(The following is a continuation of this article)
Why then, if seeking knowledge by inductive reasoning takes so long compared to deductive reasoning and heightens the risk of damaging oneself and/or one's surroundings would anyone even attempt it?
The answer lies in the most valuable human commodity - experience. Deductive reasoning draws information from an accumulated body of experience already established by people with shared interests. Validity is the player here. Information drawn from the highest number of shared experiences is the most valid. However, if no one has experiences related to the information you need, or the body of experience is very limited, deductively driven pursuits of knowledge will be short-lived and you will be forced to revert to inductive reasoning to create new knowledge that is relevant to your interests. Authenticity is the player here. You will need to rely on your own personal experiences to come up with the information you need.
It's spectrum time.
We can thus organize information on a spectrum of deductive and inductive reasoning based on experience. The truest form of deductive information would be information that is the most shared amongst the most people. This information would be the easiest and quickest to access. Information that draws from the least amount of shared experience can be considered the truest form of inductive information. This information would be the most laborious yet authentic type. While I can't think of an example of the truest form of deductive information, the truest form of inductive would be a personal experience that has not been shared with anyone. This would constitute a piece of information known to only one person.
It's transition time.
To enable myself to analyze in a much more organized fashion the various types of games I play, I will place the puzzles within them on the same deductive/inductive spectrum. I will use the criteria of what kind of experience the puzzle creates to determine where on this spectrum it lies. My hope in doing this is that it will allow me to understand the mental processes behind these two categories of puzzles and connect them to the various forms of intelligence as per the theory put forth by Howard Gardner. Similar to above, a true deductive puzzle would be one where all the necessary information to solve the puzzle is shared with the player and the player need only to perform correctly under these strict guidelines to solve the puzzle; a true inductive puzzle would be one where no information regarding the solution to a puzzle is explicitly shared with the player and the player must discover information relevant to the solution from personal experience with the environment where the puzzle exists.
According to my knowledge, the truest example of a game with deductive puzzles would be games similar to the Professor Layton series. I say this because the puzzles in these games communicate to the player exactly what they need to know to solve the puzzle and exactly where they need to solve it. (Please refer to the picture below which is taken from Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box)
Everything the player needs to know to function properly is explicitly shared. The puzzle does not allow itself or it's environment to be open to interpretation. There are strict rules the player must understand and obey which create small boundaries wherein the player must remain if success with finding a solution to the puzzle is desired. With these limitations also come another aspect of deductive games - the puzzles are very loosely related to the overall story of the game. Since each puzzle has such a strict set of rules and boundaries, it would be very difficult to have a complex, imaginative story function within them (just like the complex imagination of a human doesn't survive well either). As such the only way for a game to survive with deductive puzzles is if there is a story that is separate from the context of the puzzles and only loosely ties them together. The following image illustrates this point. You will see the story up until the point where the puzzle from above is issued. As you will see, the only thing that connects the story to the content of the puzzle is the hat - absolutely nothing else.
Inductive puzzles cause a game to be quite different.
Inductive puzzles emphasis on personal experience being the main factor in how a player figures out the rules and solutions to a puzzle causes a game that have them to have a completely different design. It creates is a game where the player has to rely 100% on his personal interaction with the environment and shed light on the goal of the puzzle and possible solutions to this puzzle through correct interpretations of these interactions. One aspect of this, the goal of the puzzle, is easy for the player to understand simply because the only kind of game that can currently allow for truly inductive puzzles are adventure games and the goals of adventure games are seldom complex. Sometimes it is to get from point A to point B, or to help something else get from point A to point B, or to stop an evil force, or a combination of them all. Without the use of explicit communication the player relies on personal experience and so a game needs to allow the player the freedom to interact with and create a diverse amount of experiences. Adventure games are currently the genre of game that best allows for personal experiences based on interactions between player and environment.
Its example time.
The truest inductive game I can think of and will use for this article is called Toki Tori 2. The goal of puzzles in this game are a combination of getting your avatar from point A to point B, and getting other NPCs from point A to point B. The solution to these puzzles is where this games represents it's true inductiveness. While most adventure puzzle games often explicity communicate some aspect of how to solve a puzzle in the game and therefore fall somewhere on the spectrum between deductive and inductive, Toki Tori 2 is true inductive because there is absolutely no communication to the player about how to solve a puzzle outside of actual player-environment interaction.
Behold this image.
As you can see the goal of this puzzle is to get from point A to point B. This goal is known only because it is common knowledge among adventure game enthusiasts, and the design of the level is pretty obvious. (I guess according to my definition of inductive puzzles, this common knowledge of game progression in adventure games would mean this game is not true inductive, but since every inductive puzzle is found within an adventure game, this common knowledge can be considered a zero point. However, this does leave open the question of is it possible to have inductive puzzles in genres of games other than adventure?) What is not obvious is how to get to point B from point A. If this were a deductive puzzle, there would be prompts telling the player exactly what to do. I will come back to this and explain why this would cause the entire game to be horribly boring.
Remaining true to inductive puzzles, the player can assume that the solution can only be discovered by personally interacting with the environment and from these experiences piecing together the solution. And this is exactly how it happens. Thanks to previous experiences in the game, the player knows this bird can stomp. This would be the natural start point for interaction with this new environment. After some possible trial and error, the player will arrive to this solution:
From the player's personal experience with this puzzle, new information is discovered and added to the player's growing body of knowledge of the game which can used to understand and solve future puzzles, namely, stomping breaks bridges, frogs eat purple watermelon things, and when you stomp next to a frog after it eats one it will spit a bubble at you which allows you to float up. This all occurs as a result of personal player experience with no explicit communication from the game.
Imagine if this was a deductive puzzle.
Wouldn't it be boring?
Its list time.
Here are the advantages I can think of for each type of puzzle.
Deductive
- Due to loose relation to the story of the game, there can be a puzzles with a wide variety of mechanics.
- Similar to above, since puzzles are not closely related to the story, there is more freedom in developing an interesting story and less on how to fit the puzzles in.
- Freedom to construct and communicate rules allows for complex puzzles that require much cognitive activity to solve.
Inductive
- Solutions rely on information derived from diverse personal experience. This requires an open mind that can see clues in unconventional places.
- Due to the lack of explicit communication and rules, the player is allowed to explore an environment and seek out alternative solutions with much more freedom.
- Stimulates the adventurer in us all.
- The puzzles define the story of the game and therefore are in integral part of the entire gaming experience.
I would like to end with an open invitation to all who read this.
I invite everyone with interest to explore with me the following:
As briefly mentioned earlier in this article, the theory of multiple intelligences states that human intelligence is not limited to the one intelligence that has been popularly focused on and measured by IQ tests and what not. There are in fact a variety of intelligences, and each human is developing a combination of them throughout it's life. The combination of intelligences for each human is determined by an intimate relationship between genetic inheritance and environmental stimulus. Since the environment is always changing the genetics always adapting to this change; one's intellectual constitution is constantly in flux. This infographic depicts the current breakdown of these intelligences:
I am curious about two things:
- What intelligences are puzzle games most commonly stimulating? By first determining what intelligences would fit within inductive/deductive forms of reasoning, then categorizing puzzles into their prospective inductive/deductive locals, and lastly through this categorization placing the game wherein these exist on the correct location on the inductive/deductive spectrum; would we have a better understanding about what intelligences this game is targeting?
- If it turns out that puzzles only target a certain number of these intelligences and others seem to have been left out, how possible would it be to use the same principles behind these puzzles to develop new puzzles that target the intelligences that have up until now gone overlooked?
references
Gardner, Howard (1983), Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Basic Books, ISBN 0133306143
Level-5. 2007. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (GameBoy DS)
Two Tribes. 2013. Toki Tori 2+ (PC)
Infographic pulled from http://fundersandfounders.com/9-types-of-intelligence/
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