Video game physics suggestions?

[steuard]

I'm looking for ideas!

I'm giving a talk on "The Physics of Gaming" at a small convention this weekend (run by our college anime/gaming club). My plan is to first talk about "good physics" (games where some aspect(s) of physics are done well and important), then about "bad physics" (games where some aspect of physics is horribly inaccurate), and finally about how gamers wind up thinking like scientists (based largely on "Scientific Habits of Mind in Virtual Worlds" by Steinkuehler and Duncan).

What I'd really like would be some neat, current examples of "good" and "bad", and ideally YouTube videos to illustrate them. I've got some ideas already, but any suggestions would be welcome. Thoughts, all you gamers out there?

Comments

[beth_leonard]

*nod* although the slightly-bad physics in Super mario style games makes the games themselves much more playable. Contrast (for example) with the game "Braid" http://braid-game.com/ which also has bad physics (no momentum) but doesn't allow in-air direction reversal, and is nearly unplayable for the casual gamer. If you press "right arrow" the character goes right, and stops the instant you stop pressing to the right. Likewise you sink like a stone the moment you stop pressing to the right in the middle of a jump and can't reverse direction. It has even more bad physics than the mario series, but is much easier to code.

A free game I can think of with this property is Resonance from the Global Game Jam 2010. This type of physics is about the simplest there is to code, but is very annoying to play, much more so than Super Mario Bros. style games. Resonance does allow you to do in-air reversals, but otherwise is much like Braid in that you stop moving the moment you stop pushing on the key. This entire game was designed and coded in 48 hours or less.

--Beth