Please elaborate.
A well-executed game can be fun, when a poorly-executed version of the same idea is not. But if execution is everything, how can you experiment to test the hypothesis without making the whole thing?
A well-executed game can be fun, when a poorly-executed version of the same idea is not. But if execution is everything, how can you experiment to test the hypothesis without making the whole thing?
People love to pretend that game dev is just a matter of prototyping to find a fun mechanic, and while that can be true for a few things (mostly niche movement), it’s generally not true of most games. It’s important to identify where the player consciousness is within a game.
Binding of Isaac, to pick something somewhat random. It probably wouldn’t be that fun doing random rooms to prototype. It probably wouldn’t be fun doing random items. It has to be a whole sequence of runs before you get the feeling that it works.
If it's fun even without full-fidelity, it's fun. But if it's not fun, it might just be the lack of fidelity - not believable enough. I guess one needs an opinion for how much fidelity is enough to know, for the specific mechanics/interactions.
EDIT can always increase fidelity.
Through this discussion, I realize I'm more interested in "feel" than fun as such - e.g. a sense of place, being somewhere, in a walking simulator; or the feel of guns in COD. Not a mechanic; but perhaps a kind of interaction.
Not necessarily "cinematic", but probably more akin to issues in cinema than game mechanics.
I suppose one can still isolate an aspect and iterate on it; but it seems fidelity is important here...
Your point on a/v feedback reminds me of "cow clicker", started as a joke, creating the idle-game genre.