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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8619188" data-attributes="member: 6790260">The example is useful because it is, almost unequivocally, a situation where mechanics led fiction, rather than the other way around. IOW, a gamist choice ("spells would be overpowered if they could be repeatedly used, so they cannot be repeatedly used") caused the fiction to take a certain form ("when you use up a spell's energy, it is removed from your mind and you must wait until you are mentally refreshed to re-purpose that energy again.") Simulationism implies the opposite approach: one starts from fiction-state and extrapolates the rules that that state implies, or at least rules which naturally support that state of being occurring. This is the sense in which simulationism is like "physics of the world": actual physicists, like most scientists, make a hypothesis about how the world works, collect data and analyze it, and then strive to determine the underlying rules which must have existed in order for the observations to have appeared as they did.This is not, at all, to dismiss either approach. Sometimes the "what is there, in the world?" question leads. Sometimes the "what story does this world tell?" leads. Other times, "what method lets us play in this world?" leads. The point is not to say that these things are bad because they were gamist; it is only to say that they were gamist, but have become simulationist because they have become presumed. It's sort of like how some audiophiles today want certain audio characteristics of older technology like vacuum-tube-based amplifiers, because those purely technological differences between older songs and modern-day songs have become part of the auditory experience, and their absence means the sound doesn't feel right even though it is theoretically "higher fidelity" or the like. This is obviously a loose analogy, but the idea still stands: a purely technical characteristic that has become part of the process/reasoning, and thus is now desired for simulationist reasons, even though the mechanic itself was proudly gamist in its day (though, of course, it wouldn't have been called by the term "gamist," since that came later.)</blockquote>

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