There's an XKCD comic for that.

https://xkcd.com/1425

Alt text: In the 60s, Marvin Minsky assigned a couple of undergrads to spend the summer programming a computer to use a camera to identify objects in a scene. He figured they'd have the problem solved by the end of the summer. Half a century later, we're still working on it.

Edit: seems I'm the third person to comment this! :')

Well yeah, we have a character model for the giant demon and the giant demon has a huge use case.

A scarf? That's a model extension. Either you're asking me to create a whole new character with a scarf baked into the mesh that will deform weirdly as the character moves, or you're asking me to implement an accessory-anchor system all for the sake of a scarf (albeit other accessories might use this new framework) which will then need a physics/cloth sim to even look half good.

Game director : we’re gonna add interact-able doors with proper door opening animations for the characters

The game designers:

The programmers and artists:

The producers:

Way back in the 90s I did a contract job at MS Research on a project called "V-Worlds" - a world simulator similar to the Doom or Quake engine, but it was browser-based and everything was a script, so changing how the world worked didn't mean you had to restart a server, just change the scripts and new stuff would appear right in front of you.

Anyway the concept of adding accessories to the player's avatar and even having a pet follow you around came up, and I remember there was an involved discussion of how difficult/impossible that would be. The player's avatar was a special object class that represented a user, and didn't have the same capabilities as ordinary objects in the world. I remember asking, "Why isn't the avatar just a world object the player happens to control? Then you could do all kinds of cool stuff like let the player transform into something else just by switching objects, or let another player run your character." Dead silence. I was just a contractor, what did I know?

• "Can you make the player be able to summon a monster from the fifth dimension?" "Yes ok ez lol"
• "Can you make the player able to exist in the world without having it fall though the ground?" "You are asking too much mate"

Always have to remind myself of this when managers ask me if something could be done. If it's easy, I naturally get a little annoyed that they're even asking. But knowing that is my job, not theirs, and it's good that they ask. There's lots of places where they assume and things go badly.

There’s already a codebase for bursting from the ground in an explosion of lava. Everyone wants that.

You’re the first person asking for a scarf, and our system doesn’t even know what a neck is.

Only in 3D. In 2D, you slap some pixels on top and there's your scarf:

No problem, just mention it in the requirements - early on. Not when everything is built to work this one specific way.

The giant is easy. The ground is easy. The lava though... Do you want the particles to stick together? To visually connect? To collide with each other? To interact with dynamic objects?

I just want a game that lets my avatar be left handed.

mf said choas

I worked at a company that made IoT stuff (which is an increasingly archaic term). The web team was pitching using a third party tool called ThingSpace to view and manage the things. The web dev said ThingSpace could do all these amazing things automatically. The manager said “can we change the color of the background?” The web dev said “…. no.”

I want dresses, and I don't care if they clip through literally everything!

Shadows in the real world a lack of energy Shadows in games imma need it all boss

The scarf in Shinobi was such a revelation when it came out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinobi_(2002_video_game)