Trigger Happy
meadows and open spaces to get the player comfortable with the character.” The terrain is designed expressly to optimize gameplay.
One theory of how the universe came to exist is a provocative idea called the Strong Anthropic Principle, which suggests that the universe is designed exactly the way it is, with the forces of nature and relative charges of fundamental particles balanced exactly this way, for the sole purpose of allowing intelligent life forms such as ourselves to observe it. We are the whole point of creation. In videogames, the Strong Anthropic Principle is not speculation but fact. As Lara Croft’s creator has explained: “The whole Tomb Raider world is utterly dependent on Lara’s size and animations. The distance she can jump, reach, run forward and fall are set variables. In this way, her world is designed for her to exist in.”
How strangely comforting. We are everywhere alienated from nature in the real world, but for a time we can feel oddly at home in this unreal universe, where our strengths can always overcome our difficulties. We prefer the fantasy because it is fair.
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