Too realistic?? But I thought that was what we wanted…

So prior to attending Penn State, I served in the Marine Corps as an Infantryman for four years. Through years and years of training, I have developed a pet peeve against things that are not correctly or well portrayed especially when it comes to military-related things. One example is the destructive power behind an actual grenade launcher explosion. Often times I see in movies an antagonist blowing up entire rooms with a single grenade from a grenade launcher. Well, realistically, a standard 40mm grenade either HE (High Explosive) or HEDP (High Explosive Dual-Purpose) has a kill radius of 5m (actually, from experience, that is an ideal number).

More info:
http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/army_board_study_guide_topics/m203/m203-ammunition.shtml

So during my downtime, my fellow Marines and I have spent time critiquing games about how unrealistic they are and how they give people a sense of false-realism compared to “the real thing”.

oh-youre-really-good-at-call-of-duty
Image retrieved from here

So you would assume naturally that when Bohemia Interactive released Operation Flashpoint and the Armed Assault (ArmA), the issue would be resolved. To be honest, these two series have been the most realistic game I’ve played in terms of mechanics. There is no health bar, a limited HUD, and the proper weapons nomenclature and functions. Well, now the game is too realistic and hard to enjoy.

For most of the game, you’re not actually fighting. It is spent traveling from one place to another hoping that there is a random vehicle lying around. However, I’ve caught a bullet to the head a few times from an enemy who I still haven’t figured out where he was. Randomly dying from a sniper even though I took the most random and senseless route possible brought on a lot of rage-quits. Those games take not only skill but also a lot of luck.

So that leaves me with this question: How realistic does a shooter have to be without being too realistic and still satisfy our need for realism?

http://www.complex.com/video-games/2013/09/hardest-video-games-ever-made-good-thing/arma-ii-too-realistic

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5 Responses to Too realistic?? But I thought that was what we wanted…

  1. byh5145 says:

    I think game developers should take the weight of reality in a game seriously. I’ve been playing Battlefield 4 for a little while and then I gave up. There is a severe bug in the PS3 version that if you died when escorting a VIP to a helicopter at the end of chapter 2, you won’t able to restart the game from last checkpoint because the screen just blacked out with audio only. But that’s not the most important reason why I gave it up, I gave it up because I think the game is a little bit too real. I can’t deny how good the texture and the graphic is due to the power of Frostbite 3 engine but good graphic doesn’t necessarily makes good game. At another polarity, a game that steps beyond reality too much might also be unacceptable such as Mass Effect. I don’t quite enjoy playing it because I just hate fighting weird-looking aliens. Anyway, controlling the proportion of reality in a game should always be a highly philosophical question that every game developer should consider.

  2. Dalton Schaadt says:

    Brandon has a good point, games that strive for realism over everything else should really be considered simulations. As someone who really enjoys simulators (Goat Simulator 2014 included xD) I still have to admit that, from a game perspective, too realistic is a very real problem. When I start up a flight sim, I expect to be in control of a realistic airplane, but when I play Battlefield, I just want to blow stuff up and have fun. I spent a fair number of hours playing Operation Flashpoint a few years ago and the realism really did get in the way of my enjoyment. I too found myself dying, seemingly randomly, from enemy snipers, and spending inordinate amounts of time traveling from checkpoint to check point. The overall experience was frustrating for me, since I went into the game expecting just that, a game.

  3. blw5180 says:

    I think that games that are made as realistic as possible can be considered ‘too realistic.’ Sometime developers think so much about how realistic this game can be that they can forget gameplay elements and what makes a game fun. “This game would be more fun if it didn’t take an hour to find an enemy and I could skip right to the fighting; but that wouldn’t be realistic so we aren’t doing that.” Or “that weapon is way overpowered and disrupts the balance of the game, but that weapon is proven to be better than this other weapon in the real world so we have to keep it as is.” I think these type of games should be considered more of a simulation than an actual ‘game.’

  4. muh5000 says:

    I think games like ARMA serve a very niche crowd; i dont expect the everyday person to just walk up and start playing these types of games. There is something to be said about simulating the entire battlefield experience and trying to put players in the role of what every modern FPS has been trying to do: the role of the Commander. Your experience i would say is EXACTLY what the developers wanted. They want you to form into commandments ( I have no idea what im talking about for the record, no army experience) and command your squad members to execute a well planned out attack. There was an old game called Rainbow Six that tried to execute this type of gameplay by having almost a turn based system.

    I love the idea of forcing players to cooperate instead of mindlessly running into the “flag” or trying to capture an objective. See games like dota 2 and league of legends have this invisible structure to how the gameplay works depending on which part of the game you are in. This invisible structure dictates how you and your teammates coordinate attacks , and unless you want to be stuck in the trenches YOU HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER. Now i have never EVER had that experience in a first person shooter, which is why i find my self so addicted to dota 2 ; the cooperation aspect of the game is so fresh and way more rewarding that just solo KDA building.

  5. rtc5089 says:

    I think there is a balance to be struck between a simulation and a game. With a game you want to have more of an arcade-ish feel in that anyone could pick it up and be able to play. There is something to be said in that cartoony games such as World of WarCraft, League of Legends, and Team Fortress 2 are some of the most popular games of their genre because they completely go as far away from reality as possible.

    On the other hand in a simulation used for realistic purposes of course you would want to keep the actions and environments as real as possible to ensure that things go as smoothly as possible in reali life.

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