I’m fascinated by the process of bringing real things into video game systems, deciding how to classify them, which characteristics to represent, how they’ll work, and how to make them distinct. The complex stats and balancing of virtual guns is perhaps the most obvious example, because video games, but I do enjoy seeing Ark: Survival Evolved do the same with prehistoric creatures. Consider the thick-skulled Pachycephalosaurus, which scientists have theorised was into head-butting. Aye, but isn’t that only a fancy attack animation for just another bipedal dinosaur? Right. Well. Let’s game this up: they also have a ‘charge’ attack to even smash through buildings. Ah! Now that’s a gamification I can get behind. …