This is a press release though, lots of games were advertised with similar claims that don’t live up to expectation when you actually play them.
The reason is that designing an universe with simple and elegant physical laws sounds cool on paper but it is very hard to do if you want to set an actually playable game in it, since most combinations of laws, parameters and initial conditions yield uninteresting “pathological” states. In fact this also applies to the laws of physics of our universe, and it is the reason why some people use the “fine tuning” argument to argue for creationism or multiple universes.
I’m not an expert game programmer, but if I understand correctly, in practice these things use lots of heuristics and hacks to make them work.
since most combinations of laws, parameters and initial conditions yield uninteresting “pathological” states
Another issue is too simple optimums. Human players are great at minmaxing game rules (=physics) and if the optimal behaviour is simple, well, the game’s not fun any more.
This is a press release though, lots of games were advertised with similar claims that don’t live up to expectation when you actually play them.
The reason is that designing an universe with simple and elegant physical laws sounds cool on paper but it is very hard to do if you want to set an actually playable game in it, since most combinations of laws, parameters and initial conditions yield uninteresting “pathological” states. In fact this also applies to the laws of physics of our universe, and it is the reason why some people use the “fine tuning” argument to argue for creationism or multiple universes.
I’m not an expert game programmer, but if I understand correctly, in practice these things use lots of heuristics and hacks to make them work.
Another issue is too simple optimums. Human players are great at minmaxing game rules (=physics) and if the optimal behaviour is simple, well, the game’s not fun any more.