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Graphic Novelist Calls For Better Game Violence
eldavojohn writes "Landry Walker (alternative comics creator of X-Ray Studios) has a brief opinion piece at Elder Geek asserting that all he wants for Christmas is more realistic game violence. While he acknowledges the world probably isn't ready for it, he wishes that getting shot in a video game was a bit more like getting shot in real life. From his piece: '... that's my problem with video game violence. Bullets are something we shrug off. Point blank fire with a machine gun is something that a tiny bit of flexible body armor and 20 seconds sitting on a magic invisibility inducing gargoyle can cure. Time and time again, I've heard people claim that they want to see a greater degree of realism in video games. But that's a lie. We don't want realism. We want fantasy. We want unlimited ammo and we want rapid respawns. We want to jump out of second story windows without a scratch. We want to dodge bullets and shake off mortal wounds without pause.' What say you, reader? Would this bring a new level of impossibility to video games or would there be a way to balance this out?"
Reality isn't fun. If it was we wouldn't play games.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
This reminds me of the old discussions about realism in pen&paper RPGs.
We got a medievalist on our group, let him prepare a short demonstration game and quickly confirmed that it was, essentially, annoying.
He wants more real violence? There's no need to create a game for that, mod L4D2 or MW2 to multiply damage by a hundred.
It's one of those arguments that end as soon as someone actually does the little effort of trying the argued point.
Americas Army has always focused on realism. You can't run too fast, you can't jump too high or continously. If you fall too far you'll break a leg and bleed to death. And yes you usually die after the first hit from AK47. It's possible to have a medic bind your wounds, but you won't get to 100% health..you stay slow and weak. I used to play it a lot and loved it. Too bad they stopped making linux ports.
They exist.
That said, they're not wide spread because, like most gaming peripherals, they're not a standard and don't actually add to your ability to succeed.
That and I guess that most people that play games aren't into the whole "learn through pain of failure" thing (or at least literally).
Wow, couldn't pass up the opportunity to contribute nothing before someone else did? Be proud!
Simulating combat realistically makes for a short playing experience. Catch one bullet in the leg and then what happens? Do you have to start over? Do you bleed out if you don't immediately get medical attention? If you get medical attention then do you "play" recovering in the hospital and dealing with the police reports? Let's have a physical therapy "mini-game" as well; spend a few months doing some exercises and walking around with a crutch.
Having the screen go red and having to find cover until I recover so I continue mowing down the opposition with joyful glee sounds much more appealing to me.
Entropy just isn't what it used to be.
So why are games like Operation Flashpoint, ArmA, the Rainbow Six series and so on available? They're there because people DO want realism, they want one-shot kills where stupid rambo behavior action will get you killed. Sure they're not for everyone, but for people who want a challenge, they exist.
This novelist asks for something that already exist.
I have yet to see any computer-game outside some adventure game that even loosely reflects what violence is like. And the war-games are probably the worst of the bunch. If a military simulator resembled what a soldier has to do in a real war it would play like this.
1: Get up, brush teeth, polish equipment.
2: Drive 10 km on a congested road looking out for bombs.
4: Walk to the observation post
5: Spend 8 hours looking out over a field with peasants, trying to figure out if any of them is a resistance fighter.
6: Walk back to the truck
7: Catch your buddy when the sniper shoots him in the hip
8: Spend 3 hours trying to keep pressure on the wound and wait for medivac
9: Listen to your buddy beg for his life while he is medivaced
10: Fire blindly at a few bushes where the sniper might still be
11: Get tinitus when they bomb the bushes and the nearby houses
12: Spend 4 hours sorting out the remains of the families in the houses, trying to figure out if any of them was the sniper
13: Go to truck again, looking out for snipers this time.
14: Drive home, looking out for road bombs.
15: Wash blood from cloths, eat dinner, go to bed.
16: Repeat...
War is not fun. War does not make a good game. Any "realistic" game still removes 99.95% of what it means to be in a war-zone. You don't get bored, watching a field for hours. You don't police bodies. You don't dig through bloody cloths looking for clues if the guy you just shoot was a resistance fighter or a civilian. You don't have to stop everything and arrange a medivac if anybody in your group is hit. You don't have to write letters home to the family, explaining what happened. You rarely have any rules of engagement. It's clear who is an enemy and who is not...
I wonder when we will see a game where the punishment for sticking your head out at the wrong time is 60 years in a wheelchair with no control over your body... If you are lucky.
What CS did was encourage everybody to camp. It just didn't make sense to move anywhere because you'd be one hit killed by some AWP-wielding camping lamer who would win by being the guy that moved the least.
If you're going to have realistic combat effects, you need to balance that by also simulating how hard it is to actually aim weapons with any precision even standing still, let alone while moving. America's Army did that sort of where you have to hold your breath to get your sight to stop wandering. You know what that is? Tedious and annoying. The GP got it right, what's next? Reports and physical therapy simulation? 'Realistic' games are for a special breed of lamer. If you want that much realism, go to a recruiting center and enlist, or enroll in a police academy, or at least get off your damn couch, go to a shooting range and put some real munitions down range. Games are for fun, if you want realism, the door to life is over there.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
When the ancient Aztecs played basketball, the rules were simple - the first team that made a shot through the basket got to live. The other team was...well...beheaded. Now, if you want to make video games that are realistic, why not go all the way? Have some sort of controller that provides an electric shock or poison if you really die. That will make you think twice about going into that room full of zombies.
The bottom line is that video games are for fun and "practice". You go to a new level of realism and it just gets boring. I love flight simulators, but the ones that are completely realistic are the most boring. Who wants to spend 4 hours in combat air patrol with a 1 in 1000 chance of actually getting to splash a bogie?
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
More realism in consequences will only come with greater realism in controls. Once you're truly "in the game" can you deal with "in the game" realism.