PROVIDENCE – What happens when you put a game designer and a neuroscientist in the same room and have them talk about games and play in an interactive fashion with students?

That was the premise of the seminar, Games and Play, hosted by Brown University on Sept. 16, sponsored by the Brown Institute for Brain Sciences and by an Advanced Neural Dynamics Training Grant from the National Institutes for Health.

The seminar featured Andrew Innes, creator of the card game, Anomia, whose slogan is “Where knowledge becomes uncommonly fun,” and Christopher Moore, Ph.D., an associate professor of Neuroscience at Brown.

The seminar sought to explore how and why games generated [the good kind of] stress that enhances learning, cognitive control, as a way to provide a snapshot of how our own minds work.

A relationship of ideas
Moore and Innes first met as undergraduates at Oberlin College, and they have continued a regular, ongoing conversation as their careers moved into different spheres.

Innes first brought Anomia to market in 2009, which has sold more than a quarter-million copies of the game; he is planning to launch themed Anomia decks in movies, music and sports as well as Anomia Jr. version of the game, which requires no reading.

One of Moore’s recent research efforts has been to develop a new technology called bioluminescent optogenetics, which seeks to have cells produce their own light, and then respond to that light, as a way to control their own activity as well as the activities of neighboring cells. [See link to ConvergenceRI story, “Programming brain cells to turn their own light, on and off, like a firefly,” below.]

Innes has often enlisted Moore as a tester for his games when they have been in the under development phase.

In advance of the seminar, ConvergenceRI had a chance to talk [and mostly listen] as Innes and Moore engaged in a rapid, free-flowing conversation, talking about games, the sweet spot for games, learning, game design, virtual reality and stress.

Moore suggested that playing games represented one of the best ways “to get dopamine to spritz through your brain” through what’s known as the reward-prediction error hypothesis.

“You think you really understand the world, and then something really positive happens above and beyond our model,” Moore said. If you never take a chance, Moore continued, “You’re never going to get there, by definition.”

Innes shared the grid he had prepared for the seminar, mapping out the nexus of the sweet spot for successful game design: competition, which is regulated, defined and purged of chance; chance, where the outcome is ruled by chance only; role-playing, which incorporates make believe, pretend and mimicry; and madness, characterized by delirium and temporary madness.

Here is the ConvergenceRI interview with Andrew Innes, game designer and creator of “Anomia,” and Christopher Moore, neuroscientist, at the intersection of games, learning and life, a conversation that occurred very much within the boundaries of Rhode Island’s emerging innovation ecosystem and research frontier.

ConvergenceRI: How did the two of you arrive at the idea to hold a seminar on games and play?
INNES: We first met each other as undergrads at Oberlin, so we have been friends for years. I wanted to talk about games and the career path I took as a game creator.

Here is someone from an industry that you might of interested to you if you’re in neurosciences; maybe you’ll become a game maker. If you’re a designer, maybe you’ll become a game maker.

The seminar is a way to broaden peoples’ sensibilities and interests. For me, I had this idea when I was very young, as a kid. Then, a whole series of events shaped it.

We’re going to explore in a very open way: what is play, what are the attributes of play, and where does it come from.

From working with game designers, I believe there is a need to teach design-thinking skills. It is empowering to look at problems and solve problems in new and interesting ways, in a very action-oriented manner. It’s not like having a meeting to decide how you are going to solve a problem; it’s actually doing something.

MOORE: In my own work, there’s a guy in design school that I [ sometimes collaborate] with, he’s the guy who founded and invented the mouse for Apple. He has a great approach: the key thing to do is to make a paper house.

So when you give people something, they can see what your idea is, and you feel totally comfortable cutting it up, adding a wing. You don’t need to give them a balsa wood house. Don’t give them something that they can’t tell what it is, like a sketch. You give them a paper house; it’s how you share ideas. Then they are comfortable changing it.

INNES: [In working with game designers], I ask: can you draw [the idea] in a short amount of time? So that you show your creation to someone, and then you talk about it. That way you don’t get so invested in the idea [that it can’t be changed].

In playing Anomia, for instance, you’re put on the spot: is your brain going to betray you? Is [another player] going to name something first? It creates a lot of tension; sometimes it’s hard to get that answer out.

I’m curious; maybe the neuroscientist in the room can talk about what’s going on in your brain. Then maybe they can say: this kind of question flustered people. And maybe we can make a game out of that.

I have a prototype of a kids’ version of Anomia that is all picture-based. You see a picture of a flower, and you have to give a word that starts with the same sound.

MOORE: That’s perfect. That game may prove to be challenging for adults, because they have to go through all the [learned] linguistics. Kids may do that better than adults can.

ConvergenceRI: Many kinds of neuroscience research are based on based on training humans or laboratory animals on a behavioral task, then analyzing their performance in the face of various experimental manipulations.
These tasks may have a lot in common with many games: it’s usually an engaging activity, there are rules, it’s possible to play “better” or “worse” than an opponent or some other criterion.
Is there a convergence between game design and task design? Are there instances in which the scientific literature could actually inform how to make a game more challenging and engaging?
MOORE: One of the great things about games is that you have to embrace the complexity. It doesn’t mean that the game is complex, but it’s got to hit a lot of different things in a person.

It’s got to have the right level of stress, not the wrong level of stress. It’s got to have the right level of do-ability, not the wrong level of do-ability.

It can’t take a lot of practice; or at least it can’t take a lot of practice at the beginning, otherwise people would never play it.

INNES: It depends on the game. Some people love those hyper-complex games.

MOORE: You probably have to sell it to someone that it’s worth [the effort] to get there, but the easiest way to play it is accessible, but the more effort you give, the more progress you make. Chess is a perfect example…

ConvergenceRI: There is an educational program in Rochester, Rochester Roots, that is involved in teaching entrepreneurial thinking around sustainability, engaging with third- through sixth-graders and introducing game theory to them.
One of the students created this game around life choices, which has been introduced to teen-age students through the local Urban League. The teenagers dug it, because it was perfect for them to learn how to deal with the complexity of decisions in their own lives: you have to make choices about what you want to do, based on parameters, a future-looking game based on your own expectations.
MOORE: It sounds similar to cooperative games, such as Forbidden Desert, where you and other players are a team. You’ve crashed in the desert, and you have to find pieces of ancient aircraft, and you know that if find the other pieces, you can get out of there.

If anybody dies, the game wins and you all lose. You are always having to manage your resources, such as water. You have to share. When you take your turn, it’s a collective set of decisions, about what you want to do.

ConvergenceRI: Can you talk about your ongoing interaction? How often do you see each other? Do you get to talk on a regular basis?
MOORE: We get together maybe once a year.

INNES: It’s kind of a collision

ConvergenceRI: Could you talk about, from a neuroscience point of view, the importance of collision, the unplanned discussions?
INNES: A lot of what happens in games is that you’re confronted with situations that you haven’t dealt with before, and you have to respond, which is very much a learning mechanism. It totally shows how the brain functions.

MOORE: I watch how my kids shift the rules when they play games; it’s a positive exploration.

Games are all about flexible learning, if you can apply it quickly. You learn language, which takes years and years and years.

But, with games, it only matters if you can apply it in real time. It is kind of what your cortex does; it learns stuff, and it has amazing abstraction to it, amazing detail to it.

But if you can’t apply it quickly, it’s often useless.

Games are the ultimate… Games are the neocortex in action, the things that make us human, to bring [choices] to a point in real time.

In terms of finding the sweet spot in games, I defer to Andrew. Where it’s stressful enough, the good kind of stress – the stress that creates excitement and arousal.

We know that laughter was a warning sign for monkeys back in the day, but now it means pleasure.

Like the way that comedians can make you uncomfortable, and that’s when you laugh the most.

That’s the zone of stress; as opposed to the stress: I’m terrified, this is not working for me.

It’s finding the flexibility that allows you to learn quickly, and then being able to find that sweet spot of stress, just like a good comedian. It makes you just uncomfortable enough, but it’s a really good release.

INNES: I made this grid to use in the workshop today [opening it up on his computer].

Competition, regulated, defined, and purged of chance; chance, where outcome is ruled by chance only; role playing, which involves make believe, pretend and mimicry; and madness, with delirium and temporary madness.

ConvergenceRI: Where, if anywhere, does serendipity come in? It’s not chance, bu the ability to put yourself in the place where good things can happen?
INNES: It doesn’t necessarily happen here, it’s not part of the grid. The serendipity or the collision happens when we’re playing a game that has these attributes.

ConvergenceRI: To be provocative, in terms of learning, isn’t it the opportunity to have what I’ll call a serendipitous experience that can change the pathways of synapses?
MOORE: We’re all kind of addicted to dopamine. One of the best ways to get dopamine to spritz through your brain is [what’s known as] treward-prediction error.

You think you really understand the world, and then something really positive happens above and beyond your model. If you never take a chance, you’re never going to get there, by definition.

INNES: It’s like a joke.

MOORE: Exactly, exactly. Because your model gets violated in a way that’s rewarding and it throws you off. I was going to give you this hundred dollars, but dude, here’s a thousand dollars.

You want the right amount of chance. And, the chance is a model where you think you known what’s going on.

Games are going to live exactly in that nexus, where there is enough predictability that I can win, or I can learn to do better.

The trick is that if it is total chance, you could go down as well as up, but you have to have some reason of thinking that your narrative will go up more.

It’s about reward-prediction error. A major theorist of this is Michael Frank, he’s over in the department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, he’s one of the world leaders. I try to hang with him.

INNES: [In terms of the seminar], we’re looking to see what happens when you stick a bunch of neuroscientists and whomever else shows up, in a room with a game designer, and start talking about games and play. To see what’s going to come up that’s provoking and participatory.

MOORE: To put on my science hat, a general science hat, what is the job of a scientist? To create stuff, and then to make it real in the world. It’s a real set of findings, but it’s based upon some moment, a creative impulse, and then it becomes real.

So, a huge part of having Andrew come here, and for me, personally, if you want to do that, you need to learn how people do that. It’s not as simple as there is a formula, and it’s far away from chance.

The ways you learn about how to do that is to find people who have done it, and say: what do I need to do [in order to] do what they do. That’s your only road map.

INNES: When I’m designing my games, Chris was often a test player, along with other friends.

In developing the rules for my first game, I got some advice that caused me to shift my focus; it was a great collision.

You need to be able to explain the rules of this game in a minute or so.

I gave the instructions to my niece, asked her go into another room, read the rules, and come back to me when she can explain it to me. It took her about five minutes.

ConvergenceRI: Imagine if you can a similar session with legislative leaders, where they have a model of learning which is based upon people testifying, people projecting their own image onto the idea is, and trying to manage the messaging so that everyone hears the same message. Could an interactive session on games serve as disruptive force in the way they work?

INNES: Think about dragon control. It means you have a person, and he or she is not on your side, but they are not on the bad guys side, either. They are out for their own interests. They may help you, as long as it benefits them.

MOORE: It’s the concept of nature.

ConvergenceRI: He who hesitates is lunch?
INNES: Right, right.

MOORE: That’s part of the flexibility of games. Why do people play games? It nicely puts you in the position where you are able to feel threatened, and you have to respond quickly, based on prior knowledge. And it’s so relieving when [something bad] didn’t actually happen.

It’s not the Hunger Games. That’s why you watch games, too. You love the fact that it matters to them, and you’re so nervous for them, even if they lose.

Once the Red Sox beat the Yankees that first night in the 2004 series, I didn’t change my chair, I didn’t move my furniture.

Because exactly what you’re trying to do is to build a model to explain chance. It’s chance to you, because you don’t control it.

I was sitting in this chair, and the RPEs kick in. But that the model has too few constraints; it could easily be my chair as it could be something else.

ConvergenceRI: As a writer, I pay attention to how people respond to words, both as visual and oral stimuli. It often seems that there has been a change, a kind of short-circuiting what is actually being said. Many folks don’t necessarily listen any more; they hear what they want to hear, and they get uncomfortable if the disrupt the story line that they expect.
Can games help modulate more openness in the way that people respond to stimuli? In terms of dopamine spritzing, or cortisol spritzing, does that become prewired?
What is the nexus for people to learn through hearing something versus learning to see something?
MOORE: Games are the original virtual reality. There is this new sport, first-person viewer drone racing. It’s awesome and terrible at the same time.

INNES: You’re competing, but you’re not going anywhere. You’re flying a drone, but it’s not just simulated.

MOORE: How much can our attention span hang with it. I don’t mean to sound glib, but with ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder], it’s only relative about what you want to get to attend to, it’s only relative to the speed at which you want to take stuff in.

People with ADHD have no problem paying attention, they have a problem paying attention to things at the rate that you’re telling them to pay attention to.

INNES: They may find other things that they are fully immersed in.

MOORE: Yes, that’s part of the issue. They are very good at immersing, and very good at switching what they immerse themselves in. And, it’s driven by their version of their model of the brain or their model of the world.

I’m not saying it’s not a problem. But it’s a problem because of the way we want to educate them.

Yes, games can be an awesome way to learn, if kids want to play them. It’s a continuum. There are elements of games that are practicing for being in the real world, and we can image all kinds of ways that is useful and helpful.

INNES: Dealing with the unexpected, and dealing with variations, in a simulated environment, with none of the real world risk.