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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?"
I'm fairly certain actually realistic shooters exist. It's just that realistic mechanics, from a player perspective, are extremely boring, except for in a few limited cases (only one I can think of that is fun and isn't at least a bit fantastic or sci-fi is Counter Strike).
With the whole rise of casual gamer shenanigans going on, making games realistically punishing isn't lucrative in the slightest. Even the most successful hardcore/brutally evil game that has come out recently, Demon's Souls, has a lot of unrealistic elements in it (such as excessive hit points, predictable AI, magic, etc).
I want an accessory that is worn on your torso (as a vest) and delivers a paintball-like punch when an in-game bullet strikes your avatar. That would teach stealth tactics better than anything.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I've been wanting more realistic violence since forever. I don't want great big clouds of blood shooting out from someone unless it's called for. I don't want NPC's to fly back when you shoot them. I don't want NPC's to insta-die unless you hit them in the head or central nervous system. But more realistic violence doesn't necessarily imply more realism for the player. The player character can be genetically modified, enhanced by nanotech or whatever handwavy technology you want to use.
Say you shoot someone in the general torso area, you obviously miss the spine since he doesn't ragdoll and you take cover as he returns fire. When you pop out of cover the target is nowhere to be seen. When you find him he's on the ground aspirating blood and generally bleeding out. Or when you finish a firefight there is not silence but lots of poor fuckers screaming from their pain as they bleed out. If nothing else that might make you want to take the more stealthy route or make sure you aim better.
I definitely agree with the article, unrealistic games are terrible. I've found myself gravitating towards games with realistic damage rates and weapon accuracies.
For example:
- Counter Strike: Used to be really good in the early betas, then went to hell once the whiners in the forums resulted in every weapon being nerfed. I stopped playing it after I emptied a clip at point blank into a guy's head, missed with every bullet, and then had him turn around and knife me. Over 90% of players had never played CS when it was good, and have no idea just what they're missing...
- Day of Defeat: started off awesome, then slowly went downhill, but never to the same extent as CS. Players who thought they were 'l33t' at CS got massacred when they joined DoD games.
- Team Fortress / TF2: feels like you're using nerfbats at first, but there's lots of instant-deaths, more then you'd expect, which makes up for it. (snipers, spies, crits, etc...)
- Left 4 Dead 1 & 2: I love the way that one bullet from most guns will kill a dozen zombies in a row. Not only that, but Valve made the guns in #2 better, not worse! Someone at Valve is clearly learning!
Contrast these games with the likes of Quake, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, or the like. In those games, three or four direct hits with a rocket weapon is not enough. It's like using nerfbats. What's worse, Tribes basically had no hitscan weapons, so at range, you couldn't even hit anything moving, and even if you did get a lucky shot in, it would do no significant damage.
I've found that the games with accurate, lethal weapons result in very different game play. People jump around like rabbits less, stick to cover more, crouch, avoid open spaces, etc... Basically, they play just like you see soldiers or SWAT behave in real life. It's also gives me a much bigger adrenaline rush. Periods of quiet stalking interspersed with real terror, ending with either sudden death or a panicked getaway make for great tension. Jumping around like idiots in glowing neon green armor is just boring after a few hours.
Urban Terror is a good example of a game that makes an effort to have "realistic" weapon damage effects. In the game—a free, open-source FPS—players square off using modern weapons and equipment. When you spray machine gun fire at your opponents, your accuracy degrades. When you get hit, you start bleeding, and you must bandage your wounds quickly before you bleed out. If you are shot in the leg, your movement speed decreases, and you also take damage to your legs if you fall from heights greater than one story. If you are shot in the arm, your accuracy decreases. Reloading your weapons takes time, and in the middle of combat it is usually more expedient to draw your trusty sidearm, rather than reload.
Unlike most FPSs, where players engage in running gunfights that can last for tens of seconds, the typical Urban Terror engagement is very short; players frequently die before they realize they are under attack. This turns the game into an unending quest for the perfect ambush—attacking with surprise, from behind, almost always ensures victory. Many players tend to be snipers or campers, since the gameplay mechanics make very difficult to "run and gun" effectively. With that being said, it is still possible to power-slide down a hallway, turn, and take out two alert enemies with well-placed bursts—it's just very, very difficult.
Nonetheless, UrT distinguishes itself for its reliance on teamwork. There are almost no plain Deathmatch servers, since UrT Deathmatches simply aren't interesting. Instead, it is all about the team-based gameplay: team-DM, CTF, and bombing run missions. A lone man is easy prey, but squad of two or three players can take and hold an enemy base for some time, provided they know what they're doing. In UrT, working with others is the key to victory, and your ability to score frags can increase exponentially if your team-mates are nearby. If you like teamwork, and don't mind the occasional insta-gib, then you should consider checking out UrT. The game is based on ioquake3 and will run on almost any Windows/Linux/Mac system that's less than ten years old.
At our school, we don't earn a degree when we graduate—we earn pi/180 radians
Bushido Blade was awesome, and it is still among the most, if not the most, realistic deadly fighting game ever made. Its simplicity came from its realism, so the complexity that it had was all related to how you were actually fighting. For instance, which stance you were in, or the way you swing your blade. The realistic simplicity also let it break out into three dimensions, so it was one of the very first fighting games to really allow you to run wherever you wanted (not just the lame side-stepping that fighting games still often use). It's still certainly worth a spin for those of you who (for some reason) still play PS1. Just a simple fight between two players in the bamboo forest is tense. There are only a few (sometimes one) unblocked swings between your character and its death.
Of course, most people were more interested in playing Tekken and Mortal Kombat with their fireballs and snap-your-neck-to-take-away-20%-of-your-health type moves. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with that, but Bushido Blade showed that the simplicity of realism can give developers room for real substance in the gameplay.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
This reminds me of the old discussions about realism in pen&paper RPGs.
It can work as a system incorporated into RPGs. There is a James Bond RPG that uses a damage system with about five stages to it, from uninjured, through moderate wounds, to outright killed. Depending on the weapon used, you may take one additional level of damage (say, by being hit with a rock), to five (rocket to the head). Your general effectivenes drops as your damage accrues, and the likelihood of scarring increases, making you a less effective spy in later missions.
Of course, there are advantages to paper-based gaming; the GM may alter the game accordingly to help players saddled with too many problems to be effective. If a computer game could effectively substitute for a human GM, then I might be more easily persuaded to try a game with such a realistic damage system.