness that creates a model of the world and then simulates it in time, by evaluating the past to simulate the future. This requires mediating and evaluating man feedback loops in order to make a decision to achieve a goal.

This definition is much closer to conventional usage of the word “consciousness”.  However, for me this definition seemed exceptionally similar to a very specific definition I’d seen before.  This contains all the essential components of Julian Jaynes’ definition in The Origin of Consciousness!

Jaynes argued that the four defining characteristics of consciousness are an analog “I”, (2) a metaphor “me”, (3) inner narrative, and (4) introspective mind-space.  The “analog ‘I'” is similar to what Kaku describes as the brain’s “CEO” — the centralized sense of self that makes decisions about possible courses of action.  Jaynes’ “introspective mind-space” is analogous to the “model of the world” in Kaku’s definition — our comprehensive understanding of the environment around us.  The “metaphor ‘me'” is the representation of oneself within that world model that provides the “feedback loop” about the costs and benefits of hypothetical actions.  Finally, what Jaynes’ describes as “inner narrative” serves as the simulation in Kaku’s model.

This final point is the primary difference between the two models.  One of the possible shortcomings of Jaynes’ definition is that the notion of an “inner narrative” is too dependent on language.  However, Kaku avoids this confusion by using the term “simulation”.  Jaynes’ hypothesis was that language provided humanity with the mental constructs needed to simulate the future in a mental model.  I think the differences in language are understandable given the respective contexts.  Jaynes was attempting to establish a theory of how consciousness developed, while Kaku was attempting to summarize the model of consciousness that has emerged through brain imaging technology.

While I must admit some disappointment that Jaynes was not mentioned by name, it’s partly understandable.  Jaynes’ theory is still highly controversial and not yet widely accepted in the scientific community.  With Kaku’s emphasis on scientific advances, it might have been inappropriate for this book.  Nevertheless, I’d be interested to hear Kaku’s thoughts on Jaynes’ theory after having written this book.  Jaynes didn’t have the luxuries of modern neuroscience at his disposal, but that only makes the predictions of the theory more fascinating.

Artificial Intelligence (or the illusion thereof)

While I continued to read on, I happened to come across a news story proclaiming that Turing Test had been passed.  Now, there’s a couple caveats to this claim.  For one, this is not the first time a computer has successfully duped people into thinking it was human.  Programs like ELIZA and ALICE have paved the way for more sophisticated chatterbots over the years.  What makes this new bot, Eugene, so interesting is the way in which it confused the judges.

There’s plenty of room for debate about the technical merits of Eugene’s programming.  However, I do think Eugene’s success is a marvel of social engineering.  By introducing itself as a “13-year old Ukrainian boy”, the bot effectively lowers the standard for acceptable conversation.  The bot is (1) pretending to be a child and (2) pretending to be a non-native speaker.  Childhood naivety excuses a lack of knowledge about the world, while the secondary language excuses a lack of grammar.   Together, these two conditions provide a cover for the most common shortcomings of chatterbots.

With Kaku’s new definition of consciousness in mind, I started to think more about the Turing Test and what it was really measuring.  Here we have a “Level 0” consciousness pretending to be a “Level 3” consciousness by exploiting the social behaviors typical of a “Level 2” consciousness.  I think it would be a far stretch to label Eugene as a “Level 3” consciousness, but does his social manipulation ability sufficiently demonstrate “Level 2” consciousness? I’m not really sure.

Before we can even answer that, Kaku’s model of consciousness poses an even more fundamental question.  Is it possible to obtain “Level (n)” consciousness without obtaining “Level (n-1)”?

If yes, then maybe these levels aren’t really levels at all.  Maybe one’s “consciousness” isn’t a scalar value, but a vector rating of each type of consciousness.  A a human would score reasonably high in all four categories. Eugene is scoring high on Level 0, moderate on Level 2, and poor on Levels 1 and 3.

If no, then maybe the flaw in the A.I. development is that we’re attempting to develop social skills before spacial skills.  This is partly due to the structure of the Turing Test.  Perhaps, like the Jaynesian definition of consciousness, we’re focused a bit too much on the language.  Maybe it’s time to replace the Turing Test with something a little more robust that takes multiple levels of consciousness into consideration.

The MMORPG-Turing Test

Lately I’ve been playing a bit of Wildstar.  Like many popular MMORPGs, one of the significant problems facing the newly launched title is rampant botting.   As games of this genre have grown in popularity, the virtual in-game currency becomes a commodity with real-world value.  The time-consuming process behind the collection of in-game currency, or gold farming, provides ample motivation for sellers to automate the process using a computer program.  Developers like Carbine are in a constant arms race to keep these bots out of the game to preserve the game experience for human players.

Most of these bots are incredibly simple.  Many of them simply play back a pre-recorded set of keystrokes to the application.  More sophisticated bots might read, and potentially alter, the game programs memory to perform more complicated actions.  Often times these bots double as an advertising platform for the gold seller, and spam the in-game communication channels with the sellers website.  It’s also quite common for the websites to contain key-loggers, as hijacking an existing player’s account is far more profitable than botting itself.

While I’m annoyed by bots as much as the next player, I must admit some level of intrigue with the phenomena.  The MMORPG environment is essentially a Turing Test at an epic scale.  Not only is the player-base of the game is on the constant look out for bot-like behavior, but also the developers implement algorithms for detecting bots.  A successful AI would not only need to deceive humans, but also deceive other programs.  It makes me wonder how sophisticated a program would need to be so that the bot would be indistinguishable from a human player.   The odds are probably stacked against such a program.

Having played games of this type for quite some time, I’ve played with gamers who are non-native speaker or children and I’ve also seen my share of bots.  While the “13 year old Ukrainian boy” ploy might work in a text-based chat, I think it would be much more difficult to pull off in an online game.  It’s difficult to articulate, but human players just move differently.  They react to changes in the environment in a way that is fluid and dynamic.  On the surface, they display a certain degree of unpredictability while also revealing high-level patterns.  Human players also show goal oriented behavior, but the goal of the player may not necessarily align with the goal of the game. It’s these type of qualities  that I would expect to see from a “Level 1” consciousness.

Furthermore, online games have a complex social structure.  Players have friends, guilds, and random acquaintances.  Humans tend to interact differently depending on the nature of this relation.  In contrast, a typical chatterbot treats everyone it interacts with the same.  While some groups of players have very lax standards for who they play with, other groups hold very high standards for player ability and/or sociability.  Eugene would have a very difficult time getting into an end-game raiding guild.  If a bot could successfully infiltrate such a group, without their knowledge, it might qualify as a “Level 2” consciousness.

When we get to “Level 3” consciousness, that’s where things get tricky.  The bot would not only need to understand the game world well enough to simulate the future, but it would also need to be able to communicate those predictions to the social group.  It is, after all, a cooperative game and that communication is necessary to predict the behavior of other players.  The bot also needs to be careful not to predict the future too well.  It’s entirely possible for a bot to exhibit super-human behavior and consequently give itself away.

With those conditions for the various levels of consciousness, MMORPGs also enforce a form of natural selection on bots.  Behave too predictably?  Banned by bot detection algorithms.  Fail to fool human players?  Blacklisted by the community.  Wildstar also potentially offers an additional survival resource in the form of C.R.E.D.D., which could require the bot to make sufficient in-game funds to continue its subscription (and consequently, its survival).

Now, I’m not encouraging programmers to start making Wildstar bots.  It’s against the Terms of Service and I really don’t want to have to deal with anymore than are already there.  However, I do think that an MMORPG-like environment offers a far more robust test of artificial intelligence than a simple text-based chat if we’re looking at consciousness using Kaku’s definition.   Perhaps in the future, a game where players and bots can play side-by-side will exist for this purpose.

Conclusion

When I first started reading Kaku’s Future of the Mind, I felt like his definition of consciousness was merely a summary of the existing literature.  As I continued reading, the depth of his definition seemed to continually grow on me.  In the end, I think that it might actually offer some testable hypotheses for furthering AI development.  I still think Kaku needs to read Jaynes’ work if he hasn’t already, but I also think he’s demonstrated that there’s room for improvement in that definition.   Kaku certainly managed to stimulate my curiosity, and I call that a successful book.

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In a previous post, I mentioned my fascination with Twitch Plays Pokemon (TPP). The reason behind this stems from the many layers of metagaming that take place in TPP. As I discussed in my previous post, the most basic definition of metagaming is “using resources outside the game to improve the outcome within the game”. However, there’s another definition of metagaming that has grown in usage thanks to Hofsteadter: “a game about a game”. This reflexive definition of metagaming is where the complexity of TPP begins to shine. Let’s take a stroll through some various types of metagaming taking place in TPP.

Outside resources

At the base level, we have players making use of a variety of outside resources to improve their performance inside the game. For Pokemon, the most useful resources might include maps, beastiaries, and Pokemon-type matchups. In TPP, many players also bring with them their own previous experiences with the game.

Game about a game

Pokemon itself is a metagame. Within the world of the game, the Pokemon League is its own game within the game. A Pokemon player is playing the role of a character who is taking part in game tournament. What makes TPP so interesting is that that it adds a game outside the game. Players in TPP can cooperate or compete for control of the game character. In effect, TPP is a meta-metagame: a game about a game about a game. Players in TPP are controlling the actions of a game character participating in a game tournament. It’s Pokemon-ception!

Gaming the population

Another use of metagaming is to take knowledge of the trends in player behaviors and utilize that information to improve the outcome within the game. In TPP, players would use social media sites such as Reddit to encourage the spread of certain strategies. Knowledge of social patterns in the general population TPP players enables a few players to guide the strategy of the collective in a desirable directions. Memes like “up over down” bring structure to an otherwise chaotic system and quickly become the dominant strategy.

Gaming the rules

One of my favorite pastimes in theory-crafting, which is itself a form of metagaming. Here, we take the rules of the game and look at possible strategies like a game. The method TPP used in the final boss fight is a perfect example of this. The boss is programmed to select a move type that the player’s pokemon is weak against and one of these moves deals no damage. By using a pokemon that is weak against this particular move, the boss is locked into a strategy that will never do any damage! Not only do the TPP players turn the rules of the game against it, but they also needed to organize the population to pull it off!

Gaming the population

Another use of metagaming is to take knowledge of the trends in player behaviors and utilize that information to improve the outcome within the game. In TPP, players would use social media sites such as Reddit to encourage the spread of certain strategies. Knowledge of social patterns in the general population TPP players enables a few players to guide the strategy of the collective in a desirable directions. Memes like “up over down” bring structure to an otherwise chaotic system and quickly become the dominant strategy.

Rule modification games

One of the defining characteristics of a game are the rules. The rules of Pokemon are well defined by the game’s code, but the rules of TPP are malleable. We can choose between “chaos” and “democracy”. Under chaos, every player input gets sent to the game. Under democracy, players vote on the next action to send. When we look at the selection of rules in terms of a game where we try to maximize viewers/participates, we get another type of metagaming.