Conceptual Space: how?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 7:06 am

So, I vaguely understand that conceptual space is important.

What I don't have any clue about is how you determine what your conceptual space is?

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 7:10 am

sounds like postmodern bullshit to me

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 7:19 am

Conceptual space is essentially the amount of mental effort required to keep up with a body of information. In a story, if there are a lot of new things that the reader is unfamiliar with, then it can't be about much besides them; while a story that reuses elements the reader is likely already familiar with can afford to have more complex plots and character interactions without overwhelming the audience.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 11:16 am

virgil wrote:Conceptual space is essentially the amount of mental effort required to keep up with a body of information. In a story, if there are a lot of new things that the reader is unfamiliar with, then it can't be about much besides them; while a story that reuses elements the reader is likely already familiar with can afford to have more complex plots and character interactions without overwhelming the audience.

Note that means that different audiences will have different conceptual space limits relative to the same material. As Anime becomes more culturally accepted, Anime that was considered "too weird" or "incomprehensible" by American audiences has since become normalized.

-Username17

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 9:38 pm

This is such a Forge topic.

Just saying.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 9:58 pm

I'm just trying to figure out how to determine the conceptual space of the Urban Fantasy game I'm working on, how many character types are too many.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 10:18 pm

The important thing is how many types you lift wholesale from pop culture and how many types are essentially new creations.

If you can communicate the essential character of a particular class in a single sentence that's golden. If you'll need multiple paragraphs and bullet points to get the idea across then you've got a problem.

Think of it as a Hollywood sales pitch.

He's a high-class wizard, she's a street-smart werewolf, together they fight crime.

Harry Potter with Machine guns.

The fewer words you need to explain your world then easier it is to grasp.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:22 am

You don't have to keep it to the "napkin pitch" level, but there is no reason to add complexity if it doesn't have to be there.

For example, if to play a fae you need to understand 12 pages of history, culture, how their magic works, who their enemies are etc that is a much bigger deal than saying they are "like D&D elves, but a bit different".

If there is a valid reason to make it complex than you should, but there should be a good reason.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:41 am

What? But if mindless complexity for its own sake isn't the secret to getting in on that huge mountain of FATAL money, what is?

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:50 am

Claim to have done 1000 hours of reserche and come out with a game that is so blatantly offensive that half the people who read it think it's satire?

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Tue Jul 05, 2011 6:09 am

fatal is the american dream fuck you for thinking otherwise

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Tue Jul 05, 2011 6:42 am

Psychic Robot wrote:fatal is the american dream fuck you for thinking otherwise

Is that why everything's going to shit here?

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Wed Jul 06, 2011 12:37 am

virgil wrote:Conceptual space is essentially the amount of mental effort required to keep up with a body of information. In a story, if there are a lot of new things that the reader is unfamiliar with, then it can't be about much besides them; while a story that reuses elements the reader is likely already familiar with can afford to have more complex plots and character interactions without overwhelming the audience.

Alright, I'm confused.

Some quick searching on "conceptual space" and I can't find anything around this definition: mostly I've found pretty intense cognitive science stuff about how to graph similarities between various concepts using N-dimensional space.

Is this a term that's been taken up and used by different disciplines meaning entirely different things or something?

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Wed Jul 06, 2011 12:55 am

It's a niche term in game design that may or may not have been made up by Frank Trollman.

It is basically how much "space" your audience has in their head for new concepts. Some audiences have more space than others. Having a game that requires lots of conceptual space means that less people will be able to play it.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Wed Jul 06, 2011 3:05 am

CCarter wrote:Some quick searching on "conceptual space" and I can't find anything around this definition: mostly I've found pretty intense cognitive science stuff about how to graph similarities between various concepts using N-dimensional space.

Is this a term that's been taken up and used by different disciplines meaning entirely different things or something?

Grek wrote:It's a niche term in game design that may or may not have been made up by Frank Trollman.

Based on what I know about him, he probably took the term from some Cognitive Science stuff he read and then just used it in his Game Design talks without bothering to stop and explain it to the rest of us. Then we all puzzled out what he was talking about based on how he was using the term.

Explicitly defined or not, it's a big concern that you have to keep track of when you're designing a game or story, which is why some settings get a "reboot" from time to time when there's been too much stuff in the past to keep track of (World of Darkness, Comics, Star Trek, etc).

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Wed Jul 06, 2011 4:31 am

The definition of conceptual space involves descriptions like

Gardenfors (2004) wrote:A conceptual space is built up from geometrical representations based on a number of quality dimensions.
...
Thus conceptual spaces provide us with a natural way of representing similarities. In general, the epistemological role of the conceptual spaces is to serve as a tool in sorting out various relations between perceptions.

When a player thinks about an RPG they create a conceptual space for it in their minds. This conceptual space is about breaking down complex ideas into concepts based on how similar they are to other things they have a concept for already. This similarity can be defined both by how close it is to another concept (how like another concept it is) and the distance between the (the differences between them).

So, when thinking about an urban fantasy RPG they may think about vampires as being "like Blade 1 vampires except that they are allergic to gold instead of silver" and being "in a war like Underworld with werewolves" who are "like Dog Soldiers werewolves except that they don't ignore bullets quite so much and take longer to heal".

Different concepts take up more or less space in the total conceptual space based on how many exceptions there are and how many other concepts they link to. This means that there is a limited amount of concepts that can be stored so you should make as many of the concepts easy to understand as possible.

What this means for you is that if you have races that the player doesn't have similar concepts for they either have to spend a lot more time creating a concept or they force an unrelated concept to act as if it is related which can lead to misunderstandings and confusion. Since the second is easier it is more likely meaning that it is a bad idea to add many races that are not in reasonably well known fantasy.

More specifically it means that spirits like Yokai, Elysians, Dark Landscapers, Sapphos and Scourges are bad and should be removed since there are no concepts that are similar to them meaning a lot of unneeded work for the player. For example you don't even describe what Scourges look like or how they act so there are no predefined concepts that could apply. But that sort of discussion should be in the appropriate thread and not here.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Jul 06, 2011 10:03 am

Parthenon, I all those are either taken directly from myth, inspired from it, or from gaming or modern literature. See if the most recent post in the main thread helps any.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Wed Jul 06, 2011 11:04 am

Prak_Anima wrote:Parthenon, I all those are either taken directly from myth, inspired from it, or from gaming or modern literature. See if the most recent post in the main thread helps any.

If your audience is unfamiliar with the myth, it's new conceptual space to them.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Jul 06, 2011 8:30 pm

I'd expect some familiarity with most of the myth, and the scourges can be likened to a lot of things, Banes, Captain Planet or Sailor Moon Villains, Dementors, etc.

er, let's move this specific part over to the main thread

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Wed Jul 06, 2011 11:54 pm

Psychic Robot wrote:fatal is the american dream fuck you for thinking otherwise

What disturbs me is that I think that you're probably right.