Hard SciFi in games

[hermes]

I just recently saw the much recommended motion picture 'Gravity' This made me aware of a particularly nasty hole in my gaming collection: Space based SciFi, optionally hard sci fi.

You know, not the aliens/galactic civilizations kind of games, but something with actual space ships.

I wonder if there is a market for something more serious.

Actually, hard science fiction can be accepted if there are enough plausible explanations that support it. For example, the mass effect fields in Mass Effect provide a plausible explanation for things like FTL or supermaterials, which puts it closer to hard sci-fy than, lets say, Star Wars' force.

 

[Realitycrash]

Hard Sci-fi in games means..No ray-guns, no FTL, no cybertech, no mutants with superpowers, etc. Not unless you can explain those things with modern (or soon-to-be modern) science. So..Can get rather boring?

Not at all. It's just that these have to be based on more rigorous science. You can have most if not all of these, but they must be based on solid theories and explain them well.

Problem being that most of these theories will probably contradict several laws of physics (Like Newtons laws of Thermodynamics). Sure, you can handewave some by appealing to Phlebotonium, or any form of gadget or invention, but then 'Hard Scifi' starts to become far less 'Hard'.

It all depends on where on the scale of 'Hard and soft' you want to place yourself.

 

[moseythepirate]

Hard Sci-fi in games means..No ray-guns, no FTL, no cybertech, no mutants with superpowers, etc. Not unless you can explain those things with modern (or soon-to-be modern) science. So..Can get rather boring?

Not at all. It's just that these have to be based on more rigorous science. You can have most if not all of these, but they must be based on solid theories and explain them well.

Problem being that most of these theories will probably contradict several laws of physics (Like Newtons laws of Thermodynamics). Sure, you can handewave some by appealing to Phlebotonium, or any form of gadget or invention, but then 'Hard Scifi' starts to become far less 'Hard'.

It all depends on where on the scale of 'Hard and soft' you want to place yourself.

I don't want to nitpick...but Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics don't exist. There's Newton's laws of motion, which don't apply at near light speed. Completely unrelated is Thermodynamics, the study of heat and energy flow. What you're thinking of is Einstein's Theories of Relativity.

But aside from that, yeah, the difference between hard sci-fi and soft sci-fi is fuzzy at best. One of my favorite hard sci-fi novels (Mission of Gravity) is about as hard as hard sci-fi gets, and even it only mentioned FTL travel in that it exists. I imagine this is so that the story (recruiting aliens to collect a crashed probe on a planet with variable gravity) could actually happen.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Hard Sci-fi in games means..No ray-guns, no FTL, no cybertech, no mutants with superpowers, etc. Not unless you can explain those things with modern (or soon-to-be modern) science. So..Can get rather boring?

Not at all. It's just that these have to be based on more rigorous science. You can have most if not all of these, but they must be based on solid theories and explain them well.

Problem being that most of these theories will probably contradict several laws of physics (Like Newtons laws of Thermodynamics). Sure, you can handewave some by appealing to Phlebotonium, or any form of gadget or invention, but then 'Hard Scifi' starts to become far less 'Hard'.

It all depends on where on the scale of 'Hard and soft' you want to place yourself.

Except Mass Effect dropped any pretense of hard science fiction the moment that your character was lifted into the air by an alien beacon and implanted with knowledge to stop the Necrons from harvesting all life.

While it isn't really a series that focuses on the science aspect, the Killzone series falls within the Hard Science Fiction range. The conflict is between two planets sharing the same solar system, interplanetary travel takes weeks, interstellar travel takes months. Most machines and weapons are built for practicality over technical whiz bang, and the mad science death lasers are rather subdued and only used in the third game.

 

[moseythepirate]

Hard Sci-fi in games means..No ray-guns, no FTL, no cybertech, no mutants with superpowers, etc. Not unless you can explain those things with modern (or soon-to-be modern) science. So..Can get rather boring?

Not at all. It's just that these have to be based on more rigorous science. You can have most if not all of these, but they must be based on solid theories and explain them well.

Problem being that most of these theories will probably contradict several laws of physics (Like Newtons laws of Thermodynamics). Sure, you can handewave some by appealing to Phlebotonium, or any form of gadget or invention, but then 'Hard Scifi' starts to become far less 'Hard'.

It all depends on where on the scale of 'Hard and soft' you want to place yourself.

Except Mass Effect dropped any pretense of hard science fiction the moment that your character was lifted into the air by an alien beacon and implanted with knowledge to stop the Necrons from harvesting all life.

While it isn't really a series that focuses on the science aspect, the Killzone series falls within the Hard Science Fiction range. The conflict is between two planets sharing the same solar system, interplanetary travel takes weeks, interstellar travel takes months. Most machines and weapons are built for practicality over technical whiz bang, and the mad science death lasers are rather subdued and only used in the third game.

You can have hard sci-fi with unknown technology. There have certainly been hard sci-fi works with FTL travel, which is waaaaaay more problematic than a force field or machines that utilize biological components. What is interesting about Mass Effect is that it's hardness varies pretty impressively. Yes, it has ridiculous space-magic (Ardat-Yakshi, much?), and the shenanigans that occur in cutscenes pretty much live on Rule of Cool. That said, the codex and the fluff go into great detail about things that most sci-fi doesn't worry about, like heat dissipation in deep space, and light-lag in scanning and communications. Furthermore, it takes the time to explain it's ridiculous space magic using real(ish) scientific principles, and it's internal rules are consistent.

That internal consistency and attempt to justify it's more far-fetched...thingies...edge it onto hard sci-fi, in my opinion. It's certainly either on the hard side of soft sci-fi, or the soft-side of hard sci-fi. The distinction is pretty subjective in the best of times.

 

[Doom972]

Snip

Snip

Snip

Of course, then we run across the problem that video games rarely spend any time examining or explaining the logistics behind how their in-universe technology or magic works, and most of the time we're supposed to just take it as read for the sake of our suspension of disbelief.

I don't think most video-game writers would really have the ability to explain those things in a way that remains interesting, either. Video games are very much about providing quick gratification to the player; "Because magic" or "because the future!" are essentially the easiest ways of side-stepping a whole ton of needless exposition or glossary writing.

That's not to say there wouldn't be a market for games that put in that sort of effort, of course. It would almost undoubtedly be a niche genre though.

And these kind of games ARE soft sci-fi. There more than enough games where the advanced technology is explained, especially on PC.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Hard Sci-fi in games means..No ray-guns, no FTL, no cybertech, no mutants with superpowers, etc. Not unless you can explain those things with modern (or soon-to-be modern) science. So..Can get rather boring?

Boring?! Hardly!

If you take simply define the genre as things that could readily be explained with current technology you get things like:

Directed Energy Weapons - The biggest hurdle to many of these weapons systems is their absurd power requirements. So while a man portable 300kw laser rifle is certainly hard to stomach at the moment, it is a problem that could be solved. Likewise, there are material problems miniaturizing this technology that would need to be overcome. Still, there already exist various functional directed energy platforms that can do serious damage some of which are actively being prepared for military use!

Cybertechnology - Research in this very field is being conducted around the world with regular breakthroughs. There already exist relatively benign implants that can largely replicate certain body functions and others are actively being worked on. The basic principles in many of the common cases (say arm replacement) are already understood well enough that there is serious research on the subject and even artificial organs have had some astounding breakthroughs in recent years.

Superpowers - It depends on what you classify as a superpower. In the most literal sense it simply means beyond maximum human capacity and cybertechnology could certainly allow for this. Probably not much jumping over tall buildings in single bounds but giving a man the ability to lift a car is within reason.

FTL Travel - No one said you needed to go faster than light! Relativistic speeds would be sufficient to allow for interstellar travel given the right conditions. There exist entire universes of games where FTL isn't actually possible - Firefly for example. Indeed a lack of FTL travel can itself be an excellent source of drama. After all, if a trip from earth to pluto takes a week (a significant percentage of light speed) travel time suddenly becomes of extreme importance. If FTL Communication is likewise impossible, you end up with a sci fi equivalent of the age of exploration and discovery on earth.

Mutants - There are already lots of mutants many of which have superpowers in comparison to their kin. For example, there exists corn utterly immune to a particular brand of herbicide which is handy for farming purposes. Sure, it was engineered to this precise purpose but it is still a mutant when compared to the crop it originated from.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Space games are thin on the ground even without any restrictions, particularly on consoles. Assuming OP is looking for a PC title, the X series of space games are thoroughly enjoyable. They're space sandboxes with markets that react swiftly to supply and demand, multiple factions with various love/hate relationships, police, pirates, multiple ship classes from light scout to corvette to pretty much battleship. Ships can be equipped with many different weapons, shields and other mods of different classes, power requirements, etc.

There's a new game, X: Rebirth being released in November with all the spacey goodness one could ask for with an entirely new engine. One can also go back in time a little to X3 Reunion or Terran Conflict. I'm not sure what Albion Prelude is (though at the time I remember it seeing it described as "bridging the gap" between the "old" and the "new" (eg. a universe in flux).

I'm also looking forward to Star Citizen, a title I gladly backed on Kickstarter while it ran. They went a little overboard with extras, and there is an online component that I haven't really understood (I *suspect* it's always online, even for SP which is quite frustrating). Looks great with bleeding edge graphics, two different story-lines, multiplayer features and so on.

 

[tobe mayr]

Thanks for all the suggestions so far. Checking out one after the other. One thing I'd like to recommend, even though it doesn't live up to the space ship requirement:

http://glitch01.wordpress.com/2006/08/29/millennium-remake-completed/

The "Millenium 2.2" remake. It's a rather old game from the Amiga days, where you're tasked with saving what's left of earth's population. (Nuclear winter forced them to flee to a moon base) You do that by exploration, mining of the solar system and gradual expansion. Even though the game ventures very much into a territory later used in RTS games (harvest, research, build loops) , it's much slower and based on pseudo realistic science. There's even a couple of nice story surprises in the simulation, later on.

Just don't expect any fancy graphics. It's really mainly about atmosphere. I picked it up again after seeing Moon a couple of years back.