It is said of everything from outdated 3D games to the best of the 2D era to text-based MUDs and Rogue-like adventures. You know how it goes: ‘Man, that game was powered by the best graphics engine in the world: imagination.’
Sure, you can imagine a fictional world in greater detail than that in which it can be presented to you. At what cost? A couple of detriments seem, to me, to weigh quite heavily against the argument:
Imagination is of considerably lesser bandwidth. Although high-quality, it is slow. It takes quite noticeably longer to imagine a scene than to take it in visually.
Also, with regards to the world creator's intent, your imagination is less reliable, less likely to accurately represent the intended visuals. One might argue that this ‘personal interpretation’ is the beauty of seeing a constructed world through imagination, but hell, we can all imagine anything at any time as we please; don't we enter the worlds of others to experience their imagination?
Well said :)
Indeed, Imagination is the very beginning for people, that want to bring their visions i.e. into a game.
Were tabletop DnD like games use i.e. pen and paper to get the step into complexity and overview, a modern 3D game has all that combined on screen already - at least a second hand imagination of what the creators had in mind.
For sure, imagination has the best grafix as no device is as powerfull as our brains are and even then - what we see outside is not the same as what we see inside.
Tue Jun 21 2011 5:38AM ReportA mmorpg should trigger your imagination, and thereby draw you into its universe. I think a text based game leaves too much work for my imagination, as it its nature as a game does not give you the same time to imagine that a book does, and therefore the book is better for text based presentation. We all have different imaginative powers, so for others a text mud works better.
I tried muds back in the days, but it was only once graphics were introduced into games, it started to trigger my imagination. First it was simple mud additions, that drew up a map or eased the typing hell, and then on to pictures of gear and your character and world objects and on to full 3d worlds.
For me a good mmorpg, gives enough graphics to trigger a state of imagination of what lies behind what you see. The crumbled note found in a dungeon with a mysterious message. The strange race of creatures whose origins are unknown, or why these creatures has a 6th toe on the leg. All kinds of hints, subtleties, and mysteries combined will make the mmorpg world interesting and trigger my (your) imagination.
Older games and including mmorpgs had these things, not only because they were new and exciting games, but also because they were build for imagination. The curse today is, now we can technically draw the things or animate creatures so well, that it doesn't leave much to your imagination anymore.
The worlds have become too obvious in all aspects, including graphics and gameplay, that the mysteries have faded, and while we are awed by the details and information we can get now, the experience is shallower because our imagination doesn't play the role it can. It is so hard to describe something this abstract, but I hope you can see (imagine) the meaning behind it all.
Tue Jun 21 2011 1:06PM ReportI think it's simply that the more you rely on your imagination to present the world to you, the more it suits your personal tastes, and that's all. While graphics improve, as the fidelity of the world presented to us improves, we're disappointed to find that the creators have aesthetic tastes that differ from ours.
I don't mean to come down against text-based, tabletop, or oldschool MMO games—I'm building a wiki and PDF rulebook for a campaign setting in the background as I write this—but ‘golden age’ thinking is a pet peeve of mine.
Fri Jul 01 2011 1:14AM ReportMMORPG.com writes:
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