Rename?: Empty Room Psych

Having grown up in The '80s and The '90s, I see the name Empty Room Psych and keep thinking it's something like "There is nothing in the room. Psych! A cloaker drops down from the ceiling!"

Also, I know it stands for "Empty Room Psychology", but given that could apply to how characters react to empty rooms, the name should refer to how gamers treat this. Something like Never Show A Gamer An Empty Room.

edited 22nd Jun '10 11:43:23 PM by DragonQuestZ

Actually my first thought when I read the trope name was somebody was told to go in a room for some reason, except the room was empty. Sounds like something a mad psychologist would do. Like making B the answer to the multiple choice questions, all of them. So YMMV.

edited 22nd Jun '10 11:55:47 PM by GiantSpaceChinchilla

Well it's still getting confused by the name, which is my point here.

No Empty Rooms perhaps? Describing the mentality that makes the trope work?

No Empty Rooms could work.

But it's not always an empty room... or at least the description makes it seem as though it isn't. The description needs some work.

It's not necessarily an empty room per say so much as the the thought "If it's there it serves a purpose." This mostly takes the form of gamers being unable to accept that a seemingly empty room is just that, an empty room.

And that's why I proposed that name in the OP.

Uh... "Psych" as in the 90's catchphrase is what the ord in the title means, I though.

I think the current name amounts to Psych-ing someone out with an empty room.

Would merging with Narrative Filigree be more acceptable?

It doesn't really fit though, this trope is a lot more about the reaction than the defiance of Conservation of Detail.

To explain, Narrative Filigree is any detail that isn't important. Empty Room Psych is about the suspicion gamers treat an empty room with, refusing to believe that there's no point to it.

Also, Empty Room Psych has many more examples than Narrative Filligree, if we merged, the Empty Room Psych examples would dominate the example section.

edited 23rd Jun '10 1:10:06 AM by Twilightdusk

But No Room Is Ever Empty ? There Must Be Something Here?

I'm fine with the name. "Psych" basically means "tricked you!" The player comes into an empty room and assumes there's something in there, but nope - psych!

That's not "Empty Room, Psych!" though. That's "Meaningful Room, Pysch!" Even if you can interpret it correctly, the phrase is far too ambiguous as it is. This topic alone demonstrates that.

If it's worth noting, the page is linked to from 54 other articles and has brought 50 people to the site. In any event, I can see how the name could stand to be clearer.

Also, the description is kind of hard to read with all those blanks, which sometimes seem to stand for the word "empty" or "nothing" but sometimes they don't. I'm not sure it has enough self-demonstrating value to be worth preserving, but does anyone disagree?

Er... no, it's not. You are given an empty room. You assume something about it but you're wrong - psych! You aren't given a meaningful room.

And yes, the description with all the blanks is annoying and doesn't really have much to do with the trope, anyway.

You assume it's meaningful but it's not. Psych! This works because the players will always assume that every room is meaningful by default. The point is that you don't think it's an empty room at first. The "Psych" normally goes after the initial expectation, which in this case is a non-empty room.

That's in dialogue, perhaps. Here, nobody is saying anything. The existence of the empty room is the statement that "psych" is modifying.

Cid you're assuming the trope is what it looks like. It's actually about players assuming every empty room has to have something.

The trick empty room should be a trope, but this isn't it.

I think this shows that the name will get interpreted different ways if we leave Psych in it, no?

Yeah, even if it's technically correct it's still confusing.

This seems to cover both the attitude of gamers to empty rooms, and the reluctance of some designers to put them in. Hence I suggested Never Show A Gamer An Empty Room.

DQZ, that assumption is behind the psych. If it didn't exist there wouldn't be a psych in the first place.

And I wouldn't go with Never Show A Gamer An Empty Room either, because sometimes the empty rooms are there to confuse the player on purpose.

We may have two tropes here, which would cause the confusion. One is "gamers expect every room to have something in it or be important in some way". The other, which presupposes the first, is "an empty room in a work which confuses gamers". The first would be example-less.

edited 23rd Jun '10 11:29:53 AM by Cidolfas