https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAW84QQPg7c"Rambling about realism in video games (playing Fistful of Frags)"
By: Skallagrim
He made lots of interesting points about realism in video games, and I really felt that this bit at around 4:30 was beautifully done.
"Even magic can be at least somewhat realistic, or at least logical. For example, the way Brandon Sanderson describes magic. In his books, he actually explains how the magic works, instead of just saying "well, it's magic" as a generic placeholder explanation for everything. For example, he doesn't just say people fly magically, but he describes how they draw power from metals and use that to push off objects, similar to the way in which magnets with identical poles repel eachother.
So that way, magic is not just its own justification and its own explanation. It doesn't make magic any more plausible than real life, but it makes it more satisfying because that way you can understand and then you can anticipate effects. Of course you don't have to care about it. A game doesn't need to be logical, obviously. But, it's easier to relate to it if it has some degree of logic. "
It also sums up my fixation on magic theory and the study of the movement and interactions of the fictional energies. I can imagine different disciplines and institutes that study the energies having a wide array of different theories.