How “No Man’s Sky” Helps Apply Face-work to Emotional Interactions in the Real World

How “No Man’s Sky” Helps Apply Face-work to Emotional Interactions in the Real World

Another area of theory that can help a person use the knowledge from maps and guides in video games and apply that knowledge towards evaluating real-world emotional experiences comes from an era before mass-produced video games. Erving Goffman was one of the more recognized and well-respected sociologists in the 20th century. Goffman (1985) developed the theory of Face-work as a means of understanding how a person maintains a consistent series of social interactions within a community. These actions are called maintaining one’s face. A classic example of maintaining face in society would be waving to every passing car as a person is driving to maintain the impression that a person is a friendly member of a given community.  Maintaining one’s face allows that person to be more confident with themselves and more self-assured that they can exist successfully in a given community. One of the critical aspects of Face-work theory that relates to video game mapping is the concept of how a person performs dignity in the real world.

Dignity in this context refers to the ability of an individual to present their physical and emotional state in social interactions while maintaining their face (Brown & Levinson, 1978). These are normally some rituals that a person performs that represents the emotional or physical attitude of that person. These rituals can be a simple as offering food to one member of a community and performing polite small talk (Bucar, 2012) to an individual showing solidarity with others in that individual’s community (Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003). Dignity is vital as the act of dignity provides a vantage point that an individual can use to view the rest of the social terrain.

A map is useless if a person can not see where they are in relationship to the rest of the terrain. Any type of emotional mental map or model is equally meaningless if the person cannot maintain some sense of who they are.

Dignity provides a person that grounding.

The ground can be shaky in the real world as any emotional mental model must deal with the dynamic social environment that a person is likely to face on a daily basis. A person must recognize that they will be dealing with people whose moods and behaviors will change based on the “feeling bubbles” (Wetherell, 2014), past experiences (Schein, 2003), or any number of social, psychological or cultural stimuli that can influence the behaviors of the individual on a daily basis. Any model must be prepared for these dramatic changes. Looking at a game like “No Man’s Sky” can provide some guidance on how to deal with this type of social environment.

“No Man’s Sky” is arguably the best example of applying a map to a dynamic landscape. The game engine uses a “procedural generation” model for creating all of the in-game elements, which means that no two players will have the same map playing the game. There are possibly millions of different variations of monsters, planets, and spaceships that a player will experience over the course of the game (Alexandra, 2016). This layer of complexity also means that it is impossible for there to be a guide that can help a player find new terrain or determine the threats and rewards they will face throughout the course of playing the game.

A player must study the movements and rituals of the different creatures they will face during the course of the game to determine if those creatures are a threat, harmless, or helpful. The reading of the actions of this computer-generated being begins to provide a foundation for a player to judge the non-verbal mode of communication that other people have in the real world and determine how those people will react to a person’s actions and intents.

Another reason “No Man’s Sky” seems to help train a person in performing Face-work is when a player goes through the Atlas Path. Beyond the functional component of the Atlas Path adding more directions to go on the Galactic Map, the Atlas Path trains a player to understand the influence of societal institution as part of social interactions. Monoliths are placed throughout the map, and the players must learn how to interact and exist with the locations to advance their view and knowledge of the world. Interacting with the monoliths helps the player understand the mythology of the game, which allows the player to understand more about their role within the game and what the universe they are moving through exist.