Realism vs fun

"Realism" has about as much place in gaming as "fun" has in the corporate world. They're accessories in their respective departments. If they're there, fine. If they're not, to me that's an encouraging sign. It means that content-wise, the game isn't limited or restricted in any way and it means the employees are getting their damn jobs done.

Neither has to be swept entirely off the stage, but their appearances should be fleeting and brief if a satisfactory equilibrium is to be maintained.

I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serial

^^ I've experimented with realism in RTS mods. It has one major drawback that prevents use of truly "realistic" RTS designs: The AI and pathing generally suck compared to reality.

Then there's a couple of myriad problems which in my experience are for the moment insurmountable. Game balance for one, you cannot give tanks the traditionally fast rate of fire seen in the later Command And Conquer games with realistic damage and expect to be balanced in the armor vs infantry platform. Likewise you cannot design anti-aircraft units to be woefully inefficient about ammunition usage against air targets like happens in reality. (It takes an average of 18 missiles to kill an air target from the ground in reality or thousands upon thousands of rounds of AAA fire per kill.) The balance would be too shoddy and some of the stuff wouldn't be fun to use.

Now I know from experience after modding Yuri's Revenge for years that you can strike a neat balance of much greater realism while still allowing elements of fun.

A realistic war game would be interesting. You are General Doe, charged with the important goal of taking southern Afghanistan, you devise a perfect strategy, implement it perfectly and lose horrifically because General Dumbass didn't send in the airstrikes you needed to soften hill 4A and General Idiot in charge of supplies didn't give your men enough rocket launchers to make up for it.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

This depends on...how the realism is implemented, what sort of game it is, and the person playing it. So...there is no one, universal answer to this. Or anything taste related. For me personally I prefer my unrealistic JRP Gs and platformers and shumps with bright happy colors and flying, magical lolis. But that's just me. Others prefer more realistic games and there do exist those who would really love something that is at the farthest end of the realism scale possible. Me personally I will stick with my hyper stylized insanity.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Have there ever been pastel bright cartoon games which take realism as crushingly as their art styles allow? That would be an interesting combination.

^^^ You also forgot the part where Colonel Fubar forgot to give out several crucial details regarding the Rules of Engagement.

edited 19th Jun '11 8:44:22 PM by MajorTom

I am not sure what you mean...Games with colorful, stylized visual aesthetics that have a realistic tone about them thanks to the story, characters, and so on?

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Eh... not quite. I meant games with a highly stylized aesthetic but realistic physics and character handling insofar as the character and environment designs allow.

Company of Heroes managed to solve the tank problem pretty well. The tanks in that game would pretty much one-shot most standard infantry when using their cannons, sometimes even taking out two at a time even if they were in cover, but they were slow to shoot, as in real life. Also, the infantry could easily run around to the rear to attack where it's armor is weakest, and the turret would often have a hard time rotating around fast enough to deal with this.

Things only got a bit weird with the fact that the tanks were unusally crappy shots, often missing targets right in front of them, and the "elite" infantry units could dodge an insane amount of cannon fire and only take minor damage. But that was most likely done for balancing purposes.

EDIT: WHOA, talk about a post jump! I actually meant to address Major Tom with this post!

edited 19th Jun '11 9:54:13 PM by SgtRicko

Ah. Ok then. So stylization and so on, but with realistic physics. Hmm. I can't think of anything like that...

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

I do believe that Super Meat Boy had conservation of momentum to quite an extent. Maybe that could be a starting point. I've seen a lot of platformers do inertia as well. Some do both.

Then again, those mechanics are usually regarded as Fake Difficulty if mixed with Platform Hell.

TF 2 has a surprisingly extensive if inaccurate physics model. That counts to a lesser extent since the overall gameplay is relatively more realistic than a platformer.

edited 19th Jun '11 9:15:06 PM by Recon5

^That's because Source (TF2's engine) uses Havok physics, which is rather extensive, from what I heard.

edited 19th Jun '11 9:22:52 PM by RocketDude

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

That depends on, er, what you're shooting for. If a game is unfair, horribly broken and abuseable, often boring, confusing, unintuitive, actively abusive to the player… But very realistic, it can still be thoroughly worth playing and an excellent game. MS Flight Simulator, the old MechWarrior games, Harpoon, sims like that are the obvious example, where the objective isn't “This game is fun to play,” but “Gee, I never realized [subject matter of game] was like this.”

Another somewhat more game-ish example, off the top of my head, was the D-Day mission in MoH: Allied Assault. Snipers, machinegun fire, and random artillery blasts are lethal and virtually unavoidable; allied casualties are constant; your death is frequent; every inch of ground is precious; quicksaves will do you no good; you don't feel like a badass, you feel like a worm crawling through the mud toward a statistically unlikely victory. There's numerous ways that game could've been more realistic, but I think even what it did gave me some small insight into how that must've felt in reality that a more fun design wouldn't have.

Granted, reality for reality's sake certainly doesn't have a place in every game, and throwing reality straight out the window in pursuit of some other game design goal is certainly justifiable a lot of the time, but most games strike a balance. Just like how not every anime is Grave of the Fireflies or Gurren Lagann, most games strike a balance between realism and artistic license, because most are probably aiming for an effect on the player that uses both.

Eric,

Where realism is detrimental to the game IMO are mods like ACE 2 for Arm A 2 and "games" like Steel Beasts Pro: PE. Steel Beasts in honestly was intended to be a military training tool, but I know some people who play it religiously and also due to a lack of titles in the post-WWII tank simulator genre.