Chris Crawford on Game Design

Galilean Relativity

Most people know about Einstein's theory of relativity; few people know that Galileo came up with a kind of slow-motion analogue of it. He reasoned that, until you know about something happening, it might as well not be real for you. In other words, events happening in the New World right now would not be known in Europe until several months later, so it was better to think in terms of the lag being a kind of reality. Galileo showed that this view of reality had some practical benefits. But the idea never took off.

This could provide the basis for a nice game. I actually started building just such a game, calling it The Last of the Incas. It was based on the final struggles of the rebel Inca leaders against the Spanish. There ...