Reality and you

[iTeamKill]

This doesn't have anything to do with one particular game, so for a general audience, I will post this question here.

Why do most FPS want to sell their game based on how "real" the game play and graphics look while hiding behind a rock returns you to full health and respawns are instant? Its real only to a point.

Realism sucks. Its brown in a desert, green in a jungle, and people are hard to see. You can't jump as high or run as long. Ammo is expensive, there are no respawns, and health doesn't return in 5 seconds while ducking. In all reality, reality sucks as a game.

Besides, everyone I know who has actual combat experience and training... usually comes back with shell shock (PTSD) and is put on antidepressants. That's not a fun game to me...

What's your take on realism in a game? Why you prefer/avoid it?

 

[APPCRASH]

Besides, everyone I know who has actual combat experience and training... usually comes back with shell shock (PTSD) and is put on antidepressants. That's not a fun game to me...

God, I hope you are joking.

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

Age old argument here. Personally I just like games to work properly and maybe look nice, that usually makes for a fun game.

 

[WayOutThere]

realism horribly limits a game

Jak 2-> huge creative feedom in game design

Bioshock-> fair degree of creative freedom

CoD-> not much to speak of

 

[FalloutJack]

Realism is, I think, a method by which game developers use to draw people in and get them to buy. That is, they are saying "We're so good at graphics that we can make the not-real look very-real" and hope you'll be impressed by that. Since you are against realism, I would say this is not effective on you. Me? It's not one of the things I hunt for in particular. I look for the fun. If I'm not finding the fun, it's probably not the game for me.

 

[Mr.Pandah]

Most games tout realism to a certain extent. The guns are made realistically, as in, they sound like the real thing, they look like the real thing, and for the most part, control like the real thing. The combat is visceral and fast paced, like the real thing. The enemies move as if they are real people and so do your allies.

Thats what realism I can think of in games, and I think for the most part, thats what developers aim for. I really have never seen gameplay take a back seat to realism though. America's Army is about the only thing I can think of that takes realism to its "fullest" extent.

 

[iTeamKill]

God, I hope you are joking.

I wish... 7 out of 9 friends who served in Iraq/Afghanistan are on medication. The other two are dead.

Edit* I can't call all of them friends, not like the kind you would lend money too. More like I know them through class/work.

 

[the1ultimate]

It would be completely immersion-breaking if the objects fired from my gravity gun didn't trace realistic parabolic trajectories. Also games shouldn't raise questions about how things would actually work in practice, or break any particular logical or physical rules.
Just out of consistency and in order to properly relate to the audience.

Other than that though, I prefer fantastical settings completely removed from everyday life where mechanics are based on the best possible gameplay, and I am able to do everything I should be able to do in the game.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

Realism is never inherently good or bad.

Some games, especially simulation games, try to get as close to realism as you can get sitting behind a screen. Other games have almost zero realism. Both of those extremes can work for the right game.

In my opinion, the most important thing is that the level of realism should support the game as a whole. Building a game purely on the idea of "more realistic == better" will be a bad idea, because there's only so much you can do when the player is sitting on his couch at home and at some point you're going to need to make sacrifices. However, the opposite isn't true either. A solid level of realism can make it much easier for the player to suspend disbelief and immerge himself in the game. It also makes things more recognisable, negating the need to explain everything. For example, if you find a gun in an FPS, you can be 99% sure it'll be used for shooting stuff. If you find a first-aid kit, you can be 99% sure it can be used to recover lost health. If you find something you don't recognise, you'll need to figure out what to do with it, first. Then again, figuring that out can be part of the game, so it can really go either way.

Saying that realism sucks is just as stupid as saying that only realistic games are good. Apart from the whole personal preference thing, there are simply different levels of realism that work for different kinds of games. Taking two recent examples, Dragon Age isn't realistic at all, with dragons and magic and zombies and whatnot, but it would be a really boring game if you took away all of those. On the other hand, Modern Warfare 2 would be a lot less realistic if all guns were replaced with flowers and candy, but it wouldn't improve the game one bit in the eyes of most players.

 

[APPCRASH]

God, I hope you are joking.

I wish... 7 out of 9 friends who served in Iraq/Afghanistan are on medication. The other two are dead.

Edit* I can't call all of them friends, not like the kind you would lend money too. More like I know them through class/work.

I'll just tell you right out. The situation with your "colleagues" is tragic but not a good sample for a statistic. Not everyone who experiences combat gets PTSD or dies.

 

[Misterian]

realism can be either boring, or imersive, depened on how you do it.

but personally, I hate reality, to the point where if I had a chance to manipulate reality, at least slightly, I'd take it in a heartbeat.

 

[Mr.Governor]

Realism sucks. Its brown in a desert, green in a jungle, and people are hard to see. You can't jump as high or run as long. Ammo is expensive, there are no respawns, and health doesn't return in 5 seconds while ducking. In all reality, reality sucks as a game.

 

[Distazo]

Some aspect of a game have to be based in some kind of reality of no one would be able to identify with it. Aka, almost every game I can think of has a gravity mechanic in the physics no matter how unrealistic that game is. I personally play video games to do things that I wouldn't be able to do in real life. I do appreciate beautiful and surprisingly real graphics, but beautiful realisitic fire shooting out of my hands onto a magnificently rendered and realistic armored man still is overall unrealistic.

I have never been a big fan of fps games because the general trend is to greater and greater realism which doesn't keep my attention as well. Give me something ridiculous happening that I would never see in the "real world" over a life sim anyday.

 

[Slayer_2]

Realism provides immersion. I like a mix of realism and fun. PTSD is TOO realistic. Little things, like guns actually making lond bang noises, lends a hand to realism. You don't need to add in dysentery and insta-kill bullets. However, when a game like MW2 brags about it's "realism", I have to laugh.

 

[Valiance]

Obviously, there will always be game-world abstraction.

They have made realistic games, check out WWII Online - When my friend first tried it, it ended up being him jogging for about 2 hours before dying in a 6-second firefight.

What I REALLY hate is people who can say that their game is different and special just because it's fucking cel-shaded, or because of the art design.

It works with presentation (braid, bioshock, etc), but not with something like Borderlands or Brink, when it's like, "Gee, FPS games have been cel-shaded since before XIII..."

I remember, sadly, that one of the big selling points of Jet Grind Radio was the art style and a lot of people were against it at the time - same with Windwaker. I really have come to enjoy it, but it seems any upstart game designers can just pull some "artsy" bullshit on you and say "oh it's our creative vision" for lack of trying to do anything special (see: Torchlight, even though I love the game.)

Anyway, realism is generally a turn-off these days, obviously, and people mistake "realism" for "detail." (ie: People calling Fallout 3 "realistic" when they have clearly never experienced a nuclear wasteland of their own)

 

[TailsRodrigez]

Quoting Moviebob:
"realism is an artstyle, and there use to be many different art styles."

I like to have some realistic games, but not all like FPS's try to do.

 

[Mr Scott]

Reality is relative.

 

[DarkPanda XIII]

Give me something I can sink my teeth into, seriously. It has to be fun, and something about it that stands out too me, otherwise it's a bore.