I had a roommate in college who loved to play World of Warcraft.
At some point, we got into a discussion over art style and realism. He made an observation that still sticks with me.
"The style sets expectations. When something breaks a real world law of nature or logic because of a bug, it doesn't feel as jarring, because the style is already cartoon-y."
It made me think about just how malleable expectations are with regards to game systems. Train a player to expect realism, and breaches become infuriating. Train a player to expect the unexpected, and the unexpected becomes intriguing and fun.
I think it’s more about internal consistency. If a world hasn’t said something about it (or hasn’t shown a derivation of it — e.g. gravity presumably exists, because all objects shown have been affected by it), then you’re free to do whatever (e.g. introduce magic as a mechanism). But once done, it must continue to hold true — else the rules are bullshit, and we expect nothing to behave in a manner that isn’t arbitrary.
Even fortnite has a kind of logic to it, haphazard as they may be (though it’s also so loosely defined, that I find it completely uninteresting — it’s a dumpster fire of cosmetic items with no real theme or nuance; this is because its more a modern shopping mall [ an arbitrary context for social groups ] than a game system).
It’s why simpsons can revert (nearly) all damages every episode (that’s simply the rule of the world), but if it tried to violate that rule and persisted those changes in any meaningful way, it would feel like complete nonsense. (They do however do it for self-referential jokes and such, but these aren’t persistence so much as temporary anomalies) At best, they’re allowed to forget something exists altogether.
At some point, we got into a discussion over art style and realism. He made an observation that still sticks with me.
"The style sets expectations. When something breaks a real world law of nature or logic because of a bug, it doesn't feel as jarring, because the style is already cartoon-y."
It made me think about just how malleable expectations are with regards to game systems. Train a player to expect realism, and breaches become infuriating. Train a player to expect the unexpected, and the unexpected becomes intriguing and fun.
(More modern tip of the hat to Fortnite)