Week 5 Thesis Group Meetings

This week I got the chance to attend Nun’s and Sarah’s thesis group meetings. Here are some of my synthesized notes from each:

Nun – 3/7/23
What is the self sacrifice aspect in altruism? Is that something I want to emphasize or explore? For example, looking at animals there is no evolutionary benefit with altruistic acts.
– altruism is a big part of survival
– emotional feeling of im willing to my needs aside for the needs of the group
– essential emotion for the needs of the community
– At which point is giving not sacrificial anymore?
– Self indulgent sacrifice vs other sorts of sacrifice
– when you don’t have that much, and you give a lot
– do something and you don’t get credit

Buddhism
– Karma cycles
– if you translate it to the game
– if you die you level up

We also talked a bit about trust and things like Milgram’s experiment and the Prisoners dilemma.
– 2 prisoners cooperate
– if one turns on the other
– both turn, both get punished for the longest time
– [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/prisoners-dilemma.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/prisoners-dilemma.asp)

Sarah – 3/7/23
奶 – helping others play
Jaye – had an experience of random people helping her in WOW, even with an ugly character
Yinyi – likes the idea of the dice and how the randomness can be engaging. Also looking at classic games for simple mechanics.

can a game be good without being bad?
– community and who plays the games – loopholes
– the more things we put in place, the smarter the kids get to how to circumvent
– people will get really creative to get around that
– innovative around that
– how altruism may contribute to an addictive, always on community
– What does someone get from being altruistic? Is that countering the altruism itself? What gets someone hooked onto the game?

In terms of my final project/ prototype:
Do what your hands feel like doing?
If the video game is a prototype that illuminates the dice game
Programmers guide to creating an altruistic game
– what are the instructions that id give based on all my research?
– putting a lot of pressure on this amazing altruistic game
– fool-proof ingredient list
– here are things you have to be careful of