I've come up with a general statement for how we need to handle things in the development of this game, which I like to call the "Manifesto of Simplicity"

Manifesto of Simplicity wrote:

If the player does not fully understand how a system works, we can simplify how the system works in the game.

This basically means that we can use people's general lack of encyclopedic knowledge to our advantage. If the average person playing Thrive doesn't understand, say, how continental drift works, they cannot get angry at us for not simulating it accurately. If the player doesn't know exactly how something would evolve in the real world, they can't tell us we did game evolution wrong.

On top of this, we're going to save more time and processing power by having observer-based processes. This is something I like to call quantum game management.

Quote :

If something is not direcly affecting what the player sees, it is either
A) run in the background
B) disregarded
C) handled arbitrarily

Basically, if you're not looking at the lizard, the lizard isn't actually there. Turn back to it, and it becomes a lizard again. Turn away, and he game isn't dealing with it, it's just a tagged mesh in your vicinity.

When we're discussing anything, try to heep these two things in mind. Our goals are simplicity, science, and playability, and we shouldn't sacrifice any one of them for another one.