Here are my running notes from Sims-creator Will Wright's fascinating after-dinner talk at PC Forum.
Science is about observing reality and making a model. In games you do the reverse — take a model and generate an elaborate world.
In games today, players are getting really good at sniffing out the size of the possibility-space — in five minutes of play, I can tell you how linear a game is. To get the complexity players demand, you need algorithms — emergence.
We used to model with calculus — an equation that tells you where jupiter should be. In simulations, you use little dumb automata that create stories.
Games have topologies — Myst is linear, chess is branching, Doom is branching but collapses at the end of every level.
