The Butterfly Effect

[xEik]

Wipeout, as you may well know, was first explored on a drunken night in the Shrewsbury Arms pub in Oxton, Birkenhead when myself and Jim Bowers got talking about this ideas with these partiuclar ships he had designed perhaps 5 year earlier for a game idea he wrote up called Matix Marauders. matrix Marauders turned out to be a terrible, terrible game despite Jims very detailed design document. The basic ship design remained and we talked about why the old concept hadn't worked and the problems it's implementation.

I suppose everyone knows about the butterfly effect : the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil sets off a Tornado in Texas. In fact, it refers to the propensity of a system to be sensitive to initial conditions. Such systems over time become unpredictable.

Now, what would have happened if at the end of that night they had thought 'Nah, we are too drunk and can't think clearly. The idea wouldn't work in a million of years' and let it go to later forget about it.

Who would we be now? Where would we be? What kind of things would we be doing and what friends would we have? It's impossible to know, but we would have never met for sure. Think about that parallel world where WipEout never existed and where you think that Ridge Racer was the best racing game for the PSX when it was released.

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[Lance]

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yes, the random coalescing of disparate elements sure accounts for a lot of both great and notgreat. probably all of it.

ahh... Ridge Racer. my first videogame. in all its grainy, polygon-seamed glory. i loved it. i still have a place in my heart to keep it warm. it sure was fun
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[infoxicated]

What would my life be like if it hadn't been for Wipeout... jees... quite different, I can imagine!

When I look at my life I'd like to think it's been a mixture of decisiveness and chance, with nothing as trivial as a video game affecting the job I do, the hobby I have and the area I live in.

Pretty much where I am in life right now hinges on a game I bought on a whim three years ago.

Yikes! :o :lol:

[Lance]

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even one's decisions are based on chance. even one's basic character is based on chance: whom you are the child of, your genetic structure [more important than we ever believed], the friends you meet, the teachers you have, the places you move to, the books you happen across, a movie that grabs something in you and won't let go, a hobby you start cos 'that looks kinda interesting' that becomes an obsession because there was more to satisfy you in it than you ever dreamed and it leads you to a lifelong profession and a set of friends and maybe even loved ones that you would never have known in any other way. life is a sort of casino that is owned by the players and where the house doesn't rig the games, where the possibilities seem endless, and anything can happen
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[auslander]

You can look at it the other way too, i wonder if Jim Bowers knew way back in 1990 that the little doodle he was making of an AGShip would be involved in such a long running series and not even for the game he was designing it for!

Did he know that eventually the then obscure 'internet' would eventually emerge into the massive thing it is now and that twelve years later, people would *still* be in love with everything based off of his design?

i wonder if he still has the original notes ;) ..

aus!

[xEik]

Think about that parallel world where WipEout never existed and where you think that Ridge Racer was the best racing game for the PSX when it was released.
I was thinking about it and if you see it the opposite way, there is another parallel reality where I am a fan of an even better racing game that doesn't even exist in this reality and where I've written a post that states


Think about that parallel world where <name of the game here> never existed and where you think that WipEout was the best racing game for the PSX when it was released.;)

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION ! (no matter which reality you are in) ;)

[Task]

... Can I change parallel realities? If anyone's listening, you can take this as my formal application to be shifted to the alternate universe where there's a racing game that puts wipeout to shame.

Please.

I'm waiting...