Social Proof is a light pointing in a direction

The world is destroyed by an evil master. All must obey him, or perish. As you speak to others, they ask you not to involve themselves with your ideas, and guards constantly treat you awfully. In your mind, you are the hero, the one who will save the day. You know this because that’s why you bought the game. Because of this, the social movements you see in front of you, convince you of your noble deed. In other words, as Social Proof is thrust at you, your mind moves to thwart it. The thing is, the game makers wanted you to feel this way. They know that showing you this proof will make you hate the leaders, not love them. In other words, you are being controlled by your desire to not conform.

Social Proof itself is the idea that if you see others doing something, you do it as well. This is the reason why we have advertising. If everyone talks, and thinks about a commercial, they are likely to buy that product. In fact, if you were to convince people that everyone is using the product, then they would likely try it out. This is why so many groups want to sound like they are grass roots. They want it to sound like the people themselves are doing this.

The idea of using Social Proof to persuade is old. My personal favorite example was used by the Communist promoters in the 20th century. If you ever wanted to feel scared at how brilliant a way this is, then look no further. The professors at my college leaned toward East Asian history, so the Chinese and Korean Communist uprisings were well known. If you want to read more on this, go check out Disarming the Allies of Imperialism. Most of what I am about to explain is from this book, and Mao Zhe Dong’s guerilla warfare manifesto. These are also great books if you want your head to explode, or fall asleep.

A group of people want to convince an area that Communism is the way to go. As a group standing in one place, a few people would join, but not all.

You can try to get people within the area to join up, but it will still be a small group.

However, if the communists dispersed, and joined every single group they could find they would cover more area.

The Communist party had their members go separately and join whatever they could. They would share their message in every way possible to their new colleagues. For the farm group they would say the communist party was good for the farmers. For the urban performers, they would say that the party would help them perform. Because so many groups seemed to be doing the same thing at the same time, there began to be a consensus. The groups would then join every leadership position there was, and thus take over the entire area.

Outsiders with ‘wrong’ opinions were shunned. If you were considered one of the outsiders, it may be a death sentence during the revolution. You can imagine why so many people in the US were scared to death of communism at the time. To be honest, it is still unknown if the USSR really was doing things in the US or not.

Advertisers have begun using the same tactics. Wikipedia has begun changing its rules so that anyone caught writing information, and secretly being paid will be kicked out. This goes from political pages, to scientific ideas.

Advertising to make things look like people really enjoy something is constantly being played. For example within gaming culture, the entire issue with Gamespot and Kane and Lynch fiasco was that a company was trying to make the game look popular to people that played games for a living. Jeff Gertsman reviewed the game Kane and Lynch and gave it a low score. The company Eidos began yelling at the website managers, threatening to pull advertising. Gertsman was fired.

Another example of trying to control the Social Proof comes from Dan Hsu, who began to talk about companies buying articles, and the cover of the magazine. It went so far that companies began to stop giving out free plays to journalists from the magazine. So, Dan Hsu named the companies.

Companies can also use social proof without the manipulations.

Wii Would Like to Play is now one of the greatest examples of Social Proof advertising out there. It showed people enjoying the games being offered at all sorts of different households. They then went to the streets, and actually got random people to play the game. This made people have parties entirely dedicated to playing the Wii. This was not the only reason why it was popular though. People actually used and enjoyed Wii Sports, even losing weight while playing. However, the commercial itself is sighted by people as how the game became popular.

Social Proof within a game comes in two ways, the first is used as a way to tell you where to go next. If you walk down a hallway, and see a light on at a door, you check the door. The next is to tell you how you should view the world.

While playing the fun mod Estranged you can see how a level tells you where to go. You start off in a pool of water, and when you see over the surface.

As you can see, a giant sign is telling you where to go. You don’t need to think about what to do next, it is already explained to you.

Even if you go in other directions, the map is designed that you end up in the same spot. Every ladder leads to the boardwalk, and then to that house. If you try to swim around the house, all you do is end up at the spot after the house. You do not have a choice, yet you would not notice it while playing.

The lights, arrows, and yellow highlights tell you what to do. It gives the idea, and feeling that the proper social thing to do is do these things. The one thing the map can’t do is keep me from getting motion sick while playing. This was not built for my screen, and it shows up in my wibbly wobbly head.

Within the context of a story, social proof gives you the villains, the good guys, and the story. The best proof of this is within the Half Life series.

In a let’s play session by Masters of AudioSurf, our main character walks through an old train station. There is someone being broadcasted over the waves, telling you what to believe, and how to believe it. As you walk by people, they mention problems with trains. People leave, but never come back. There are masked guards, who will hit you if you mess with them. Because of the social cues given, you realize that these are the enemies, and it is ok to kill them.

In the same first minutes of playing you meet these guys.

They act happy to see you, and give you hints on how to escape. Without any more context, you view these people as friends. The entire game explained to you within the story what to shoot, and what to save. Who the good guys are, and who deserves to be have a flaming barrel of exploding justice thrown in their faces.

The game is constantly doing this over and over again. The bad guys deserve to die, and the good guys are your friends. The game makers know that you already view yourself as different from any other character in game, this allows you to reject the first offer of social proof and conformity. You are the hero, you should not be treated this way.

The simple cues, and uses makes you feel a part of the world. Social Proof is a really old form of persuasion. A great example of how it worked was the communist guerilla propaganda system. Advertisers are now using the same techniques, even going into places like wikipedia and paying for wanted statements. The videogame industry is not much better. As we can see, videogames can persuade you socially within the game as well. You see a light in a dark alley, and you end up following it. You know who to hate, and who to love based on how the story is presented to you.

If you haven’t noticed already, the different ways to persuade tend to weave into each other. You wouldn’t go toward the lit area, unless it was consistent in other games. The next forms of persuasion, liking, and authority are used together with social proof to make a good argument. Just look at any political advertisement, and see where it takes you. Keep in mind, persuasion also does good things, like help you enjoy a game.