The Abstraction Trap

Welcome

4th time at GDDG
7 minutes, just one idea
Inception
Visual pun
Friend
worked for local government in my birth city
"forester" <- look it up
One of his jobs
Go places, decide whether there was a forest or not
What is a forest?
Everyone knows / "feels" a forest
Legal definition
A lot hangs on this legal definition

The concept "forest" is a useful abstraction of a collection of trees
The closer one looks, the more details appear

One may even argue that our understanding of reality is built exclusively on abstractions
To show how powerful this is…

UK: that is the IQ of school children

Heterosis: More genetic diversity, less inbreeding
Why am I talking about this?

Game Designers and artists create rules and whole worlds
Testers need to find patterns
Programmers create interfaces and systems

And the trend is going towards abstraction
We rely on it more and more
But there are some downsides

I.e. TCP/IP

I.e. all Asians are good at math

#1 Skill for game designers
#1 Be aware of the problem!

Some hints only…

Run thought experiments
Attributed to Einstein
Most likely a paraphrased

Check these out next