Artistic License

Welcome back. As promised, GC's meddling with reality continues. Speaking of reality, there are times when reality just doesn't cut it. For instance, when we were making our first pinball game, all of the 3D models were made with the most exacting scale. Unfortunately, this meant that things that we really wanted to stand out where very small. In cases like that, exaggeration is a necessity. The funny thing about that is that you can make a dollar bill the size of a magazine, and it looks fine as long as it doesn't spend too much time next to, say, a person's head. In other words, as long as things look like they belong, you can get away with it. But more importantly, it has to be done, especially if you want to make sure your player is able to spot that dollar bill.

Are there cases when you shouldn't mess with reality? When dealing with an established story (factual or fictional), there are a lot of adjustments that need to be made in order to make a decent game. That creates problems when the game play flies in the face of the reality established by the story. This does not mean that the designer can simply discard the story simply because it's inconvenient. The game designer has to come up with creative solutions that (like the example above) at least look like they fit within the reality established by the game's story. It's not always easy, but hey, that's why they call it work.