The world is chaos, packed with sights and symbols coming at us full bore...
...and our brains hunger for order
So in a desperate attempt to make sense of a whirl of images bombarding them every minute
They sort of automatically package things together
They have a mechanism for understanding things
Not as each of their component parts, but as a whole which is different from an agglomeration of pieces
They have the ability to make a gestalt and like many other quirks of our psychology it comes up in game design
When you look at a dog, your brain doesn't see it as a million different tiny hairs
It doesn't even see it as a set of paws, legs, tail, and adorable nose
It sees it as a dog
You don't consciously add all the bits together to know something's a dog
You don't say to yourself, "That has a dog's legs and dog tail and dog ears. So it's a dog"
Instead your brain instantly takes in all of that visual information and crunches it down into, "That is a dog"
In fact, you'll usually find you're consciously aware that something is a dog...
...before you're consciously aware of details about its paws or fur or tail
And this information shorthand system is hugely useful for us as designers...
...because a lot of design is about conveying information
By understanding this system, we can use this strange, interesting part of how the human brain works...
...to make players instantly get things, without having to explain them or spell them out
Now let's think about shmups
Every shmup since the days of Galaga has had the enemies fly onto the screen in groups
This is essential to the design
The designers are going to throw too many things at you to have you registering and thinking about every enemy separately
Instead, they're going to have the enemy's function as groups
But how do you know they're a group? Because we use the laws of Gestalt
So what helps us form a gestalt, or an understanding of a group of parts as a whole?
First off, there's the law of proximity
Things which are near each other our brain to group together
for example
If you're walking down the street and see a bunch of dogs
Your brain doesn't try to make a group out of all of the dog's feet
Instead it tries to make a single object out of the things close to each set of dog feet
The enemies you group together in a shmup often fly close together
Rather than entering from all random points on the screen to help your brain instantly process them as a set...
...rather than a bunch of different individuals it has to keep track of
Next, there's the law of similarity
As humans we also tend to group together things which are visually similar
This is why you'll see enemy groupings often involving large numbers of the same enemy...
...enemies that share a color...
...or enemies with similar silhouettes
Then we have the law of closure
This is not a triangle and this isn't a circle but your brain makes them so
As part of our power of Gestalt, our brain will automatically fill in the missing bits for things...
...we already have a mental picture for and then decide that all of the pieces...
...we see are part of that mental hole.
So in the case of our circle...
...not only is it not actually a circle, but the dashes that make up our non-circle don't actually have anything to do with each other
But that's not how our brain sees it
So when you see a group of enemies swoop in and trace out a line a curve or a shape...
...you see them as all part of a group
Because your brain fills in the spaces between them and connects them all together to make the shape that it expects
Oh, and do you want to see something really neat?
We even do it with...
...negative space
We also have the law of common fate which I call the law of directionality
When dealing with motion our brains will often group a set of objects moving in the same direction or along the same path together
So if I want your brain to register two sets of enemies as distinct I can just have them go in different directions
Then, there's the law of symmetry which states that our brains like to group symmetrical things together
So if I have a boss in the center of the screen...
...and then I have a set of tiny fighters fly from both sides of the screen...
Assuming we aren't doing anything radical to break the gestalt
Your brain will process the mirrored pair of minor enemies as part of the same group
Freeing up more brain power to focus on the boss
There are several other laws of Gestalt, but these are the most common for us to work with as game designers
And while I've used shmups as an example throughout this episode
It's important to remember that this idea carries beyond just shmups
Ever run into a new enemy in a game...
...and not even think about the fact you already sort of know how it's going to behave?
Well, often that's in part because your brain has already grouped it with some other type of enemy you've already encountered
Sometimes this is by color. Sometimes this is by shape
Sometimes it's by things a little less immediately apparent like movement pattern
Gestalt groupings can help us tell friend from foe, parse our inventory, or even navigate space
After all most of us have had that moment where we ran into a group of coins laid out by the designers...
...and thought of them not as a scattered mass of individual objects, but as an arrow pointing us where to go
This idea of Gestalt, or pulling together disparate bits of information into a larger whole...
...can be used almost anywhere visual information is conveyed...
...be it the UI, enemy patterns, or puzzle design
So the next time you see a pattern or a group in a game, ask yourself:
Is that all really connected or did my brain just to make it so?
And then ask yourself: "Is there a difference?"
*pow*
*splat*
That was my-- That was my brain... exploding