I came across a bold statement while reading the book. It said, “quote about watercolor artists here.”
In Japanese RPGs, part of what makes the games feel the way they do is that teams were small and large maps were cheap. Fight Magic Items:
This is a quote
It’s harder to do that today, large, open world games are notoriously behind schedule (GTA 6).
So maybe it’s more that the physicality of a medium (read: new technology) comes to define it; what that medium makes newly cheap also effects movements that are, in the end, inextricable from the medium itself.