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.

Comments

Re:Effort

[rotide]

I'm not sure if you want to ween someone onto firearms.

The kid was apparently itching to go military, which is great as we need people willing to fight for our rights! But from the tone it sounded like he was gungho on firearms and wanted to join the guys who shoot lots of them since it was fun in games.

A healthy dose of reality, in my opinion, is a good starter. Show him how difficult and how dangerous they can be before you give him a taste of putting real holes in things, or people.

In short, weapons are to be respected. Starting you off on a weapon that is easy to _not_ respect isn't the best strategy, in my opinion. Let him feel a powerful weapon and if he shows respect and an appetite to learn more, awesome!

Re:It has to be said

[grumbel]

There are millions of firearms owned and billions of rounds fired annually.

That doesn't change their original design goal, which for most guns clearly is based on military, police or self defense work. If guns would be designed for making holes in paper they would look like this and if they would be designed to make holes over long distances for sports they would look more like this, yet your average gun doesn't look much like either of those.

Any recreational tool that kills as many people as guns do would already have disappeared from the market long long ago.