How Perlin's Law Makes Gaming Credible

simoniker writes "Veteran game designer Ernest Adams has posted a new column on 'Perlin's Law' which suggests that all books, movies, and games have a 'credibility budget'. For games, both the designer and the player decide what happens: '...the story itself can only tolerate a certain amount of improbability before the credibility budget is exhausted, and the story is ruined.' According to this new law, named after Ken Perlin, who gave birth to the concept, games should not be infinitely wide-ranging or allow the player to do anything he wants."

Comments

This is not a new law. It's not even a law.

[CyberLord Seven]

It's called suspension of disbelief. Science fiction and fantasy stories start out with a lot of it. Romance novels have much less. Traditional literature gets even less.

No matter how much you start out with you must never cross the line and have a character do something that is inconsistent with the world in the story. You cannot have a character from The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter leap into the air and fly. You MIGHT be able to get away with that in a Star Trek story.