Re:No Man’s Sky – Procedural Content
by stcredzero on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @02:22PM
(#12737237)
IOW, they tried so hard to make the game realistic that the intended gameplay was no longer enforceable
Realism is sometimes a misguided goal. Games are media, just like movies. What you want most of the time isn't realism, but an impression of realism. Robert Crumb and his son sometimes do "realistic" portraits, but in the biographical movie about Crumb, he reveals that his "realistic" portraits actually contain very subtle elements of caricature, to draw the user's attention to the most interesting aspects of the subject's face.
Contrast this with films of war vs. actual war. Head-cam movies of modern soldiers in combat look like people in battle gear taking cover while yelling at each other about people you can't see or barely see, then calling in air support. There's nothing cinematic or easily parseable by the viewer. If you're on a modern battlefield, and you're posing for the cameras in a nicely composed scene laid out by the "Rule of Three" you're likely to get shot in the very next second.
Documentaries and action films are very different things. Both of those are very different from documentary-styled fictional films. Analogies to sandboxes, various other game genres, and sandboxy games apply.
Realism is sometimes a misguided goal. Games are media, just like movies. What you want most of the time isn't realism, but an impression of realism. Robert Crumb and his son sometimes do "realistic" portraits, but in the biographical movie about Crumb, he reveals that his "realistic" portraits actually contain very subtle elements of caricature, to draw the user's attention to the most interesting aspects of the subject's face.
Contrast this with films of war vs. actual war. Head-cam movies of modern soldiers in combat look like people in battle gear taking cover while yelling at each other about people you can't see or barely see, then calling in air support. There's nothing cinematic or easily parseable by the viewer. If you're on a modern battlefield, and you're posing for the cameras in a nicely composed scene laid out by the "Rule of Three" you're likely to get shot in the very next second.
Documentaries and action films are very different things. Both of those are very different from documentary-styled fictional films. Analogies to sandboxes, various other game genres, and sandboxy games apply.