Reporter’s Notebook: Game Theory
In our new “Reporter’s Notebook” pieces, we feature first-person accounts from News Office writers on life at the Institute.Every Friday afternoon, the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab opens its doors to anyone who wishes to drop by and play. On one such recent day, Jason Begy, a graduate student in the Comparative Media Studies program and a GAMBIT researcher, greeted a visitor from the MIT News Office before offering him tea and a place to hang his coat. Whether the games themselves are as welcoming to visitors is another matter, however. In fact, it is a research issue: How do video-game players respond to the failure they feel when struggling at hard games? Finding the right balance between difficulty and reward is no trivial matter in an industry with nearly $12 billion in 2008 sales, according to its trade group, the Electronic Software Association. It is the kind of problem that...