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Richard Garriott discusses a similar problem with UO's virtual ecology in the Ars Technica "War Stories" interview. UO had a virtual ecology system that tried t

Richard Garriott discusses a similar problem with UO's virtual ecology in the Ars Technica "War Stories" interview. UO had a virtual ecology system that tried to balance carnivores, herbivores, and plants. When the game opened, to the designers' surprise, players slaughtered all animal life across the land. https://youtu.be/KFNxJVTJleE https://youtu.be/KFNxJVTJleE

lowbloodsugar 6y ago
They didn't know about Checkhov's gun [1]: >Checkhov's gun is a dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed. Elements should not appear to make "false promises" by never coming into play. If you put it in a game, and we can kill it, then we will kill it because we will assume that there must be some reason for us to kill it, otherwise it would not be here. Shigeru Miyamoto understands this. In Super Mario 64 there is a star that you "can't" get. You can see that there is no other way to get it other than somehow jumping "really high". There is also an infinite heart to restore health as many times as you need. Why is it here? As you start trying every combination of jump, sometimes you fall far enough to take damage. The heart is there to tell you to keep going! If you do, you get a star, and you learn the wall jump. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun
- Raph_Koster 6y ago
  I'm an English major -- of course we knew about Chekhov's gun. :) You may want to check here regarding that particular article/video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18749793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18749793
  - lowbloodsugar 6y ago
    Oh hey man! Sorry to bag on your game. But it did really bum us out, and that's genuine emotion I'm writing there. I could perhaps have been less of a bitch about it.

lowbloodsugar 6y ago

They didn't know about Checkhov's gun [1]: >Checkhov's gun is a dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed. Elements should not appear to make "false promises" by never coming into play. If you put it in a game, and we can kill it, then we will kill it because we will assume that there must be some reason for us to kill it, otherwise it would not be here. Shigeru Miyamoto understands this. In Super Mario 64 there is a star that you "can't" get. You can see that there is no other way to get it other than somehow jumping "really high". There is also an infinite heart to restore health as many times as you need. Why is it here? As you start trying every combination of jump, sometimes you fall far enough to take damage. The heart is there to tell you to keep going! If you do, you get a star, and you learn the wall jump. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun

Raph_Koster 6y ago
I'm an English major -- of course we knew about Chekhov's gun. :) You may want to check here regarding that particular article/video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18749793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18749793
- lowbloodsugar 6y ago
  Oh hey man! Sorry to bag on your game. But it did really bum us out, and that's genuine emotion I'm writing there. I could perhaps have been less of a bitch about it.