Do we really want realism?
 

Okay, this is going to sound messed up...

You know how so many designers claim "We have realistic physics," or "Our squads behave realistically," or "We have realistic weapons." I personally find it aggravating, because they don't. The idea of realism seems to just be a tag-line that originally belonged to such franchise as SWAT or Rainbow Six. Now, I looked at FarCry:Instincts and it claims to have realistic weapons. It doesn't! They slapped a real name onto a generic weapon, and left it at that.

Now, I recently went onto the Rainbow Six forums at Ubisoft. These guys scrutinized over and over every single detail of Lockdown and bitched and complained about everything for the PC version. Their biggest complaint seemed to be two things. 1) Renee Raymond didn't wear a helmet, and thus you could see her corn rows. Apparently, corn rows is Ubisoft trying to make R6 "gangsta'" and not true to Tom Clancy's vision. They went on and on about this fact, over and over and over. 2) Guys leaned around walls to shoot.

Now, I'm sorry, but their idea of a "perfect Rainbow Six" sounds incredibly stupid. It would be one where you never shoot around corners and instead sit perfectly still for half an hour until a terrorist opens a door. You would then shoot him, then spend three minutes planning out an elaborate plan for Team Rainbow to enter a room, and all eight (!) people would then move in harmony on this premapped plan of attack.

They claim to know about CQB and other techniques Team Rainbow would use. But they don't. They haven't been in the army. They aren't even police officers. Or security guards. When someone from the army does comment, they complain endlessly that this person is an idiot. Their two biggest complaints were answered by a SWAT team member. 1) Some of their guys don't wear helmets as they can restrict field of view, and are easily noticeable when looking around cover, much more so than just skin. These guys without helmets are usually the last ones in, and have to have shown they're competent enough not to stick their head out in a firefight. 2) His exact words were "When you have someone with a gun spraying bullets at you, you don't point at the corner at wait for them to come towards you. You reveal as little as possible of yourself, and then you fire back." This resulting in a 5 page long flame fest about how the man was a complete moron.

These, and actions on Ghost Recon forums, Splinter Cell, Full Spectrum Warrior (!), SWAT 4, and other realistic games leads me to one simple conclusion.

Most gamers don't want realism. They want something that looks secure and official. They don't want to accept the reality that people would be shooting at them, and they'd be scrambling for cover to stay alive. They want to believe that special forces just use patience.


Am I right? Do gamers not want realism, just something that's far slower paced than most games? Or do I just find the worst bunches?

We don't want real life things, we want immersion and fun.

Except for the insane. For many people its more then games. The fourms are the hard-cores of the hard cores, I doubt they really reflect how most people feel about the game.

With war games, no i don't want realism. If i wanted realistic war i would join the army.

With RPG's, no i don't want realism. What kind of RPG is supposed to be realistic in the first place.

Anything else, why not? Realism is totally awesome in games.

RTS? No realism there. It would be boring. Especially the time limits.

RPGs? Erm....

FPS? Possibly. Depends on your view of the VG world. DF: BHD for example. You get shot twice an die. NO FUN. Counter strike. All the guns had different names with the same kind of model, and yet it was still fun because you actually had to aim at someone's head to kill them in one shot.

Sports? Is that a trick question? (Most fun games are the street games)

Everything else? Well, everything else falls under a catagory the same as Jet Set Radio Future. So random that it CAN'T be realistic

Sounds like you had a bad experience. Yes, god damn, I want realism. Especially in shooters and action games. Some games need it, some use a style that doesn't require it. Neither is better than the other, they are simply different. I think game physics is extremely important. Now, you can't simulate real life situations because...well...this is the Internet man, stay calm. But take a look at the physics in Half-Life 2. I mean damn, we're getting closer.

See campers, it doesn't work in the real world. Stop doing it in video games!

It really falls to this;

No, we don't.

It doesn't matter how badly we say 'yes', we really don't. We, as gamers, don't like realism when it comes to most situations. Do you REALLY want to play a SWAT game and get shot in the arm, therefore suddenly get pulled out on and rendered incapable of doing anything? Do you really want to use NO5 in Need For Speed: Underground, only to have your engine explode? Do you really want to play Final Fantasy and have a critical hit kill your character?

However, we do want realism in the sense of, you know, gravity works.

Graphics: Realism is nice, but personally, I believe the best, in my opinion, graphcis are found with Final Fantasy X. Not real, but yet compellingly good.

Gameplay: Oh, geeze, honestly, I don't care about realism in games. I mean, sure, maybe if I played more historical fiction games, I MIGHT, but I play Heroes of Might and Magic, and Maple Story. Realism in gameplay is not something I'm too interested in. I play them to get AWAY from reality. Fish on a stick? Hey, it's got an attack power of 50, why the heck shouldn't I use it?

Uh, question for Skeleton. What is DF: BHD?

lets compare the two.
Realistic, a single bullet just about anywhere will kill you. Guns slow you down and all you have to fight are humans

Unrealistic, Your a spell casting demi-god slaughtering thousands of hellspawn.

Hmm...which one would make a good game

Yes I do. In fact, there are many attacks in Final Fantasy that kill your characters. I would applaude at a game that blew up my car in the middle of a race. I'd love to actually get shot in a shooter and lose functionality. At such a point you shouldn't have to WATCH yourself be incapacitated, that's not good gameplay. But you can change the gameplay to fit the realism.

Possibly the worst comparison I've ever seen, but I'll search around and get back to you. :p Honestly man, those two situations are completely different, and you can have a realistic game with good content.

I actually read a theory about this a while ago, saying that graphics-wise, tryign to have realistic graphics that in the end really don't loko realistic actually looks worse to the human eye than stylising it, because there's a point where you cross a line of how the eye judges an object (in a game), and when it is the immaculate skin of some character in Xenosaga, it's much more noticable and un-realistic than a stylised anime-style chracter.