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> the game couldn't be played realistically. I think I found your problem..., trying to take a game too seriously. I've played thousands of hours of SimCity 2

> the game couldn't be played realistically. I think I found your problem..., trying to take a game too seriously. I've played thousands of hours of SimCity 2000, 3000 and 4 and I treat them as what they are, incredibly fun city building sandboxes with illusory and believable but flawed simulations under the hood.

DonHopkins 1y ago
https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-simulation-games-bd7a9d81e62d#73e0 https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s... >Everyone notices the obvious built-in political bias, whatever that is. But everyone sees it from a different perspective, so nobody agrees what its real political agenda actually is. I don’t think it’s all that important, since SimCity’s political agenda pales in comparison to the political agenda in the eye of the beholder. >Some muckety-muck architecture magazine was interviewing Will Wright about SimCity, and they asked him a question something like “which ontological urban paradigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?” He replied, “I just kind of optimized for game play.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22062590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22062590 DonHopkins on Jan 16, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Reverse engineering course Will Wright defined the "Simulator Effect" as how game players imagine a simulation is vastly more detailed, deep, rich, and complex than it actually is: a magical misunderstanding that you shouldn’t talk them out of. He designs games to run on two computers at once: the electronic one on the player’s desk, running his shallow tame simulation, and the biological one in the player’s head, running their deep wild imagination. "Reverse Over-Engineering" is a desirable outcome of the Simulator Effect: what game players (and game developers trying to clone the game) do when they use their imagination to extrapolate how a game works, and totally overestimate how much work and modeling the simulator is actually doing, because they filled in the gaps with their imagination and preconceptions and assumptions, instead of realizing how many simplifications and shortcuts and illusions it actually used. https://www.masterclass.com/classes/will-wright-teaches-game-design-and-theory/chapters/game-mechanics#reviews https://www.masterclass.com/classes/will-wright-teaches-game... >There's a name for what Wright calls "the simulator effect" in the video: apophenia. There's a good GDC video on YouTube where Tynan Sylvester (the creator of RimWorld) talks about using this effect in game design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia >Apophenia (/æpoʊˈfiːniə/) is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things. The term (German: Apophänie) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as "unmotivated seeing of connections [accompanied by] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness". He described the early stages of delusional thought as self-referential, over-interpretations of actual sensory perceptions, as opposed to hallucinations. RimWorld: Contrarian, Ridiculous, and Impossible Game Design Methods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdqhHKjepiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdqhHKjepiE 5 game design tips from Sims creator Will Wright https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scS3f_YSYO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scS3f_YSYO0 >Tip 5: On world building. As you know by now, Will's approach to creating games is all about building a coherent and compelling player experience. His games are comprised of layered systems that engage players creatively, and lead to personalized, some times unexpected outcomes. In these types of games, players will often assume that the underlying system is smarter than it actually is. This happens because there's a strong mental model in place, guiding the game design, and enhancing the player's ability to imagine a coherent context that explains all the myriad details and dynamics happening within that game experience. >Now let's apply this to your project: What mental model are you building, and what story are you causing to unfold between your player's ears? And how does the feature set in your game or product support that story? Once you start approaching your product design that way, you'll be set up to get your customers to buy into the microworld that you're building, and start to imagine that it's richer and more detailed than it actually is.
- ciex 1y ago
  Fantastic comment, thank you! I am going to dive into several of those sources and ideas.
- voidfunc 1y ago
  Thanks this an amazing comment!
deleted 1y ago
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DonHopkins 1y ago

https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-simulation-games-bd7a9d81e62d#73e0 https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s... >Everyone notices the obvious built-in political bias, whatever that is. But everyone sees it from a different perspective, so nobody agrees what its real political agenda actually is. I don’t think it’s all that important, since SimCity’s political agenda pales in comparison to the political agenda in the eye of the beholder. >Some muckety-muck architecture magazine was interviewing Will Wright about SimCity, and they asked him a question something like “which ontological urban paradigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?” He replied, “I just kind of optimized for game play.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22062590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22062590 DonHopkins on Jan 16, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Reverse engineering course Will Wright defined the "Simulator Effect" as how game players imagine a simulation is vastly more detailed, deep, rich, and complex than it actually is: a magical misunderstanding that you shouldn’t talk them out of. He designs games to run on two computers at once: the electronic one on the player’s desk, running his shallow tame simulation, and the biological one in the player’s head, running their deep wild imagination. "Reverse Over-Engineering" is a desirable outcome of the Simulator Effect: what game players (and game developers trying to clone the game) do when they use their imagination to extrapolate how a game works, and totally overestimate how much work and modeling the simulator is actually doing, because they filled in the gaps with their imagination and preconceptions and assumptions, instead of realizing how many simplifications and shortcuts and illusions it actually used. https://www.masterclass.com/classes/will-wright-teaches-game-design-and-theory/chapters/game-mechanics#reviews https://www.masterclass.com/classes/will-wright-teaches-game... >There's a name for what Wright calls "the simulator effect" in the video: apophenia. There's a good GDC video on YouTube where Tynan Sylvester (the creator of RimWorld) talks about using this effect in game design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia >Apophenia (/æpoʊˈfiːniə/) is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things. The term (German: Apophänie) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as "unmotivated seeing of connections [accompanied by] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness". He described the early stages of delusional thought as self-referential, over-interpretations of actual sensory perceptions, as opposed to hallucinations. RimWorld: Contrarian, Ridiculous, and Impossible Game Design Methods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdqhHKjepiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdqhHKjepiE 5 game design tips from Sims creator Will Wright https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scS3f_YSYO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scS3f_YSYO0 >Tip 5: On world building. As you know by now, Will's approach to creating games is all about building a coherent and compelling player experience. His games are comprised of layered systems that engage players creatively, and lead to personalized, some times unexpected outcomes. In these types of games, players will often assume that the underlying system is smarter than it actually is. This happens because there's a strong mental model in place, guiding the game design, and enhancing the player's ability to imagine a coherent context that explains all the myriad details and dynamics happening within that game experience. >Now let's apply this to your project: What mental model are you building, and what story are you causing to unfold between your player's ears? And how does the feature set in your game or product support that story? Once you start approaching your product design that way, you'll be set up to get your customers to buy into the microworld that you're building, and start to imagine that it's richer and more detailed than it actually is.

ciex 1y ago
Fantastic comment, thank you! I am going to dive into several of those sources and ideas.
voidfunc 1y ago
Thanks this an amazing comment!

deleted 1y ago

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