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Copy Clerk  Posts: 99 Joined: 9 May 2008     | |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3087 Joined: 26 Feb 2008     | I can agree with that. I LOVE the photo-realism, but I wish a little extra work into doing fun things with that photo-realism... Just because a game looks realistic doesn't mean it has to BE realistic. Cartoon style punches throwing people across rooms and such would be more fun to watch or play.... Maybe they could even make a game about a cartoon that *GASP* doesn't look like a 2D drawing.... |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2572 Joined: 23 Dec 2007    | Perfect enough physics have been achieved. It's called the Havok simulator. It's a plug-in for any 3D animation program that matters, used in the Halo 3 game engine and heavily modified version was augmented into Valve's Source engine. My opinion is that we've achieved a pinnacle of sorts in that respect. And there's no contest, I'd rather have fun than be realistic. |
Paperboy  Posts: 36 Joined: 9 Feb 2008 | Graphics, world detail, physics engines and all that can add to fun, though. For example, the fact that GTA allows you to do all those things increases the immersion and believability of the game and makes it better escapism than the first 8-bit metroid. I suppose it depends what you want in a game. If you want simple fun then all these things don't matter. Clearly, games in their current state require fun (there are good films that aren't fun, but games haven't managed that) but why not enhance the experience with better technology? |
Anonymous Source Posts: 7 Joined: 18 May 2008 | Fun should be the main aim for every game designer, I'll play something because I enjoy it, not because it looks so good I could eat it. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 99 Joined: 9 May 2008 |
Immersion and believability are well and good, but should never be the final destination of any game. The very nature of something that's a "game" is something that is "fun." If one were to go for perfect realism, that's a sim, not a game. Most of the marketing strategy behind the Wii centered on this idea -- games are focusing too much on the technology and not enough on the content. "We're going to bring the games back to gaming," they trumpeted, failing only in the fact that most of their games are bloody awful once the novelty of the joystick wears off. It was a good idea, though. |
Beat Writer Posts: 158 Joined: 2 Apr 2008  | Sometimes games sacrifice fun for realism though. One immediate example I can think of is FEAR. After you go through the eighth office building, it tends to get really, really samey. Compare that to my favourite recent game, Oblivion. The world looks incredibly lush, at times beautiful, but nobody could call it realistic. |
Copy Clerk  Posts: 60 Joined: 23 Jan 2008 | This topic implies that realism can't be fun and that makes absolutely no sense. |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 419 Joined: 7 Nov 2007    | Games like TF2 are great, quirky, fast paced and make very little sense. |
Paperboy Posts: 36 Joined: 9 Feb 2008 |
Exactly- but immersion and believability enhance the fun of gaming. That's one of the reasons that I'm dissapointed with the Wii. Not many games present motion control as more than a gimmick, and when I look at the muddy textures of Twilight Princess (with bad hardware they should have stuck to the aesthetically pleasing and technically undemanding graphics of Wind Waker), I am reminded that I have much better looking games that I would find equally as fun without their technology, but are more enjoyable to me because of it. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 817 Joined: 29 Nov 2007   | I think it gets to a certain point that realism and a video game whose chief activity is violence begin to induce negative feedback. It started slowly happening for me in 'Bioshock' and I imagine as games get more realistic it'll keep increasing: having a game accurately depict me bashing someone's brains out with a wrench is disturbing. Maybe I'm getting old, but 'Doom' never had the same reaction because the graphics were still cartoony enough that it didn't really kick off anything in my head. It's not a matter of being worried about de-sensitizing or anything. It's that I don't want to see that stuff anymore than I enjoy dissecting animals or watching snuff films. I mean really, do you actually want to see this when you come home to relax: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSU0JQKYN0E On the other hand, I'm enjoying the Wii because it forces developers to have more stylish cartoon violence like 'No More Heroes' or this little gem from SEGA: |
Copy Clerk  Posts: 70 Joined: 29 Apr 2008 | In my opinion fun should be the goal of game design and realism should be a tool used to achieve it. I specify A tool, not THE tool because there are many things that can make a game fun and not all of them are very realistic. If a program were to consist of abstract shapes and colors that you could manipulate for a while before the program tells you "you win" or "you loose", it would be game and possibly a fun game. However the learning curve would be high since new users would not know what the victory conditions are and how to achieve them. If the abstract shapes were replaced with humans in different uniforms; a new player would stand a better chance of guessing what they need to do to win. Even if the two game dynamics were exactly the same, the more "realistic" game would be more fun. I make this rant because I hear too many people whining about the lack of "realism" in their games, or if they could make a game it would realistically simulate (insert random thing here). Games exist to be fun not to train us on how to fight the Martians when they invade. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 99 Joined: 9 May 2008 |
I can understand where one would get the implication, but that wasn't the intent. I wasn't trying to say realism and fun couldn't co-exist, just that so far, they haven't. To wit, I can't readily call to mind any game where I said "It's so lifelike!" where I still wanted to play it 15 hours later. In fact, once I found out there would be no wackiness in GTA IV like there was in San Andres (jet packs, area 51, etc), some of the wind leaked out of my enthusiasm balloon. If I want true-to-life realism, I'll play my true-to-life life. |
Muckraker  Posts: 262 Joined: 4 Feb 2008 | I'm fine with that style, I understand why devolopers would go with that design (to make it more similar to its closest media cousins, movies and tvs), but I don't think that should be all we're striving for. I mean, look at Okami. It had a very stylized art style, and it was really all the better for it. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 60 Joined: 23 Jan 2008 | What about sports games? Each year, they become more and more realistic and a large population of gamers seem to find them to be fun. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 99 Joined: 9 May 2008 |
Touche'. I actually completely forgot that the genre existed when I originally posted this. I officially amend the discussion to include the phrase "except for sports games." |
Anonymous Source Posts: 6 Joined: 19 Apr 2008 | Why is unrealistic inherently more fun? I personally find Burnout kinda boring while PGR (not sim but more realistic) is a total blast. I agree there is a trend towards realism this gen but that is largely due to the fact that we can now do realism far better then before. Personally I love the realism of GTA4 and I feel it's a far better game then the previous ones. There are also people arguing the opposite to this thread. Stating that games like COD4 are so much better then games like Halo because of the realism they ride on. The issue with realistic games (to me) is that as each game gets more and more realistic and play more realistically they look and play more like each other. Obviously that will start to bore people at some point and then trends will shift. My favourite games are quite unrealistic ones but that doesn't mean a detachment from reality makes things more fun, we have to realize it's our personal tastes. My favorite racers are the PGR and Extreme G franchises but a Forza or Grand Turismo fan would look at me like I'm a retarded 6 year old. Neither of us is right, it's just what we want from games. |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 532 Joined: 25 Feb 2008 |
True, but games like Wipeout and Mario Kart exist, both about sports, both fun. But as realistic (and likely) as a baseball game on Jupiter. Then again, taking realism to extremes can make for some fun games. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 99 Joined: 9 May 2008 |
Again, I'm not suggesting that adding more realism means you have to take out more fun to make room. I'm just saying that devs seems to be focusing on one or the other these days, and the more attention paid to one, the less paid to the other. This isn't a seesaw where only one side can possibly be up. More of a filing cabinet where devs forget to open both drawers at the same time. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1622 Joined: 14 Nov 2007 | I live my life in 'realism' every day. I play games for escapism from this. Having photorealistic graphics and shaky cameras is all well and good, but I want some more imagination in games, please. When we look back on this generation of consoles, we'll call it the brown-bit era, seeing as that's the only colour devs seem to like anymore. Give me some vibrancy for goodness sake. Give me some wackiness. Remember the types of games we used to play on our Playstation 1's and our N64's? I want that. I want to journey to the centre of the earth to fight the final boss. I want to fight enemies in a magical forest on top of a floating pancake in the middle of a star nebula. I want to face kamikaze pigs with rocket packs who'll launch themselves at me. I want to play a game that doesn't try and prove how 'hip' it is every other second. A bit of originality in gameplay and design. I frankly don't give two shits if every eyelash of the player's character is rendered. Give me something that'll last beyond the current phallic-graphics obsession that this generation seems to be going through.
I know what you mean. Gore has its place. Unfortunately, currently that place is splashed across every mainstream title of the last couple of years. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 3087 Joined: 26 Feb 2008 |
I wasn't thinking that... I agree. Some of the more unrealistic games are more fun than some of the realistic games. Two Player Need For Speed is more fun than Gran Turismo (only because I MIGHT, POSSIBLY, HAVE A CHANCE of losing at NFS, whereas I always win at Gran Turismo... ) And NFS has different challenge types... I remember beating my friend, who was supposedly some kind of God at drift by over 30,000 points and just saying, "You may be a God at this game, but cars are my LIFE!" and left it at that. I prefer realism in my games that are better realistic. When a Mazda Miata beats a Porsche Carrera GT2 in a game because those were your only two options, I will never play it again. Hell, if a Miata beat an S2000 I would be done. But I loved Halo 3 for it's lack of realism. It was a hack-and-slash game with powerful guns and a FUEL ROD CANNON! The Gravity Hammer and the Sword are still my two favorite weapons in the whole game, and NOTHING will change that, even though they are the two most unrealistic in the game as well... I loved how photo-realistic the graphics were, though. As I said earlier, you can have photo-realism and still keep that cartoony atmosphere that makes a game fun. That is just my opinion though, feel free to flame me for being a Halo fan.... |
Copy Clerk Posts: 99 Joined: 9 May 2008 |
At the risk of inciting a fanboy clash, dare I say that: Halo might be the closest thing to what I'm talking about. It's cartoony and frivolous and impossible to take too seriously, it's brightly colored and over-the-top and takes place on a friggin' Ringworld, but it also employs enough graphical wizardry to satisfy the elitists who want the most realism for the money. I mean, if you had to point a finger at the game that brings the most true-to-life plasma-axe-wielding alien apes to your screen, you'd probably point in Halo's direction. See? Realism (sort of) and fun (for most). It's not impossible. I just don't understand why it doesn't happen more often. |
Paperboy  Posts: 11 Joined: 18 Jul 2006 | I don't like the thought of "the more realism, the more immersion" either. I truly believe that when graphics are becoming more and more like 'the real thing' it will do the exact opposite; it will start to appall it's audience. Much like Mori's 'Uncanny Valley' theory. The good thing about the GTA series is that, I think, Rockstar sees this trap and thus adds a twist to this realism. Their own style: realistic yet cartoony. |
Copy Clerk  Posts: 77 Joined: 12 Apr 2008 | To me, graphics don't mean shit. Sure, today's games are better looking than anything we had in the '90s, but there is a difference between realistic and perfect. Some times the graphics are so realistic you can hardly see anything but that depends on the time of day. Like playing GTA when the in-game time is at night and your time is noon. Thanks to the fact that hardly anyone besides Nintendo makes games so realistic, everything in the uber realistic games are starting to look brown, GTA San Andreas is the PERFECT example. And I agree with Quindo. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 99 Joined: 9 May 2008 | I would be remiss if I didn't mention the pinnacle, the ultimate example of gaming that strove WAY too hard for realism. From the "Bus Driver" website: "Bus Driver is all about driving buses. In Bus Driver, your job is to transport passengers around an attractive and realistic city. You must drive to a timetable on a planned route, whilst obeying traffic rules, and taking care not to upset or injure your passengers. This makes Bus Driver unlike any other driving game - the experience of driving a bus is very different from blazing through a racing circuit." Sounds...fun? |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 396 Joined: 18 May 2008 |
Thats what I think. When I got Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker, I saw the cartoonish cell shaded style interesting and fun, but apparently those grafixs received a whole lot of flax for going off on such a tangent. |
Copy Clerk  Posts: 89 Joined: 30 Apr 2008 | What do you mean by realism? That one shot kills you and you can't jump 10 ft in the air? The last time I saw a large number of games like that was back in the NES days, most of which were so bad that history forgot them. So I'm assuming that by realism you mean trying to make the world look believable. That people look like people, trees look like trees, cars looks like cars, etc. At which point I find the idea that realism is a bad thing laughable. Sure there are exceptions Mario would just look odd if he looked human. And I'm not saying that games have to look real to be fun Off the top of my head of games that strived for realism that enhanced the gameplay people seem to be under the impression that if they spent less time trying to make thing look real that they would have more time to improve the gameplay. However the team that handles the graphics and models are not made up of the same people that program the gameplay. Reducing the time spent on graphics will only result in games with the same gameplay but worse visuals Maybe because I never played GTA3, but I have a hard time getting why people complain that GTA4 is "too real" are there people out there that think that its realistic to slam in to a tree at 150 MPH causing you to get thrown out the front window and still be able to get up and start the car back up resulting in only a small dent in the car? Or that hijacking 4 cars while on a date is normal behavior? Doing crazy stuff in a world that looks real makes it more fun for me and less 'toontown' in which doing crazy things seem normal |
Pulitzer Laureate Posts: 817 Joined: 29 Nov 2007 |
1. Why did realism enhance the gameplay? 2. If they're dropping a couple million on artists and designers, that's cash that doesn't go into playtesting, A.I., and the myriad of other things they could be spending the cash on. So yeah, it hurts the gameplay because they have less cash. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 89 Joined: 30 Apr 2008 |
1)A few examples 2)Again doesn't work that way in real life. Companies that don't put any thought into bug testing or AI don't put any thought into it regardless of how much money they have to spend on it. As evidenced by the extremely large amount of games with poor visuals and poor gameplay. Or the large amount of games that had almost no budget that still managed to make games with good gameplay with passable to poor graphics. yes there are times when some short sighted CEO decided to hire 70 artist and only 5 programmers such as in the case of Vanguard:SoH but those are the exceptions rather then the rule. Developers that do such things make bad games regardless of how much they have to spend yes, gameplay > visuals but the idea that you can't have both or that you have to take away from one side to make the other side better isn't true. It even less true to say that good visuals can't improve games Visuals have a large effect on any visual media, Even with movies or tv is is very rare for a show to be renowned as good that didn't try to make thing look real. The Lord of the rings movies would of been a laughing stock if they tried to make the orcs looks like the orcs from WoW. even shows that are considered classics like the original star trek, yea by todays standards they look bad, but its still 1000x better then if they had fire coming out the back of the enterprise that was being held up by wires you can see as was common in sci-fi shows that came before it. |
Paperboy  Posts: 27 Joined: 28 Apr 2008 | thats one reason I love Insomniac. The Ratchet and Clank games are probably the best family friendly games that are actually fun. Weapons are inventive, colorful, and never gets old. I'm sick of these grey enviornments that focus on killing everything that moves. |
Pulitzer Laureate Posts: 817 Joined: 29 Nov 2007 | |
Yes, I appreciate the fact that GTA IV is as photorealistic as we've seen on a console so far, and yes, it's cute for a while that you can watch TV and go on the internet and hail cabs, but does being photorealistic and being able to watch in-game TV make the game any more fun?
The tendency in next-gen gaming right now is leaning towards realism more for the "isn't this neat that we did this?" factor and not in increasing or even maintaining the level of (for lack of a better word) fun. I'm not the first to say that as groundbreaking as the visuals and ideas behind Bioshock were, it wasn't any more FUN than the first 8-bit Metroid or a Paperboy arcade game.
Frankly, the only games making any effort to capture that insanely infectious, addictive quality of gaming these days are so-called "casual" games. Everyone else is striving to perfect a physics engine to create realistically scattering litter.