I’ve been sick, so watched tv more than usual. Watching Journey to the Center of the Earth, I noticed yet again how folks seem to like adventure stories and games to come with guides. People prefer main characters to follow a trail of clues via a map or book written by someone who has passed before, or at least to follow the advice of a wise old person.
Is it even possible to not have a guide at some level? I think of Meno's paradox about knowledge with Socrates. It definitely is a stretch to fit this conversation and it is particularly about knowledge, not adventure. But, in the end, we either know what we are looking for so we can identify it when we find it, or we will never know if we have found something we are looking for. In other words, if their is not a guide at some level (i.e. prior knowledge, God, a veteran or wise one who has been that way before, etc.) why would there be anything to push us into a particular adventure. People don't just naturally want to risk their lives, but they are willing to if they think there is something worth while on the other side. In other words, there has to be something or someone who lets them know there is value in that particular pursuit. Wouldn't that someone or something be called a guide?
Robin, Many of the greatest storytellers of our time (like George Lucas) have been strongly influenced by scholar Joseph Campbell's concept of the "monomyth" -- which typically includes a mysterious guide as a key element of the story (like Obi Wan). Campbell's framework appears to have been so successful -- and so well-rooted in human nature -- that it appears to be hard for Hollywood screenwriters to find work if they don't adhere to the monomyth framework. That still begs the question of why people aren't even more intrigued by heroes who accomplish great things without guides. I suspect the role of the guide in story telling is a convenience: a quick way to have someone incidental set up the main story arc so the fun can begin.
Kipling was all wet on that last bit. Piling up all your winnings and losing them on one last bet doesn't make you a man. It makes you a casino customer -- a broke-ass one.
Buddha had guidance, it just couldn't take him through the last steps. That's much more like real life than doing things without guidance is (and Dante hints at it too).
Another explanation is that the best stories often depict charachters with knowledge and experience that the player/viewer lack. The main lead in a movie could have been an adventurer whose dedicated their life to researching the lost treasure of X but that doesn't tell the audience what's going on.
In video games the problem is much worse since without holodeck style sophistication even possessing the skills in real life isn't enough to tell you how to work the video game. For instance you might know how to survive the elements in an artic environment but if the tricks you try to use aren't the same ones the designers thought up it won't work.
What I find frustrating in video games isn't so much having a realistic element of randomness but trying one strategy after another that would work in the real work (ohh maybe I can talk to this guy and ask if he saw such and such) only to be fucked over by the game's limitations (crap the dialog tree doesn't seem to include that question ..that's frustrating).
(replying here because software won't let an additional level of indentation in replying. Grrr...)
Yes, there's no question that there was a lot more going on the Middle Ages than many people give credit for. There's this standard narrative especially about physics where there's nothing happening between Aristotle and Galileo. This ignores a lot of people like Oresme and Benedetti who had a lot of very good ideas that were then more or less tweaked by people like Galileo and Newton who made the existing ideas more precise. Similar remarks apply about many other areas. Even the level of math going although often abysmal wasn't nearly as bad as it is often portrayed.
One reason for having guides is to have scope for character growth when the guide is taken away near the end - in the cases I can think of off the top of my head, the guide doesn't accompany the hero all the way.
People want to be successful, but they don't want to have to work for that success - that means we might fail. At the same time, we don't want to feel like success is unearned. So our fantasies and escapes of success include a guide to explain that yes, we're unique and enormously important people, destined for great things.
A guide offers us what we really want - rewards for the intrinsic specialness we believe we have.
Of course, "sandbox" style videogames with more open worlds are becoming increasingly popular, as the technology has become more able to support large virtual worlds, even though they include a lot of random searching. Technology and cost seem to be a confounding factor here - worlds on the rails are in many ways cheaper and easier to make and are tempting you know your audience will see everything that you do (people don't want to pay for things they won't receive and there's no point developing more than your audience demands).
Of course, having a unique experience and making fairly informed choices with predictable outcomes (which seems to be excluded from the random search/follow a guide duality) have value to add and are probably what people are really looking for in these open worlds, not random searching. It still seems like games could be more open than they are, and it seems like a constraint stopping this might be on avoiding random searches.
I belieive that most "folk" prefer the guides, but that many don't. In the Meyer-Briggs personality types, on the EN*P types are considered explorers and discoverers and together represent about 10% of the population. I know that some people (myself included) don't want any hints or guidance when vacationing abroad -- They prefer exploring randomly and being surprised.
The most popular MMR games (like World of Warcraft) provide maps and quests, but also allow you to just wander and discover at random.
It seems to me that there would have been an evolutionary advantage if some (not all) tribe members preferred to just pick a random direction away from the village or camp to explore -- More and better food and shelter might be found at relatively low risk to the whole tribe.
One issue that leads me to doubt your hypothesis that guides are necessary to eliminate doubt that our heroes are simply lucky is that we are so willing to suspend disbelief about luck in so many other parts of our entertainment. Take any action movie--while the hero is always incredibly smart, capable, and wise, there's obviously luck involved (think of any scene in which bullets are flying everywhere around our hero but miraculously missing). If we wouldn't be willing to watch a heroic explorer finding the correct path on the first or second try (because we know that in the real world they'd make dozens of mistakes first), why are we willing to credulously watch our heroes dodging bullets without wondering how they too manage to beat the odds?
Is it even possible to not have a guide at some level? I think of Meno's paradox about knowledge with Socrates. It definitely is a stretch to fit this conversation and it is particularly about knowledge, not adventure. But, in the end, we either know what we are looking for so we can identify it when we find it, or we will never know if we have found something we are looking for. In other words, if their is not a guide at some level (i.e. prior knowledge, God, a veteran or wise one who has been that way before, etc.) why would there be anything to push us into a particular adventure. People don't just naturally want to risk their lives, but they are willing to if they think there is something worth while on the other side. In other words, there has to be something or someone who lets them know there is value in that particular pursuit. Wouldn't that someone or something be called a guide?
Robin, Many of the greatest storytellers of our time (like George Lucas) have been strongly influenced by scholar Joseph Campbell's concept of the "monomyth" -- which typically includes a mysterious guide as a key element of the story (like Obi Wan). Campbell's framework appears to have been so successful -- and so well-rooted in human nature -- that it appears to be hard for Hollywood screenwriters to find work if they don't adhere to the monomyth framework. That still begs the question of why people aren't even more intrigued by heroes who accomplish great things without guides. I suspect the role of the guide in story telling is a convenience: a quick way to have someone incidental set up the main story arc so the fun can begin.
Kipling was all wet on that last bit. Piling up all your winnings and losing them on one last bet doesn't make you a man. It makes you a casino customer -- a broke-ass one.
Buddha had guidance, it just couldn't take him through the last steps. That's much more like real life than doing things without guidance is (and Dante hints at it too).
Alcibiades was definitely one of the "lucky punks" who never failed to claim somebody else's success.
Another explanation is that the best stories often depict charachters with knowledge and experience that the player/viewer lack. The main lead in a movie could have been an adventurer whose dedicated their life to researching the lost treasure of X but that doesn't tell the audience what's going on.
In video games the problem is much worse since without holodeck style sophistication even possessing the skills in real life isn't enough to tell you how to work the video game. For instance you might know how to survive the elements in an artic environment but if the tricks you try to use aren't the same ones the designers thought up it won't work.
What I find frustrating in video games isn't so much having a realistic element of randomness but trying one strategy after another that would work in the real work (ohh maybe I can talk to this guy and ask if he saw such and such) only to be fucked over by the game's limitations (crap the dialog tree doesn't seem to include that question ..that's frustrating).
TGGP,
(replying here because software won't let an additional level of indentation in replying. Grrr...)
Yes, there's no question that there was a lot more going on the Middle Ages than many people give credit for. There's this standard narrative especially about physics where there's nothing happening between Aristotle and Galileo. This ignores a lot of people like Oresme and Benedetti who had a lot of very good ideas that were then more or less tweaked by people like Galileo and Newton who made the existing ideas more precise. Similar remarks apply about many other areas. Even the level of math going although often abysmal wasn't nearly as bad as it is often portrayed.
One reason for having guides is to have scope for character growth when the guide is taken away near the end - in the cases I can think of off the top of my head, the guide doesn't accompany the hero all the way.
I submit the Odyssey as both the model adventure and as being mostly Guideless (and remarkably arbitrary).
Another example: Gulliver's Travels
People want to be successful, but they don't want to have to work for that success - that means we might fail. At the same time, we don't want to feel like success is unearned. So our fantasies and escapes of success include a guide to explain that yes, we're unique and enormously important people, destined for great things.
A guide offers us what we really want - rewards for the intrinsic specialness we believe we have.
Of course, "sandbox" style videogames with more open worlds are becoming increasingly popular, as the technology has become more able to support large virtual worlds, even though they include a lot of random searching. Technology and cost seem to be a confounding factor here - worlds on the rails are in many ways cheaper and easier to make and are tempting you know your audience will see everything that you do (people don't want to pay for things they won't receive and there's no point developing more than your audience demands).
Of course, having a unique experience and making fairly informed choices with predictable outcomes (which seems to be excluded from the random search/follow a guide duality) have value to add and are probably what people are really looking for in these open worlds, not random searching. It still seems like games could be more open than they are, and it seems like a constraint stopping this might be on avoiding random searches.
Or the story of Buddha, who, without any guidance figured everything out through meditation.
real grand adventures tend to have fewer guides
Only if you don't bother to ask anybody for advice, i.e. if you're too arrogant to imagine you might need a guide. Disaster usually ensues.
Robin, I love your blog!
I belieive that most "folk" prefer the guides, but that many don't. In the Meyer-Briggs personality types, on the EN*P types are considered explorers and discoverers and together represent about 10% of the population. I know that some people (myself included) don't want any hints or guidance when vacationing abroad -- They prefer exploring randomly and being surprised.
The most popular MMR games (like World of Warcraft) provide maps and quests, but also allow you to just wander and discover at random.
It seems to me that there would have been an evolutionary advantage if some (not all) tribe members preferred to just pick a random direction away from the village or camp to explore -- More and better food and shelter might be found at relatively low risk to the whole tribe.
One issue that leads me to doubt your hypothesis that guides are necessary to eliminate doubt that our heroes are simply lucky is that we are so willing to suspend disbelief about luck in so many other parts of our entertainment. Take any action movie--while the hero is always incredibly smart, capable, and wise, there's obviously luck involved (think of any scene in which bullets are flying everywhere around our hero but miraculously missing). If we wouldn't be willing to watch a heroic explorer finding the correct path on the first or second try (because we know that in the real world they'd make dozens of mistakes first), why are we willing to credulously watch our heroes dodging bullets without wondering how they too manage to beat the odds?
The opposite seems more likely: God was designed by his followers so that they could see themselves in the most epic light possible.