Pattern Games

There was a documentary here the other night about Tetris. I didn’t watch it. I was scared I’d get the urge again.
Tetris was one of the best of what I call the ‘pattern games’. Solitaire, Freecell, Minesweeper – all the same. They consist of a procedure of pattern manipulation that is highly repetitive and simple combined with a large variety of possible patterns. They are utterly engrossing, and I think that’s because they take work in perfect step with the brain itself.
My university training was in psychology, principally cognitive functioning such as memory. I was, and remain, fascinated by non-conscious processing – basically, where the neural system in your brain busily tracks or recognises or prompts something without your conscious awareness of what it’s doing.
The other day I started singing ‘there were green alligators…’ out of the blue, wondered what came next and eventually realised it was that song about noah’s ark leaving the unicorn behind. Then I did a double-take, for right next to me was a picture of a unicorn. My brain was processing stuff and spitting it out, and I wasn’t at all aware.
Brains are good with patterns. In a sense, patterns is all they are and all they do. Our brains are extremely good at noticing patterns and structuring our behaviour accordingly, much better than we usually realise. Our brains don’t tell our conscious awareness what they’ve noticed or figured out though – we just act accordingly. Even if we reflect on our actions, there’s usually no hints that some of our behaviour was prompted by recognising a pattern. Fortunately our conscious selves are very good at coming up with reasonable-sounding explanations for everything we do, so it isn’t much of a problem.
Tetris and the other pattern games exploit this. Our conscious effort is united with our non-conscious function to recognise and manipulate a pattern. Combined, they can provide an incredibly involving experience.
I remember when I was playing a lot of Tetris – I’d throw on a CD and listen to it while the blocks came tumbling down. My mind would wander incredibly, in and out of the music and the game-playing experience in front of me. It’s the closest to dreaming I’ve ever been while awake. And, not surprisingly, when I put my head down to sleep I would still have one foot in Tetris – the patterns would continue in my head, blocks coming down not as if I was seeing them but as if I could feel my brain playing out the patterns over and over and over again.
Which it was.
I didn’t watch the documentary but I did read the Guardian’s article about it. It mentioned a woman who spent a day seeing people talking in Tetris, their words falling from their mouths in patterns like blocks. This is how the brain works. It’s a crazy thing to put a mind in, I reckon – not that we have a choice in the matter.
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Because I know you’ve all been aching for it, that rpg.net thread is here.
And handsome tall man Chuck, and my own handsome fizzog, are temporarily visible at Cal’s blog.
EDIT: and the book we are holding up is, spookily, pattern recognition. That’s the unicorn factor at work again, perhaps?