What Physics Is All About
and physics—when taught correctly—is about understanding, and about learning to think well. One of the first things you learn to do with a physics problem is step back from the numbers at hand, and look at the limiting cases of the situation you’re examining. If you’re dealing with a car turning a corner at seventy miles per hour, you look to see what happens as the car’s speed approaches infinity; as the curve’s radius goes to infinity… and to nothing; as friction goes to infinity… and to zero. To a student new to the discipline, this procedure often seems odd, irrelevant; but it turns out that limiting cases give key insight into the inner workings of any physical system, and it is no different with computer games: by approaching the non-interactive, Photopia helps us to see just what is so special about that which is interactive.
But what I am coming to realize is that there is no real “forgetting” literature or film when it comes to game development, just as there is no forgetting painting and literature when it comes to film creation. In a very real way film is part painting, and part literature: it borrows and steals from, and dances around, and exists in a sometimes awkward and sometimes elegant relation to the arts that came before it. And it is the same with games: they are part film, they are part television, they are part painting and photography and literature and sculpture and poetry. And as much as we learn and discover by pushing the boundaries of the interactive, we also learn by subtly adding in touches of interactivity to things that remain otherwise linear, “film-like,” or “short story-like.” We discover beautiful hybrids that didn’t exist before, and are not the same as the things they are derogatorily compared to. Physics again: limiting cases involve going to zero, as well as pushing towards infinity.
It is a little sad that after 4 years of studying engineering in NUS, it takes a blog reviewing a game to give a quote that makes physics beautiful.
