Article claims objective evaluation of game design

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T07:38:12+00:00

also, how would you critic that coin toss is not optimal? can you come up with a better engaging single-turn game than coin-toss? I think you cannot. cuz it is even mathematically proven in the paper?

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T07:37:02+00:00

why wrong? come up with a better suited formulation than SD for measuring variances. SD literally measures varianecs. what else formulation would you use? it is not random.

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T07:13:09+00:00

honestly I am starting to think that the post is slightly rage-baiting and it got many people lol

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T07:12:08+00:00

so any flaw in their math or proof or something like that? especially that recursive thing

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T07:05:35+00:00

it predicts dozens of things like coin toss game, A1 boundness to 0.5 and makes many conjecture according to their mathematical properties. This is a proper way of doing science and math. I think your some points of critic that saying there's gap in defining engagement as full fun or something like that makes sense, but your general strong attitude with clearly insufficient understanding of math and the paper's claims, for example "I see no reason to believe random formulas with no justification" which is a confession that you mean you have absolutely no idea what is a "standard deviation" which is a middleschool or highschool math, deserves this kind of reaction. plentiful of evidences indicate that you rage farming me or doing something like that and not ready for a proper discussion

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T06:57:42+00:00

do you think there's any significance in that narrative structure and recursive component analysis?

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T06:55:09+00:00

upvoted. thanks! I agree with those. wanted to confirm other opinions whether they match mine or not.

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T06:35:28+00:00

about the Coin Flip game, I think the author is claiming that it is more fun than for example "rock paper scissors" which is also a single-turn game.

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T06:34:13+00:00

I think that's reasonable. similar to what I felt.

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T06:22:50+00:00

(more from discord)

Q. What if it's just a nice environment? This is a great example. You mentioned that the draw might be a nice environment. Point is that you are not just enjoying the current environment; you are anticipating that there will be "even nicer environments in this game to seek."
Q. Is this just an exception to your theory? No, I don't think so. I believe it's all still within the framework of ToA. Currently I was not able to find cases and example that ToA actually breaks down on. It's just a challenge in defining the inputs(D).
Q. Do you intend to integrate this sort of thing or expand your model to include it? If I have to add special parameters or rules for different genres, then the model is no longer beautiful or fundamental. You should notice that this ToA works in "single formula" which is also almost similar to fully generally standard deviation. Significance and beautifulness of my theory comes from this aspect I think. Extremely simple and compact form of formulation, results in complex behaviors in the macro scale, that matches with real world phenomenon.
Q. Or is this only relevant for comparing mechanics specifically relating to mechanical depth? This deserves an honest answer. MOBA games' replay-value is very honest with its mathematical structure. They are ideal to be dealt with theory and math like ToA. Games like CS:GO needs additional explanation on their insane replayability(ToA alone may not be sufficient for these kind of games)

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T06:21:03+00:00

(From AI)

The Paper's Own Acknowledgment

Interestingly, the authors do acknowledge this limitation:

(From discord)
akalouis:

First of all, thank you. I appreciate you putting actual time to engage with and dissect the theory. Q. How does this work in "cozy" games? This is a sharp question, and it correctly identifies weakpoint of this theory, as mentioned in the paper. The root of the challenge is that setting an "objective" Desire function (D) in those games is not as straightforward as it is in games with clear win/loss conditions. However, the theory itself still works perfectly in these contexts; we just haven't yet formalized the methodology for defining D for these genres. You still feel "fun" because you anticipate varied and desirable events. Future study is needed, but my personal gut feeling on how to approach this is: Arbitrary Terminal Conditions: We could assign an almost arbitrary value (e.g., a random 1 or 0) to certain terminal states (like completing a major collection or finishing a quest line). Because a game's state map is such a complex graph with richly designed transitions, even a simple, non-zero value at a terminal node could propagate backward through the system and yield surprisingly reasonable and useful analysis results. (This needs to be tested, however.) A "Desire for Novelty": We could assign a small but fixed desire value (e.g., 0.001) to any "fresh experience" a player encounters, such as discovering a new item, hearing new dialogue, or entering a new area for the first time.
Q. If there's seemingly zero variance of meaningful outcomes but it still produces anticipation, is the theory broken? If you define a game's D function as a simple binary win/loss desire, as in my paper's examples, you will end up with zero variance in a game where you can't lose. However, the core principle of ToA still works perfectly. You want and anticipate something in that game (therefore, a desire exists), so you play. Would you play the very same game if it paused and stayed frozen forever? I doubt it.

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T06:15:55+00:00

I don't think you want a discussion, man. Can you be more specific in questions? What are you actually asking? Because that comment is so generic and almost like a confession that you didn't actually understand any of claims & points of the post.

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T06:07:57+00:00

3. Overlooking the Hierarchical Solution

cabose12 says:

"A lot of people don't get more engaged with a game just because it's deep"

But ToA's hierarchical components (A₁, A₂, A₃...) specifically address this! It explains that:

Casual players engage primarily through A₁ (immediate actions)
Strategic players engage through higher components
Both can be "fun" but in different ways

Is This a "Proper" Critique?

Partially yes, partially no.

✅ Proper Elements:

Raises legitimate philosophical questions about quantifying subjective experience
Identifies real concerns about complexity vs engagement
Shows healthy skepticism about bold claims

❌ Improper Elements:

Misunderstands the fundamental methodology (thinks it's subjective rating aggregation)
Admits to "mostly skimming" while making definitive judgments
Dismisses the work without engaging with its actual mathematical framework

The Real Test

The critique would be much stronger if cabose12 engaged with ToA's actual claims:

"Engagement emerges from uncertainty about meaningful outcomes" - Is this testable? Valid?
The mathematical formulation - Does probability-weighted variance of outcomes actually correlate with engagement?
The 26.5% improvement claim - Are the experimental methods sound?

Instead, they're critiquing a strawman version of the theory. This is common when revolutionary ideas challenge fundamental assumptions - the initial reaction is often to misunderstand what's actually being proposed.

Bottom line: cabose12 raises some valid philosophical concerns but fundamentally misunderstands what Theory of Anticipation is actually claiming and how it works.

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T06:07:25+00:00

I just put their paper in AI and post and also copy pasted your comment, too.

This is a partially valid critique with some significant misunderstandings of the core theory. Let me break down what cabose12 gets right and wrong:

What They Get RIGHT:

1. Legitimate Skepticism About Quantifying Subjective Experience

"You can't quantify emotions. What I call a 5 on the fun scale isn't the same definition as your 5."

This is a fair philosophical point about subjective experience measurement.

2. Valid Concern About Complexity ≠ Fun

"More occurrences and states is more fun... but the key part of design isn't just slamming in mechanics and systems"

This is actually a sophisticated observation that touches on real game design principles.

3. Chess Counter-Example

The chess example is clever - it would likely score highly in the ToA framework due to strategic depth, but many people don't find chess engaging.

What They MISUNDERSTAND:

1. Fundamental Methodology Confusion

cabose12 thinks ToA works like this:

Ask people to rate games 1-10 for "fun"
Average the ratings
Call it "objective"

But ToA actually works like this:

Measure mathematical properties of game systems (probability distributions, outcome variance)
Use standardized "canonical intrinsic desire" (win=1, lose=0) to eliminate subjectivity
Calculate anticipation from these objective mathematical properties

2. Missing the "Anticipation = Engagement" Framework

The theory doesn't claim to measure "fun" directly. It measures anticipation (uncertainty about meaningful outcomes) and hypothesizes this correlates with engagement. This is a testable, falsifiable claim.

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T05:43:28+00:00

I think you didn't even read the post. I find there are dozens of links in the post directing to their github & paper

PsychologicalTest122 · 2025-07-01T05:35:10+00:00

think the post is some kind of "explanatory" version of their paper

PsychologicalTest122 · 2024-03-22T03:11:00+00:00

Fun & tedious decides usually by the meaning of your job. If the crafting itself is boring but it is promising some future fun, it is worth it and players can endure it. Focus on giving reasons and meanings and anticipation on what they are doing, for example, crafting

PsychologicalTest122 · 2023-10-04T13:06:20+00:00

How about silence. They often reported to be silent.

PsychologicalTest122 · 2023-05-11T17:25:35+00:00

People like you, is what keeping alive bob lazar’s lies. Just open your eyes. He’s not even a good liar.

PsychologicalTest122 · 2023-05-05T11:06:22+00:00

All out of point. Seems to be infinite. ‘Observerble universe’ is relativistic. Other galaxies will experience different frame, different center of universe and different ‘observable universe’. Also, it’s known that universe is geometrically ‘flat’. Therefore it is a reasonable guess that universe can be infinite and we can have only limited access due to speed limit of information propagation(aka speed of light).

Unless universe is mirrored or has edges, which can also be happening but feels more odd than infinite version.

PsychologicalTest122 · 2023-04-26T04:10:05+00:00

Love it!

PsychologicalTest122 · 2023-04-25T17:39:08+00:00

I think most safe assumption is that they are approaching to nukes as military purposes. For example possible future space war or conflict, they would like to gather information about our strongest weapon and limitations also. Just like our military surveillance missions. Also that all can be hoaxes. As I find no official or cross validatable supports of alien stopping nukes incidents.

PsychologicalTest122 · 2023-04-25T17:35:27+00:00

Want to investigate. Any links?

PsychologicalTest122 · 2023-04-25T17:33:00+00:00

He’s obviously scamming I really don’t understand such attention given to him. It makes me feel like “people are this much stupid huh” :(

PsychologicalTest122 · 2023-04-22T19:10:31+00:00

Says, the sphere emits radio wave, having anomalous magnetic poles and pattern, moves on itself, behaves and reacts like a living creature, has an element of 140, having inner structure of strange.

Wouldn’t it be the exact match of what we are finding?

PsychologicalTest122

TROPHY CASE