I got the impression that the "next" game he was talking about, the scientific achievement that would be on the cover of Wired, would be the one after Fable 2.
no matter how you do it there has to be some starting point, initiation. and whatever values you place there wont be neutral right? or can they? it seems that even if you make it very basic they will still include some interpretation of the world from the designers and thus be more likely to evolve ina certain direction.
to be a perfect simulation would need the game designer to be some sort of a god no?
What about a simulation of pool? I guess one could argue that the physics can never be 100% correct, but in that case I wouldn't feel so bad about it, somehow.
I guess I feel that it would be more interesting to have emergent behaviour from simple rules than to hardwire the rules on a high level, but of course I can not give a clear cut definition...
like molyneux himself points out it is too expensive. and i mena people kind of keep reinventing the wheel(like in a lot of other areas in programming) so one could imagine people creating worlds both for science and computer games that have evolving populations of something and then game designers can take these when they are at a certain stage of development and build a gameworld on top of them.
uh, kinda :)
I don't think Molyneux approach sounds very scientific, though. What is scientific about giving game figures an artificial idea of morals? Scientific for me would be to not make those inbuilt, but let them evolve and see why certain morals make for more successful societies than others.
Sorry to rant about this, but it is one of my pet peeves with games (like civilization). They claim to be simulations, but they are not - they are just projections of the game designers limited perspective and morals. Of course the same could be said for many books and movies, too. I don't like it there, either, but somehow I feel that with games it is another dimension. The pseudo-simulation somehow makes the opinions of the game creators seem more legitimate.