Yes, there is a development cost, but it’s a feasible system. If the payoff is deemed worth it, it can be done at the expense of something else. It’s a design decision, not a limit of technology or even budget.
The problem is that it’s hard to make a game a better experience this way, and for many games it would distract from or confuse the core experience, making it worse.
It’s a well-explored problem too. Anecdotally, in my career I’ve worked on three games where this kind of system (at various levels of complexity) was proposed. Game designers and programmers love this stuff (I do). In the end these ideas were abandoned simply because they didn’t make the player’s experience better.
If a tree falls in the woods, and no-one is around, does it make a sound? If the player encounters that tree lying on the ground, do they care that it’s fall was simulated after some event, or is the impact the same as if a level designer or procedural generation system placed it there? Will they even notice it? Can we make sure the simulated tree falls in a way that doesn’t break navigation systems, or cause a collision issue where the player can get stuck, because then they’ll definitely notice it in the worst possible way, etc.
These are not impossible problems but it really takes a special type of game to make it not only worthwhile, but better for the player, and probably a special type of player too.
The problem is that it’s hard to make a game a better experience this way, and for many games it would distract from or confuse the core experience, making it worse.
It’s a well-explored problem too. Anecdotally, in my career I’ve worked on three games where this kind of system (at various levels of complexity) was proposed. Game designers and programmers love this stuff (I do). In the end these ideas were abandoned simply because they didn’t make the player’s experience better.
If a tree falls in the woods, and no-one is around, does it make a sound? If the player encounters that tree lying on the ground, do they care that it’s fall was simulated after some event, or is the impact the same as if a level designer or procedural generation system placed it there? Will they even notice it? Can we make sure the simulated tree falls in a way that doesn’t break navigation systems, or cause a collision issue where the player can get stuck, because then they’ll definitely notice it in the worst possible way, etc.
These are not impossible problems but it really takes a special type of game to make it not only worthwhile, but better for the player, and probably a special type of player too.