Notes on Precision of Emotion: A New Kind of “Fun” Approach in Educational Games

“Fun is just another word for learning” — Raph Koster, Hoffman’s mentor

TLDR: Sophia is a concept describing where fear is converted to happiness through surprise and delight. The concept holds important implications for how we design meaningful games: The absence of Sophia is salient in the lack of tension, clarity of emotion, or surprise. In order to make a meaningful jump between the game model and the real-world model, we must keep the concept of Sophia in mind.

• What is fun? important, the scientific method, work of childhood, etc
• KTA: “Fun is learning” is the beginning, not the end — you must actually make the game “learning-filled”, otherwise kids see right through it
• Paul Ekman: emotional states are connected to facial expressions. There are 7 universal emotions connected across cultures — but not fun!
  • Instead, Hoffman posits that fun is a combination of multiple emotions
• sophia: cognitive process by which we convert fear into happiness through surprise
  • tangent about microbes in gut potentially causing heart disease
    • “this is sophia”
  • ❗️My take: It is not always fear, it is also often confusion. It is not always surprise; instead it is sometimes simple explanation.
• meaningful games: make jump between game model and the real world

• When making a game, we must specify the effect (like O in MDAO) that we want to achieve. What is the emotional progression AND parallel learning progression?
  • Hoffman says “ultimate goal is to alleviate suffering” ← How intense!
  • “pain of absence” can be thus converted into clarity, structure
• Implications
  • Sophia is a lens to view games, and the absence of which has clear implications for games
  • Lack of clarity of emotion, not enough surprise, lack of tension = either a boring game, an unilluminating game, etc.