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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)
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).
A n00b gets shot at the beginning of the game. That means he would be out for the remainder of the game. Would you play a game where the playtime is about 1 minute for every 30 or so? I know I wouldn't.
And also it would be boring as hell. Very rarely do you have situations where you are shooting all the time.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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?
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.
It's called nethack. The graphics aren't great, but he's said he doesn't mind that.
Let me quote Eurogamer on the 1997 Playstation game Bushido Blade:
Bushido Blade works like this: If somebody scores a glancing blow on you, you're slowed. If somebody hits your arm, you fight on one-handed. If somebody hits your leg, you go down to one knee. If somebody hits you hard, anywhere at all, there is a horrible crunch or spurt of blood and you die.
Eurogamer's retrospective says it all. Imagine if it had caught on.
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.
...Walker was highly critical on the realism of Road Runner cartoons, claiming that both Coyote thought processes and the laws of physics were grossly misrepresented.
Adding more realism does not equal to making game better.
Especially when it is "mind jerk" where you use realism to make game harder to play - it feels and sounds awesome because person who suggests it also imagines himself pwning in that game and getting to top of things using his innate "realistic combat skills".
It is somewhat similar to, say, people wanting hardcore pvp in mmos with full loot. You only suggest something like this if you can imagine yourself always on the winning side. Because otherwise, theese mechanics suck.
In some rare idealistic cases, people want challenge to be added to game (and of course, imagine themselves besting challenge while being awesome enough to get style points). That is, however, not something you automatically get if you make game harder and leargning curve steeper that eve.
Give him realistic fps with one-hit-kill bullet and he will not play it for long. You do not keep playing game you suck at, and adding some mechanics means that pretty much everyone ends up sucking.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
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.
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.
wow, really, you haven't heard of Codemasters' master piece Operation Flashpoint? The default setting is "get shot and you die".
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
There already are 2 very realistic games that should have been mentioned: Close Range and Modern Warfare 3.
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
I don't like the idea of desensitising my children to realistic violence. If I wanted that I'd just let them watch the news!
I think Counter-Strike had it down pretty well. Quite easy to die, and then you have to wait out the rest of the round until everyone else is dead. If the round time is long enough, it encourages you to play as if it's more "real", as there is a real downside to dying.
which is totally what she said
If I'm going to play a game, I want fun and excitement without any real threat of getting killed or suffering pain.
Ah, but what counts as "fun and excitement" for you? For me, the risk of failure is part of the excitement. The challenge of minimizing that risk is part of the fun.
When I play a game, I want to suffer. Real life is easy and pleasant enough already.
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.
Any sufficiently realistic video game will heal your character via virtual health insurance forms.
Thanks, but I'll take my crowbar any day.
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
Speaking as someone who has built combat simulations for the US Army:
Real combat is boring... it consists of long periods of time where basically nothing happens, mixed with very short periods of combat where a lot happens but the winner of this short period of combat is rarely in doubt.
I'm a big fan of (pseudo-) "realistic" FPS like OFP, ArmA, OFP2, and Arma2. Many people claim they want realism, but for most gamers these simulations are too boring or too hard. Personally, I'm missing real realism as opposed to the fake realism of ArmA 2. I might be mistaken but as far as I know in a real war wounded soldiers sometimes scream like crazy without stopping, and I've also read accounts of WW2 where soldiers were walking around with their guts (literally) in their hands. For real realism my "special forces" team mates should occasionally go nuts (if they aren't already). There should also be trigger-happy soldiers that mess up missions, accidentally shoot pregnant women and kids at checkpoints, etc. Very rarely, a civilian could be raped by your fellow teammates and it would be up to you whether you want to participate or inform your CO. In both cases, you'd have to face the consequences. And, of course, don't forget friendly fire and jobs like cleaning the latrines.
If you think I'm being sarcastic, you misunderstand me. I really want this kind of realism in my FPS. But I guess this will never happen, because people would fear that depicting real violence might disturb the emotional balance of some American kids and lead to a lawsuit against the game company. For a start, I'd already be fine if they'd come up with a good story instead of the usual black and white "good vs. evil" bullshit.
"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.'" Disagreed strongly. He may want such, you may want such, THEY may want such...but I don't. If I wanted that I'd be playing with God mode on or I'd go for My Little Pony Online. I want challenge. I want realism. I want to have to use some skill and smarts to get the job done, not just mindlessly run around shooting anything that moves.
Digg?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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
Operation Flashpoint, ArmA, the Rainbow Six aren't realism. The game mechanics are slightly more realistic, but that is it.
Realism would mean you play once for 10 minutes, get shot, possibly through no fault of your own, and are permanently out of the game because in that game you are dead. No one wants that. Reality sucks. War is not fun. Sometimes skill counts but just as often dumb luck or being born on the right side does. War's not meant to be fun. Playing warrior is.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
You obviously haven't heard the awesome reviews of the next game..
Also, I'm surprised that nobody else has linked that yet, considering the topic. (Note: link goes to onion video, sound required)
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
That's nothing. When I was younger we played Poker. It was a strange game where, if you lost, you could lose real money.
Losing often enough could end with you losing your wife, kids and house; leaving you on a homeless shelter for the rest of your life. After that, all other games seemed too unrealistic, so I stopped playing.
They say there's a funnier game community going on in certain countries of Africa. In those, when your character gets hit by a bullet, you receive a bullet wound yourself. I might consider playing those games if all the system is as realistic as that.
Ever play Rainbow Six Vegas 1 or 2 at Realistic difficulty? Try it, then cry as it makes you its bitch.
Living With a Nerd
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.
If America's Army had you hold your breath, then they were violating their own marksmanship rules. You actually fire when you get to the end of your exhale. There's a natural pause there, your lungs aren't all bloated with air (making it impossible to line up your sights), and your pulse is normal.
I would also love to have more realistic violence in video games, but the thing to realize is that is that it just wouldn't work in current day games, as those games are from their in their very core extremely unrealistic, not just what the violence is concerned. On average you kill like what, 200-300 people in a single play through of a shooter, maybe even more in some games. Reality just doesn't work that way, unless you drop bombs from a plane you just don't get to kill that many people without getting yourself killed, a lot.
I think a sensible way to introduce realistic violence would be to tackle it in a basically non-violent game. See Mirrors Edge for example, that style of game has some huge potential in that area, as its core is not about killing people but about traversing terrain. You don't shoot people, but instead you get shot. Of course the game kind of butchers its own core mechanic by introducing level design that basically forces you to shoot at other people and its extremely terrible at presenting the shooting in a realistic manner (everybody is a clone, small girl survives more bullets then armored police man, etc.), but its a type of game where you could introduce realistic violence and get away with it. In fact it would even make the game better when you for example had a choice between shooting somebody in the leg, along with consequences, instead of just having him rackdoll himself to the ground. I would much prefer it to have the game show realistically that death of the opponent is something that should be avoided, not something that should be done on a casual basis. Another thing the game misses is in-game character interaction, you get kind of a glimpse at it here and there, but you don't really see much of it in the game, which is again kind of a bummer, as realism doesn't start with violence and death, but with having non-violent ways to interact with NPCs.
The one big issue of course remains player death. It is really hard to get away from rapid respawn. You could Sands-Of-Time your way out of it, but even that is just a cheat to avoid consequences of player death. Another issue is that such instant-kill kind of gameplay leads to lots of trial&error gameplay, which doesn't seem to be all that popular with todays audiences.
Another way to do realistic violence is of course to make it all story based, like in an adventure game, where its not something the player does, but something done by other people to the player or friends of him. Heavy Rain might have some interesting stuff to show in that area, but if it really works or will be panned as a series of QTEs we have to wait and see.
I just got MW2 this weekend and I played online. It basically is one shot and you're dead.
Well, you must be using a lightweight mech, like the Jenner - and presumably your opponent is using something massive and this "one shot" is fire-linked, with all their weapons... When you're using the lighter stuff you need to take advantage of your mobility - those Timber Wolves are tough but they're not too fast...
Oh, and remember to set up the "torso twist" controls! You're really slowing yourself down if you have to reorient your legs just to fire in a different direction... If you can get one of those Thrustmaster throttles, and one of those joysticks with the hat switch - those are supposed to be very good for MW2.
Bow-ties are cool.
My right hand is suck and tired
That was a typographical penis---I mean error.
you had to eat the flower to get the power of throwing projectile fireballs at evil turtles...
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try