Realism in Games

[adityadennis]

I was thinking about how people stressed realism a lot in games (I'm talking about the idiotic people, not the cool flashkit people) and thought of what would happen if they took it too far (these are examples from side-scrollers, feel free to add) :
In games with crates like crash bandicoot, if you wanted to break the crate it would take a good five minutes while crash hacked away with an axe.
If you got into a fight, you'd probably hurt yourself a bit and would have to carry along a first-aid kit and go to the hospital periodically.
If you died, you died. No 2nd life. No 1-ups.

[yanbuzz]

adityadennis... you're thinking too much...

[mbenney]

stop();! games are one of the ways of getting away from reality! dont spoil them!

[fospher.com]

i suggest using a different word besides gay to show that you dont like someone - in todays politically correct world, you can get into some crap that you dont want to get into by using it.

about your statement though, i dont see your point, do you have any examples to show that people are making their games too realistic?

[mbenney]

yep i agree fospher, calling someone gay is very childish and ignorant. im not gay myself but i get it a fair bit cos i have my navel pierced, water off a ducks back though, they'll grow up someday

[adityadennis]

stop();! games are one of the ways of getting away from reality! dont spoil them!

Yeah, I definitely agree.

about your statement though, i dont see your point, do you have any examples to show that people are making their games too realistic?

I love the old games like Contra and Mario, and I starting thinking about the too-realistic thing after I played Jazz Jackrabbit for GBA, which penalizes you if you fall down from a platform that's too high up. It sounds trivial, but it had me wishing that they made Contra and Super C for the GBA instead...

[devnull_2k]

I agree with the points you guys are making, but I can picture an ultra-realistic game that would be fun to play.

Imagine life, but instead of being you, you could be someone that you want to be. Someone powerful. Someone who can do things other people can't. Someone who doesn't mind breaking the law, or doing things that you'd like to do, but can't for whatever reason. A game like this would be desirable to a ton of people... maybe even most people. Our entire society thrives on escapism, and what better escape then one that mirrors our own world?

[ChriSell]

Wow! This is some good stuff. I like most of the ideas that have come up. Devnull is totally correct about people just wanting to excape. But some people also would like to excape into a cartoonish world where you can do whatever. Others strive on realizm... But as long as games are being made. They will have the dreamers and the ??? realistic people, for lack of a better explaination... But you get were I'm coming from.
Christopher Michael

[fospher.com]

Originally posted by devnull_2k
Imagine life, but instead of being you, you could be someone that you want to be. Someone powerful. Someone who can do things other people can't. Someone who doesn't mind breaking the law, or doing things that you'd like to do, but can't for whatever reason. A game like this would be desirable to a ton of people... maybe even most people. Our entire society thrives on escapism, and what better escape then one that mirrors our own world?

that game already exists, and thrives on its success becuase of the original idea. its called GTA

[devnull_2k]

naw, i'm not talking GTA. I'm talking about something as close to life as possible, except not real. GTA is fun, but it's still just a drive and shoot game. To make something real, you have to have much more then that. I'm talking about a game that could be made in 20 or 40 years from now, when we start getting to the point of photorealistic graphics.

[fospher.com]

we are already at that point devnull. its just that today's computers cant handle a large amount of polygons processed.

[devnull_2k]

*sigh*, now you're just getting into semantics. You know what I meant.

[RipX]

I recently bought contra for the PS2 and I love it. You are able to actually see the way that Konami have aimed to give this game a real arcade/retro feel together with todays 3d graphics. It's only downfall is that it is perhaps a little too linear. What I mean is, when your walking along, once you've learned the sequences in how the enemies work, it then becomes very easy to get the the point where you got to the last time, sometimes without even getting hit once!?!? I suppose this is an aspect of retro platform games but nether-the-less it could have been a little more random!

Nice to see the effort being but into playability again though. I'm sure many of you whom I talk to via email etc, all know that i'm a retro freak and have a massive Sega Master System collection, but I really feel that the old stuff was soooo playable, and the fact is that this was usually the complete oposite of realistic. It was usually just crazy, weird and fun. I mean what were classics like Space Harrier, Mario, Sonic, etc etc all about?

Mario:
A fat plumber and his brother out to save a princess captured by a big turtle, travelling through green underground pipes and jumping on flying eggs!?!?!

Space Harrier:
A guy with a bazooka, flying through the air, whilst dodging trees and bullets, shooting large snakes and stone faces?!?!?!

Sonic:
A fast blue hedgehog..... bouncing on TV screens and rolling into robotic creatures to save his furry friends?!?!?!!

Man, go take drugs- (disclaimer: beware, drugs can kill) and make the coolest game ever!!!! lol

RipX

[RipX]

Originally posted by fospher.com
that game already exists, and thrives on its success becuase of the original idea. its called GTA

I understand what he's saying:

Nothing like GTA - If you were to imagine a virtual reality world which was indistinguishable between the real world where objects and people within the game are based on realtime physics and human-like behavoir. Objects have properties just like in the real world, sound is 3-dimentional, you can go anywhere you like.

For example, you may have your own house, like in the real world, you can change the decor to your liking or buy stuff from a shop that you actually have to go to, or order it off the internet on a computer within your world. he's talking real life situations like: you can't use the computer cos the phone lines in your city are down, someone knocks at your door to tell you that they'll be fixed by 5.00pm, then they call again at 5.15pm to say, that it'll be 6.00pm cos they had a problem. THE REAL WORLD in a VR environment.

You could have a wife/girlfriend in this world and a girlfriend in the real world - lol

[devnull_2k]

haha, well, you're almost there. No downed phone lines.

[Ed Mack]

The problem is, if we had an ultra-realistic game where you where somebody else:

a) People will just give up on life. Why bother when you can run around care-free in this simulation? They will use the dole to pay the electric bill and scrap food... This may sound unrealistic, but take ultima-online as an example!

b) "Bad" people could hook someone up to it (after giving them some form of memory eraser,like used in rapes) and have them live indefinitly on it... the shock of leaving it could even seriously hurt the person.

[Kirill M.]

Psst, this game does exist and we're all living in it right now. It's called the Matrix.

[devnull_2k]

Ed Mack

Just to take the opposing standpoint, would a world like this be all bad? Is the goal of life not simply to be happy? Sure, it's fake when you look at it from the outside, but if it's real for you... maybe that's all that matters. There is no difference between illusion and reality to the person experiencing it.

But the comment about the bad people is a very good one. And I have no doubt that would exist.

[Asclepeos]

funny how the sims haven't been mentioned yet. I believe it's one of the highest rated and sold game in history or something. It makes us forget all of lifes problems by letting us vicariously re-enact them in a virtual environment. The richer the virtual environment gets the more the audience is sucked into the psychosis of the game. Needless to say I hated the sims. Another 'girl' game.

I think realism in games helps to create the unconscious "gaming effect", which is usually in the forms of physics. The game usually brings us to a world where things are different and at the same time strikingly similar (as to be not be a complete detachment). Discovering the rules of the game universe is one important aspect of games. Surely we don't expect something to fall up, and expect a bullet to go backwards when we shoot it. Even if these unlikely events do occur they occur with a sense of order that the gamer needs to acknowledge and adapt to in order to progress in the fantasy game environment. IMO this heightens the gaming experience.

[adityadennis]

Imagine life, but instead of being you, you could be someone that you want to be. Someone powerful. Someone who can do things other people can't. Someone who doesn't mind breaking the law, or doing things that you'd like to do, but can't for whatever reason. A game like this would be desirable to a ton of people... maybe even most people. Our entire society thrives on escapism, and what better escape then one that mirrors our own world?

Yeah, Asclepeos, I think that a pumped-up version of the Sims with realistic graphics etc.. is probably "the ultimate realism game" devnull was talking about.

P.S. : Sonic and The Matrix rule!!