Realism in Games?

[FightThePower]

A world can be believeable without being realistic; Metroid Prime and Bioshock were both incredibly immersive games but they aren't very realistic (shooting wasps out of your arms?! Prepostorous!).

There still is a level of realism in those games though. When I saw Rapture, for instance, I was able to go like, "Oh, I see how that might work." I'm pretty sure that's what Pyrode meant when he mentioned some level of realism.
I also hate it when people say, "Oh, realism sucks because I already live in real life." The point of realistic games is to put yourself in situations that you would probably never be in, or to take greater risks in those situations than you normally would (like driving and crashing cars in GTA).

I'm still not convinced that something being realistic and something being believable are the same thing. Something might seem like it's the case (thereby making it believable) but may not work like that in reality. An example would be that to any layman, incendiary bullets setting zombies on fire in Left 4 Dead 2 is believable (after all - incendiary = fire basically) however people who know their stuff point out this isn't realistic at all. I don't see that as a problem. Lack of realism isn't an excuse for something to not make sense though.

Yeah I thought of that counter-argument as I thought about that but whilst this is true, you wouldn't want to get ultra-realistic; people want to play as the courageous war hero, but no one wants it to be like in real life where one bullet will kill you, and your effort is insignificant by itself. People want to play as a Sniper, but very few will want to lie there hours on end, taking into accout wind velocity etc etc because that just gets tedious. There has to be a limit - I guess my original statement of 'Realism is pointless' was too much but I've found that most of the time it gets in the way of the fun.

 

[YuheJi]

Yeah I thought of that counter-argument as I thought about that but whilst this is true, you wouldn't want to get ultra-realistic; people want to play as the courageous war hero, but no one wants it to be like in real life where one bullet will kill you, and your effort is insignificant by itself. People want to play as a Sniper, but very few will want to lie there hours on end, taking into accout wind velocity etc etc because that just gets tedious. There has to be a limit - I guess my original statement of 'Realism is pointless' was too much but I've found that most of the time it gets in the way of the fun.

The thing is, some people do want to go to the extremes when it comes to realism. That is typically considered a niche group, and some games are designed for them (mainly games that we call simulators). I just feel that realism is too often associated with games that aren't all that realistic, you just die quickly in them (mainly Call of Duty).

 

[Ajaysallthat]

I think that realism is good in moderation...i play games to escape from the world, and an exact replica of my life would be kinda boring! which is why i enjoy F'd up gravity and OK graphics

 

[Pyode]

I'm still not convinced that something being realistic and something being believable are the same thing.

Your right, but the thing is, we are not talking about whether or not it is absolutely realistic, we are talking about levels or realism. Almost every game game has some level of realism its just a matter of how much. Often that realism, whether it be in the physics, dynamic climate change, facial expressions, weapon damage, or even the semi-scientific explanation of how plasmids work in Bioshock, is what make the world more believable. The game world doesn't have to follow exactly what we can do in the real world, as long as it makes some sort of sense (and is fun).

 

[AlanWhite]

What if it was realistic but balanced I.E. one bullet to the right place kills you but your enemy is no better off + armor can stop bullets

 

[Acaroid]

About a month ago I was playing the demo for Battlestations Pacific and having trouble with it. I had never played any of the other games and the demo didn't have a tutorial so I was trying to figure everything out. I was having an very hard time with the realistic dive bombing mechanics, especially because the game gives you a bombing reticule that the bomb never lands anywhere near. A little while later I was trying to destroy some wooden shacks with rockets but it took like 6 rockets to blow up a wooden shack. This contrast of realism in gaming got me thinking...

As technology advances we can make games more and more realistic. This has the potential to take games to another level as an art form, but it can be taken too far. I don't want to play an FPS where I die in one hit from any gun or a frag grenade can kill me from 200 feet away. All that will lead to is frustrating game play which doesn't make for a good game. On the other end of the spectrum however, I don't want a game where it take 3 shotgun blasts at point blank range dosn't kill someone. A balance needs to be found.

We can't forget what the core purpose of video games is. That is to take us away from reality. To allow us to experience things we could never experience in real life. It needs to be realistic in such a way that it is immersive and believable but not so realistic that you get half way through the game and you die from one stray bullet and have to start the entire game over again.

Anyway, that's my opinion, what do you guys think?

Well I use to play a game WW2 online and that game is all about the realism, all the firing models, the aerodynamics of the planes and everything. It doesnt ditract from the game at all and adds to the skill and fun fromt he game. The learning curve is steep but you get such a feeling of accomplishment if you manage to kill just 1 guy!! As you have to travel a fair distance to even reach an enemy, and even then you have to take note of the terain around you, ducking behind bushes etc, and when you do get killed you tend to have NFI as the enemy are using cover,you just dont get that in most FPS :|

I also played the game you are on about and games like silent hunter (sub sim) and b17 flying fortress (flight sim) and I think the added realism helps with games and I dont think enough games implement it!

 

[avshig]

If a game wants to be as realistic as possible, it should not let you reload after getting killed or heal yourself instantly after being wounded. In this case, a game would appeal only to hardcore masochistic gamers and not to the general public and the final result would be loss of cash and very realistic unemployment.
Most games are maintaining a good balnce between "keeping it real" and "keeping it fun to play".
CoD is a fine example for that balance.

 

[Ishnuvalok]

Things can only get realistic in games up to a point. this is why i didnt like CoD4 sniping very much. i love sniping, its the best thing in FPS's, its just in CoD4 they made your aim move around so much it wasnt cool anymore and to fix it they had your dood stop breathing to aim straight. im pretty sure IRL snipers can do that while breathing. it saddened me =(

Actually, they're going for realism there. What a military sniper does is quiet complicated. You know when you exhale, there's this small moment where you don't breath? A sniper extends that time to steady his shot. When you breath, your chest/stomach moves up and down. Not to mention in CoD it's not very realistic that you can sprint then fall down flat on your stomach and "hold your breath" to get a perfect shot. If sniping is going to be realistic, you would have to keep your heartbeat down, breathing controlled etc etc.

But if you included all those factors, then sniping wouldn't be as fun for everyone in CoD4.

 

[Firenz]

There's a time an a place for realism. Check out some of the best simualtors around and they will have very complex difficulty settings that allow you to change just how realistic it is for you.

I love Il-2 Sturmovuik, the Silent Hunter series, Op Flash and the 2 ARMAs etc and the main thing about them is that they will let you start in the air or out at sea, take more hits than would really be healthy (anyhting >1) and generally feel like we're being aces, wolves or just damn hard when we're not.

I for one don't want to put any of these games on 100% realism because I am not a sadist or trained in how to fly a BF109e.

You should understand what sort of game you're buying before you buy it, if it is a hardcore militairy sim and you prefer to be rambo then it's obviously not for you but ultimately it's down to the developers to get a balance of difficulty (as this seems to be part of the OPs gripe) rather than realism and for you to work around that.

p.s Battlestations Pacific is not a sim and the whole thing with the bombing/strafing mechanics just takes a little getting used to (remeber you have to be straight and level to have the payload hit the target)

 

[Akai Shizuku]

Realism is awesome in survival horror, historical games, etc...But it has its place. Too much realism can keep some games from being fun and can affect them negatively. Real life sucks, I think we can all agree on that...it's one of the reasons we play video games. When games keep trying to imitate real life, well...that's why we have toilet-matter brown graphics these days and lots of boring gameplay.

 

[Cargando]

Realism? Thanks but, no thanks.

 

[Pyode]

Also guys, not everyone has gaming for escapism. There are people who love cars/planes and would love to race/fly, but can't, so at least they want to have the most 'realistic' experience possible. That said, games are lightyears far from any realism.

Actually that is what escapism is. Escaping you mundane normal life so you can do something that you would never be able to do in real life. Whatever you're doing can be as unrealistic or realistic as possible, but it is still for the purposes of escaping your life.

Well, first thing - most of the current games aren't even remotely realistic, even in the most loose sense. If you found Battlestation Pacific 'realistic', then please don't try Arma II or Operation Flashpoint. And don't play military-style Airsoft. You'll know what I mean

That said, different games are for different tastes. I for example, like to switch between various forms of realism. I LOVED the Enemy Engaged helicopters simulations, where it took me 3 months to learn to land on ships (and EE wasn't the most hardcore thing). But I also loved Comanche 4, which is completelly arcade.

I also love Quake III Arena with all the crazy jumps and rocket launchers. On the other hand I was mad at Crysis W for being ridiculously easy on Delta difficulty, as I was after a more hardcore experience.

So you just need to pick games that suit your tastes, and 'realism' is just one of the aspects. Actually I think that what you refer to as realism, is commonly called difficulty.

But whatever. Nowadays, most games fall in the middle ground anyway - not too easy, but enough so anyone can finish them, and with concepts that throw realism out of the window.

I wasn't saying that as a whole Battlestations was realistic, I was simply pointing out the contradiction between their attempt at realistic bombing and the fact that a wooden shack took 6 rockets to destroy. I'm not talking about whether or not realism in game is good or bad. I am asking, "should realism be favored over fun game play?" Some games have proven that realism can be fun when balanced properly, such as games like ArmA and Operation:Flashpoint but to just throw in realism haphazardly into a game as a gimmick without proper balance or consistency is just bad game design.

 

[Tarakos]

At one point, realism must be sacrificed for fun and playability. Driving sims can be as relistic as they want, that's fine. However, a shooter can be taken WAY too far. I agree that there must be a half-way point between the two, as that creates a good game. Or at least, a balanced one.

 

[Fat Hippo]

I think this problem can be solved when you select your difficulty.

I'm not really talking about game difficulty. It's fine if a game takes skill. The problem is when the difficulty just comes from cheap deaths like dieing from a sniper that there is no way you could know where he is until you have already died 3 times. That is cheap frustrating game play that doesn't make for a fun experience.

Life is cheap and frustrating, that's why so many people hate it. So I agree, too much realism is almost always a bad thing, I goddamn hated Operation Flahspoint.

 

[joe182]

I think this problem can be solved when you select your difficulty.

I'm not really talking about game difficulty. It's fine if a game takes skill. The problem is when the difficulty just comes from cheap deaths like dieing from a sniper that there is no way you could know where he is until you have already died 3 times. That is cheap frustrating game play that doesn't make for a fun experience.

...But that's what makes playing as a sniper so damn satisfying :')

OT: I think that really, it depends on the player thats playing the game. For instance, IMO CoD4 gets the balance perfect (except when hitting someone in the torso with the .50 cal doesn't kill them... it's a bullet the size of your head for christ sake), but then when I played that ARMA2 game, I'd be walking for 20 mins and then out of some bushes someone would pop a burst of fire into me and I was down... Annoyed the hell outta me but other players really enjoy the realism.

 

[Pyode]

OT: I think that really, it depends on the player thats playing the game. For instance, IMO CoD4 gets the balance perfect (except when hitting someone in the torso with the .50 cal doesn't kill them... it's a bullet the size of your head for christ sake), but then when I played that ARMA2 game, I'd be walking for 20 mins and then out of some bushes someone would pop a burst of fire into me and I was down... Annoyed the hell outta me but other players really enjoy the realism.

Well, I wasn't really talking so much about multilayer as I was about single player. In multiplayer if you good enough to find a good hiding spot that no one knows about (as long as its not a glitch or anything) then you deserve the kill. But when the developer sets a sniper up that has super accuracy looking at the door that you have to come out of or something then that is just cheap and not fun.