The year is 2003 - Legendary game designer and pioneer of the digital age, William (Will) Wright, gives a lecture on the philosophy in game design.
Fast forward to 2006 - Wright publishes the book "The Meta-Physical Games Industry", a book detailing the history and theory of meta-physics in game design, as well as its downfall. It is a huge, dense book, and a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about this subject.
In 2010, Wright publishes another book, "The Meta-Physical Theory of Games". Again, another great, fascinating book. And it’s the complete treatise on the subject of Meta-Physical theory. I recommend you read this first before diving into this one.
Anyways, I have spent the past few years getting into the Meta-physical Theory (MT), and in this article, I want to give you a glimpse into what I see as the MT, why I am convinced of it, and why I resort to using "too many mods".
A brief summary of MT
What is "meta?"
In the game, the "meta" is an idea that is as close to a "definition" of "game" as I've found. The idea behind the Meta is that every game has a huge collection of playstyles. While the player can pick the one that they enjoy, the meta is the apex that stands above all other playstyles. The meta is a super-formula that determines what the most successful (albeit probably not well-designed) features are.
And that's what the game is all about, right? Winning? The point of the game would be to find the meta and make your way to the top. That would be the case, but this is where the “physical” comes into play.
What is the “physical”, you ask?
To answer this question, I cite Will Wright's book, "The Meta-Physical Theory of Games". In chapter 11, Wright loosely defined the "physical" as "all the things you can pick". He created an impromptu card game to further explain this scheme: You pick up “a” card, out of three, in order to win. That’s the meta. Simple enough?
But we haven’t addressed the “physical”. The game rules state that the player can pick up “a” card in order to win. What it doesn’t explicitly state is that the player may ONLY pick up ONE card. This is the “physical”, the realm in which the rules may be bent without breaking.
In this astral event, Will Wright picks up ALL THREE cards. He has utilized the meta-physical realm. The “meta” being picking a card is the best way to win, and the “physical” being an alternative to win.
It isn’t a matter of whether or not he won, but whether or not he chose to win the game in the meta-physical domain.
Another top-shelf example of Wright's meta-physical abstraction is one of his own video games, "SimCity". However, it takes a spin on the “meta” approach. In the book, Will writes:
This is my own game, SimCity. It’s basically a city simulator, as you could probably tell from the name. The goal, well… there isn’t really a goal, but it manifests from the player’s consciousness. It’s still a meta-physical game but isn’t like most. Normally the objective would be to build a city, but in this particular case, and it’s quite fascinating - you can create a city or destroy an existing one. You can have your citizens live in despair and have them drink raw sewage, or downright murder them all with an alien invasion.
Look, don’t ask about the motives behind the inclusion of these options, that’s neither here nor there. The point is, it’s the apex in the sonata of meta-physicality. SimCity gives you a physical. The whole thing just gives you one giant, massive physical, but here’s the catch: there’s no meta. And I had a bit of trouble balancing this out actually. It took me a few years to give a player reason as to why they would want to build a city, but I had this revelation – why do they need to build a city? So, I introduced this sort of… idea. I call it the meta manifestation abstraction, its like this third position which births a meta through the physical. Basically, I made it so players can destroy things without a mission fail screen nagging them to death. Assuming you’re in sandbox, of course.
The Meta Manifestation Abstraction Protraction
Little did Will Wright know how much his "meta manifestation abstraction" could come into play later down the line. Thanks to the development of user-created mods, players could not only fill in missing physicality, but also create their own meta-physicality as well as meta manifestation. In fact, I'd say they might also manifest physical manifestation. Look, the idea being, Will Wright's grand intelligence in the realm of his own meta-physical concept is nothing short of awe-inspiring. It is as if the physicality is to meta what yin is to yang.
Does this answer your question: “why so many mods?”, I think it does. If we take the philosophy of meta-physical concept, it becomes quite clear why I use so many mods. What the developers made was great, but it’s just meta. Without mods, and with the huge window of physicality, it is nothing more than a waste of potential.
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