7 More Hidden Video Game Design Secrets That Are Total Genius
Are you playing Uncharted, or is Uncharted playing you?
As one of the most entertaining mediums on the planet, video games can take you from battling hordes of aliens armed with nothing but a wrench, to speeding through a pack of rivals to claim an oversized trophy.
They're everything our minds conjure when reading made visual; every ride a film takes you on make playable - in short, they're endlessly fascinating to pick apart.
To that end - and especially as modern triple-A budget titles take teams of hundreds to assemble - every last part of the experience needs to be a mix of authorship on behalf of the coders, and pathfinding from the player. One of the biggest mistakes ever levied at gaming when the "Are games art?" debate was in full swing, came from the idea of players authoring the experience, and that thereby robbing the work of any true auteurship.
This is of course not the case - it's merely that the better the developer and the more immersive the experience, the less you're supposed to see the puppet strings. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing you he didn't exist, and that goes double for escapism in gaming...