Carl Sagan's idea for Contact video game (1983) [video]

Post by Mithaldu » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 9:56 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #29

Mithaldu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't. In order: Eve is a murder/capitalism simulator and has almost no physics in the first place. (There's 3-dimensional positioning, but you can fly through planets and shoot through other ships as much as you like; also the entire world is static.) No Man's Sky is 90% an art piece with some added murder simulation. Elite: Dangerous, also a murder/capitalism simulator, only unlike Eve it's more about the imme…

Slight correction but Elite: Dangerous has the capability to do better flight mechanics.[1] The game is often quite boring, but I joke with people that it makes an amazing space station docking simulator. I actually can't wait to try that with an Oculus. [1] http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/224726/does-elite-...

Post by kevinmchugh » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 10:02 PM UTC

Mithaldu wrote: post #24

kevinmchugh wrote: post #13

Interesting that even the author of the original work seems to put aside the point of the original work for a game adaptation. Contact is about the search for god(s) and higher powers and the human religious experience, and contacting extra terrestrials was the mechanism to talk about that.

That is open to interpretation. I adore Contact and i got nothing even close to religious out of it.

Post by varelse » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 10:14 PM UTC

Mithaldu wrote: post #27

ctdonath wrote: post #23

He basically describes Star Raiders (Atari, 1979). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Raiders

Star Raiders is one game in a long series of games that pretend space travel works like airplanes of the WW2 era. It's a very impressive game for the technology it was on, but doesn't convey any of the concepts Sagan was talking about or is known for.

Post by rasz_pl » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 10:36 PM UTC

Mithaldu wrote: post #18

Zikes wrote: post #3

Setting aside the ideas for the plot, could games like Eve, No Man's Sky, or Elite: Dangerous accomplish the same thing if they used actual astronomical data?

They can't. In order: Eve is a murder/capitalism simulator and has almost no physics in the first place. (There's 3-dimensional positioning, but you can fly through planets and shoot through other ships as much as you like; also the entire world is static.) No Man's Sky is 90% an art piece with some added murder simulation. Elite: Dangerous, also a murder/capitalism simulator, only unlike Eve it's more about the imme…

Post by slg » Fri, Nov 13, 2015, 10:48 PM UTC

Mithaldu wrote: post #34

kevinmchugh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The movie focuses pretty heavily on a Christian or at least monotheistic God, and the book has some different depictions of gods and how humanity relates to them. Hadden is the most obvious: a maybe immortal man, living in the sky, who saves the plot with a deus ex machina. I remember Hadden having built a theme park/commune in a jungle somewhere which had polytheistic and maybe sacrificial elements. The protagonist…

I didn't read the book, only watched the movie. And i am saying quite seriously: Until i read the post above i did not see anything religious in the movie. Whatsoever. I do realize that this is highly likely to be due to being not an american and coming instead from a culture where religion is looked upon as at most a hobby, something a vanishingly small percentage of people spend time on and even less take seriously…