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Crytek Dev On Fun vs. Realism In Game Guns
An anonymous reader tips a post from Pascal Eggert, a gun enthusiast and Crytek developer, who sheds some light on how weaponry in modern shooters is designed. Quoting:
"Guns in games are like guns in movies: it is all about looks, sounds and clichés. Just like in the movies, games have established a certain perception of weapons in the mind of the public and just like in movies games get almost everything wrong. ... The fact is that we are not trying to simulate reality but are creating products to provide entertainment. ... if you want to replicate the looks of something you need to at least see it, but using it is even better. You should hold a gun in your hands, fire it and reload it to understand what does what — and at that point you will realize, there is nothing on it that does not have a function — because guns are tools for professionals. Lot of weapon designers in the game industry get that wrong. They think of guns like products for consumers or magic devices that kill people at a distance when really it's just a simple and elegant mechanism that propels little pieces of metal. Unfortunately 3D artists often only get access to the photos that Google Image Search comes up with if you enter 'future assault rifle' or, even worse, pictures from other games and movies that also got it wrong. This may explain a lot of common visual mistakes in games, especially since guns are mostly photographed from the side and egoshooters show weapons from the first person view."
This article is drawn from his personal experience in the game industry. The images shown are Pascal's personal work and are not related to his work at Crytek.
Crytek can look at making their games fun first...
I like that this is being talked about. I was playing Modern Warfare 2 recently and ended up with an FN-FAL. This was great news as far as I was concerned as this is the rifle I first trained on during my own brief military stint. Of course come the last round being fired the character slowly changed magazine and recocked the rifle. Now this isn't some cheap British SLR, this is supposed to be an FN-FAL. Even cursory investigation would tell you that changing mags before empty requires no recocking and changing on an empty mag only requires a flick of the bolt-locking device to allow the breach to move forward; only a first load would require recocking.
.303 sound to that point was Army Men. And they were just plastic soldiers! Here's some geek in an office who'd only ever played Doom and Duke3D telling a guy straight off the range what was realistic.
On top of that the recoil was vastly understated and I can guarantee you that after putting two 7.62mm NATO rounds through someone they will not still be firing or running at you. I'll give you a laugh, the game that always impressed me in terms of rifle sound effects was Army Men on the first Playstation. I had to read a horrible review of the game from a UK magazine stating that the sound effects and shooting mechanics were unrealistic. I read that after returing from a weekend at a firing range and the only game I had ever seen capture a 7.62 or
Next time a game promises more realism I expect more than just graphics and crazy Dirty Harrry style sound effects. Operation Flashpoint 2 got it right for the most part, firing a sniper rifle mid-air while running and jumping in CounterStrike is nonsense.
I never get used to these constant resurrections
Games are, in the end, games. Inmersion is important, but inmersion withouth fun will be... well.. not fun. So in the end videogames are mostly like complicated boardgames with the rules written in programming code.
In a game where having pistols works as very short distance weapons is not fun or usefull, the pistol will work mostly like another rifle.
( Ex: Games modeled after Rock, Paper, Scissors will force rockets as antivehicle weapons, that will not kill a soldier in a direct hit. )
And who cares? some people care... people that know real weapons, like (maybe) soldiers, and people that love weapons and love to read all details. And this affect games, because these people play videogames and is a very vocal group, and can get his point right.
There are lots of games, so generalization is poor here. There are games that aims for high levels of realism, or different levels of realism / gameplay. In one side of the spectrum there are games like Unreal and Modern Warfare 2, subreal products. On the other side there are "combat simulations" like ArmA. In the middle you have games like Battlefield.
Games are not getting wrong anything, games are remodeling weapons for his own purposes. We all know Kings are not forced to move in only 8 different directions, but is usefull for chess to model kings that way (and this don't make chess 'wrong').
-Woof woof woof!
http://xkcd.com/359/
I thought it was a mildly interesting read.. it seems the author has two main complaints...
1. the design of guns being unrealistic
He argues that 'future gun'-designs should be evolutions based on current gun designs, aiming to address problems with those current designs and integrating that into the 'future gun' design.
On one hand, that makes sense. On the other, look at the P90 - that doesn't look anywhere near the typical AK-47 or or M16. If you've never seen one before, you might think it -is- a 'future gun'. So obviously as long as the designers design a gun that could theoretically work, all bets are off as to what it actually looks like.
Not to mention that this only really applies to guns shooting bullets anyway - and even there you've got things like the MetalStorm that operate radically different from conventional guns.
2. the use of the guns being unrealistic
Recoil would tend to ruin the 'fun' of most games. A sniper rifle that gets you near-zero accuracy (floating barrel) when on the run / flying through the air would force those people to camp - and although that's exactly what snipers do, camping tends to be frowned upon in gaming
However, as another commenter posted below, it couldn't hurt to have reload mechanisms work as they do in real life -if- you're using a real life gun design in the first place. They also argued about the sound effects, though.. I've shot a few guns - I'll take the game/'Hollywood' sound effects anytime as far as entertainment goes.
You know, you're quite right. People play games because they are games. People play with guns because ... ok, we don't play with guns. Anyone who's been to a shooting range knows that it's a very serious place. If it's not, that's an excellent time to leave quickly because someone's going to get hurt.
There was a show on not too long ago, where they took a kid out to an outdoor shooting range. The only people there were the kid, his mother, the instructor, and the video crew (off camera, of course).
He was a brave hero in the video games, blasting away at all the enemies. At the shooting range, he was terrified of the guns. They left his full reaction out of the initial cut, but put it in later in the show. He wasn't just terrified. He was crying his eyes out.
I took a 13 year old to the shooting range. He'd been playing FPS games for quite a while. He was sure he wanted to join the military when he turned 18. He wanted his parents to buy him real guns, so he could go to the range with them. I spent about 3 hours with him, tearing down my weapons, cleaning them, and reassembling them. I explained every part of them, so he knew the names and functions, and how they worked together. Then we were off to the shooting range.
The range we went to had two sections, a pistol, and a rifle range. We agreed that I would demonstrate proper firing techniques, and then instruct him while he fired. We went to the rifle area first. The only other person in the rifle range was firing a Kel-Tec PLR-16 (.223 pistol). We were using my Springfield 03A3. For those who haven't used one, it's a cannon. :) Without shoulder padding, I'm limited to about 30 shots per arm (I shoot ambidextrously). It has no padding on the stock, and a vicious recoil. I had him stand a few feet behind me, and observe what I was doing. I fired the first shot, and brought the target back to show him what I did. While the target was coming back to me, I turned around, and he had gone from standing behind me, to hiding in the corner.
Mind you, this kid wasn't timid. It was the sudden reality of "the things that go pop in the games are really dangerous" came flooding into his world. I spent a while trying to get him to take even a single shot with it. That didn't happen.
We moved over to the pistol range. I had brought my Ruger P97DC. It's a nice weapon. .45 ACP, fairly light, easy recoil. I fired a single shot. This time, he didn't go running all the way to the corner, but he did back up several feet. I demonstrated proper use of it for him, put a fresh magazine in. To show it was ready, I fired 3 shots from the new magazine, and then made it safe and put it down. I then began instructing him. I got him to pick it up, and he even got his finger onto the trigger, but never pulled the trigger. He was terrified.
Now, what kind of lunatic would give a 13 year old with no shooting experience a loaded weapon? Not me. I didn't tell him, but the last "loaded" magazine I put in only had 3 rounds in it. After my last shot, I hit the slide release (the slide stays back when the magazine is empty). I just told him it was ready. I'd been telling him for years "Every weapon is a loaded weapon." I'm sure anyone who's been around firearms has heard that one. I told him again, and then demonstrated that it was empty by dry firing it. I told him, even though I knew it wouldn't fire, it was still to be treated as a loaded weapon. Since he wouldn't fire what he believed to be a loaded weapon, he wasn't ready to actually do it.
It's not an age thing though. My father had me shooting when I was about 8 years old. The
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The fact is that we are not trying to simulate reality but are creating products to provide entertainment.
Thank you Captain Obvious. Hollywood, with its disintegrating fruit stands, good looking and extremely slutty women and exploding cars, has known for a long time that reality is pretty boring. In fact, most people LIKE it that way.
because guns are tools for professionals.
Save that BS for your next NRA meeting. There's nothing professional about most of the people who own/use guns. They are tools for killing. It is their sole purpose. They may be used by professionals (SOME soldiers, SOME law enforcement, SOME private gun owners), but gun ownership does not confer professional status. "Ganstas" and drug traffickers have a lot of guns and use them regularly, and there's nothing professional about that. Nor is there anything professional about the husband who shoots his wife, or the guy who shoots his neighbor. I say this as a responsible gun owner, and I hope I never ever have to be in a situation where I have to think about using it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Why waste money on realism that doesn't contribute to the entertainment value of entertainment products?
Camping is a perfectly sensible tactic if you're defending. Anyone who complains about that is just bitter that they might actually have to use tactics to win.
Camping to me is only really a problem when someone on an attacking team is ignoring the main objective and just going for kills. If you just want to score kills, go play a deathmatch game, morons.
which is totally what she said
Don't you have a .22 you could start the guy out on, or was it more fun to intimidate him with the high-recoil stuff?
A regular FPS shouldn't adopt this.
correct, mostly because of the large amount of ammo carried in regular FPS games. 700 rounds of 7.62mm, 500x5.56mm, 12 grenades, eight rockets, four medkits, (ad nauseum). I love running at full speed, jumping and strafing whilst carrying 230 lb of ammo, not including weapons, armor and a NAV system.
If I wanted realism, I would have joined the Corps years ago.
While a crossbow did allow one to use any untrained peasant, a longbow could do the same thing at the time.
Um, no. If you give a longbow to an untrained peasant, he's not likely to actually hit anything except perhaps himself. A crossbow is much easier to use than a bow.
That's what I was thinking as I read that. I mean, yeah, a .22 isn't as intimidating, but it's also a lot more comfortable to fire, especially for someone who's never fired a gun, and especially for a kid. That, and the ammo is cheap.
A "weapon of class destruction", if you will...