Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Applied to Two Famous Video Games
Jean Piaget (1896–1980) was a Swiss psychologist primarily focused in child development. In 1952, he introduced a new concept to the world: cognitive development through adaptation.
According to Piaget, this was done in three ways:
Assimilation: existing schema (mental structures to organize knowledge) are used to understand a new concept.
Accommodation: existing schema do not help understand a new concept, and must be adapted.
Equilibrium: the balance between assimilation and accommodation. As one finds a concept that cannot be assimilated they accommodate for it. This concept then becomes assimilated until the next concept.
For example, if a child understands that a dog is a four-legged creature, it’ll also understand what a horse is through assimilation. The child won’t be able to understand what a dolphin is, and that concept must be accommodated for, but when it is it’ll understand whales and sharks and even swordfish.
Cognitive Development Theory is widely used in child development, from pre-school pedagogy all the way to collegiate-level learning, but it also has many other applications, such as that of video games. Below are two examples of Cognitive Development Theory at play, one that does it well, and one that struggles at every turn.
Magic: Demon’s Souls and a New Era
2009 was a great year for video games. With continuing additions to popular franchises in the form of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin’s Creed II, and debuts of brand new IP’s that would forever change gaming like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Borderlands, gamers everywhere were treated to a year-long feast of amazing experiences. However, there was one that stood against the rest which would completely change the way we think of games, ushering in an entirely new status quo.
On February 5th 2009, Demon’s Souls was released by developer FromSoftware. The game revolved around a brave knight who traverses the kingdom of Boletaria, ridding it of evil “so the world may be mended”, as summarized by the Maiden In Black. All of this may sound pretty cookie-cutter in terms of story, and it was, but there was an important twist. The game was hard. Very hard, and that was the point, because you had to accommodate for that difficulty and adapt to overcome it.
Players would begin with a boss fight, and in this fight you have essentially no chance of surviving. But there again, you aren’t meant to.
Once you die from the Vanguard Demon (or defeat it if you’re the brave type), you are taken to The Nexus, or the game’s hub area where you can travel to the various worlds in the game, upgrade gear and purchase items, level up, and get ready for your next foray into darkness.
The first area you enter, the Gates of Boletaria, starts with you fighting some pretty aggressive enemies, and very quickly you’ll realize you can’t simply mash buttons like in most other action/adventure games. And this isn’t an easy thing to adapt to at first. Almost every enemy hits hard at this early stage in the game, which constantly bombards you with them and keeps you on your toes.
The most challenging part, and where many might get the most frustrated, is that if you die (which you will, so many times), you start all the way at the beginning of the area, losing any “souls” you may have gained, which is the game’s primary currency used for buying items and leveling your character. This creates quite a penalty for players, and combined with the game’s difficulty, one can quickly see how Demon’s Souls was so revolutionary in a time of straightforward beat-em-ups and yearly shooters.
All of this challenge resounds with one simple phrase: adapt and overcome, or in Piaget’s case, assimilate and accommodate. You have to figure out how to use the game’s mechanics, how they relate and differ from games you’ve already played, how to use those existing schema from other games like inventory management and when and how to attack, block or dodge to cover, and how to effectively accommodate those schema’s with the game’s own mechanics for each and every enemy. You have to or you’ll simply never overcome the challenge ahead, because with every successful enemy defeated, there’s another, more brutal one waiting for you around every stone-laden corner. This is actually the most enjoyable part of the game, and the reason why many hold the Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and every other “souls-like” game in high esteem: the pure satisfaction of getting past a part you couldn’t before, of effectively accommodating for it, and carrying on your quest, thus reaching the state Piaget called “equilibrium”, is enough for many, including myself, to keep trying, again and again, until you’re finally successful, because when you are, that feeling of accomplishment is like no other.
Demon’s Souls’ loop of assimilation and accommodation shines the brightest with its bosses, or “demons” as they’re applicably named. At the end of each area, if you’re skilled enough to get that far, you now have to face the demon of that area in order to progress to the next section. If you thought Demon’s Souls was hard before, you’d better think again.
Each boss fight is so varied and different, you can’t just reused the same tactic again for the next one; assimilation won’t work here. The game forces you to either accommodate to the challenge, or die trying. Some bossess are easier with ranged or magic attacks, others with melee, but one thing is present in all of them: the threat of death and the need to survive. In these fights, the player is given the ultimate challenge of those schema, culminating together fight concepts and strategies you may have assimilated earlier in the area, testing to see if you really learned to accommodate or if you need more practice. While the tension is highest here (and enhanced furthermore by haunting orchestral scores and beautifully designed graphics in the remake) that sense of satisfaction and equilibrium is also at its peak; when you finally defeat the demon of an area, I promise you that feeling will never be forgotten.
Altogether, Demon’s Souls created an entirely new way to experience gaming, one of pain and triumph, of excessive but never exhausting trial and error, and a masterclass in assimilation and accommodation. It’s no surprise why the games developed by FromSoftware are so widely cherished and awaited for.
Dust - Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Cognitive Development Done Poorly
The Legend of Zelda series is one of the most popular and widely beloved franchises in all of gaming. One can’t think about good game design without thinking of entries like Ocarina of Time or The Wind Waker. As the series has retained its spot in gaming legend even in recent history with the fantastic Breath of the Wild, there is one game in the franchise that is notorious for how poorly received it was: none other than Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
Going back all the way to 1986, Nintendo already had a few major successes with huge titles like Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong and Duck Hunt. What would follow was yet another amazing franchise-starter by way of The Legend of Zelda. Fans of adventure games quickly flocked retail stores to pick up their copy, stepping into Link’s boots for the very first time, and the rest is history.
In order to keep the momentum of this new and successful franchise, Nintendo would release Zelda II: The Adventure of Link just the following year in 1987. Fans who played The Legend of Zelda anxiously awaited its sequel, but when they inserted the cartridge into their Nintendo Entertainment System, they were met with an experience that was wildly different from the one they so adored, enough that many completely avoided it.
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link had quite a few changes compared to The Legend of Zelda. For one, the game was almost entirely a side-scroller. This is usually the source for most of the hate for this game, but considering it was only the second entry of the franchise, I think it’s forgivable that Nintendo was still trying to figure out the best format for Link. However, to me the biggest issue with this game from a critical standpoint is its difficulty.
As prevalent above, difficulty in and of itself can be a good, even amazing, when done right. Games that get progressively harder at a logical pace give players opportunity to assimilate and accommodate in digestible bits, and, more importantly, ensure that players don’t leave the flow state and get too frustrated. This is where Zelda II: The Adventure of Link falls apart.
Players start with two very easy levels, then are immediately thrust into Death Mountain, where the difficulty ramps up significantly. It’s even arguably that this is actually the most difficult part of the game, which by the way does little to prepare you for it. This is where games like Demon’s Souls and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link differ the most in cognitive development theory. Even though they’re both two of the hardest games of all time, each beginning level of Demon’s Souls’ worlds are fairly easy in comparison to later parts, exposing players to enemies they’ll encounter in increments for them to understand and strategize against, whereas Zelda II: The Adventure of Link sends you to its hardest part directly after it’s easiest part, then somewhat ramps down shortly after.
Almost every game I can think of gives players gradual challenge and introduces enemies incrementally. There’s a reason for this: it’s so players can build upon experiences they’ve already had and learn how to take them and assimilate new ones in the future. If you don’t have anything to build upon besides something that’s too easy, excessive difficulty is disorienting at best, and frustrating at worst. In Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, players have nothing to assimilate to besides earlier levels which were too easy to teach anything, and can’t effectively accommodate for future challenges. In my opinion, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link could’ve been something great had it not been for this poor difficulty pacing.
The game also has a fairly annoying overworld experience, where if randomly moving enemies hit you, you enter a level matched with where you are on the map that goes on until you defeat a set of enemies. This wouldn’t be such an issue if it happened once or twice when traveling, but when you’re just going from one place to another it takes a lot out of the enjoyment and pacing of the game to be taken away from the main experience.
Aside from the difficulty and overworld, its at least worth mentioning that all of this and the side-scrolling element were poorly received by fans, which is another example of poorly implemented adaptation. Fans were expecting a game that built upon what they already had played a year before in The Legend of Zelda, not an amalgamation of other games. Difficult games were the norm in the 80’s and 90’s. I still haven’t beaten the original Castlevania 1–3, and it’s because they’re just too hard, and that’s as an avid fan of souls-like games. Random encounters in overworlds had been done many times before, most memorably in the Final Fantasy franchise, and of course side-scrolling was a hit in games like Super Mario Bros. But Zelda II: The Adventure of Link seemed to have wanted to be like all three, and it struggled to pull off any of them. Aside from that, the game is riddled with infamous bugs, which can make the best game a miserable experience at times (Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla?)
In Summary
Introduced to the world by Jean Piaget, Cognitive Development Theory can be a highly effective tool to introduce brand new experiences to gamers that forever change the way we think about and play them. When done well as in Demon’s Souls, players can take what they already know and expect from an action game and assimilate that knowledge to adapt to a harder difficulty, for example. When done poorly, as in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, players can become disoriented and quickly lose interest if a level, or the game itself, meets none of their expectations going into them, as they have no schema to adapt from. If one is to make a game or experience that changes the world, they need to ensure players know what to expect and what they’re in for, otherwise their pursuit for magic will rapidly fade to dust.
