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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...
Is anyone really surprised by this?
And further more, who asked for an explanation?
It's quite obvious the rocket launcher from UT isn't real. I never once thought a "rocket launcher" was that easy to handle.
I never expect weaponry in games to be life-like, depending on the game.
Certain games require certain realism, but I also know, too much realism would kill the fun.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
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!
Well take a sound team and film unit to a part of the world with real arms dealers, a wide selection of special forces, Soviet, US, South African bush wars, UK, NATO, and current weapons...
Then set up as needed and test, test, test.
Perhaps build a rig to measure push back and chart the different guns?
That will give you the laws of physics, you will have sound and visuals from every aspect.
This is not the old days of a quick sketch, a low res gui and a royalty-free gun audio license on a cd.
Why is the young digital generation of artists so sheltered should be the only question.
If they are unable to travel and work with real life, time to rethink the staff?
If your an aspiring 'artist' turn of the anime, xbox, sony time wasters and learn to draw in the real world.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You mean to tell me that my BFG 9000 was simply made up, it does not match a real world device?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
http://xkcd.com/359/
Actually, as someone who's had at least the basic infantry training (our main role was to shoot down aircraft) it seems to me like it is indeed very very easy to handle. Ever since some guy tied a bow to a plank, weapons have been point and click basically.
And I imagine we'll probably find some parchments where the old guard argues that command line weapons were better, and how you should give lusers an IQ test before letting them anywhere near a weapon. ;) Actually, that is only half joke. A pope actually treated the crossbow as some kind of WMD and prohibited its use against fellow Christians. But I digress.
Anyway, a non-guided anti-tank rocket launcher like the one in most games is the epitome of easy to use. You don't even have to compensate for distance as much as with an assault rifle. The only thing that's unlike the game is basically that you should be sure there's nothing behind you, and shooting most rocket launchers in a room is an awfully bad idea. When the rocket comes out the front end, a jet of flame comes out the back end, see? You don't even have much recoil to deal with, since the hot gas just goes out the back end instead of pushing against something. Truly point and click, really.
Now guided ones that can take down a low flying helicopter may need a tad more training, but the basic principle is the same.
As for the other point, while I'll concede the general point that too much realism kills the fun, there is a difference between lack of realism because you understand exactly why it would be less fun, and lack of realism because you have no clue how a weapon works. The latter can be unrealistic without gaining any fun, or even being less fun.
Heck, probably the most baffling weapon-related example comes from the post-NGE SWG, where one quest gives you a sniper scope for a sword. No, literally. I can't even imagine what they were thinking, what were they smoking, and what's the phone number of their dealer so I can get some of that good shit too ;) And I can't even start to imagine why that would be more fun than a more believable (i.e., realistic) attachment like a mastercrafted grip or pommel.
Or take the meme that assault rifles kick so hard that you spray bullets in a 30 degree cone, or make that 45 degrees if it's an AK-47 or SAW. Such a weapon would be fracking useless. I once calculated that if a real SAW had the spread from counter-strike it would be useless even for suppression at its rated effective range, because you'd need to fire many many full belts and more ammo than a squad carries, to even put one bullet in the same square metre as the guy you're shooting at. Sorry, that won't make me keep my head down. I'll take that kind of chances.
And anyway trained soldier (most games pretend you're one) wouldn't spray lead like that. Except maybe if he's shooting from the hip while dancing the Macarena ;)
And the AK-47 is actually a very manageable weapon, although the larger calibre tells the average clueless gamer nerd who never shot one "OMG, higher calibre must kick like a mule." The key there is that it really was designed as a mid-range weapon, in the same line of thinking as the German MP-43/STG-44 (the first assault rifle) it was trying to imitate. It has a shorter cartridge case and shoots a larger but slower bullet, which means you're not really putting more impulse in the bullet. It's also why its effectiveness takes a nose dive beyond 300 metres: the slow bullet needs a too curved trajectory to hit the target and increases the chance to estimate wrong and shoot over or too short. But even then (A) it's 300m, not the distances on the average game map, and (B) it's the ballistic problem described before, not some kind of spraying lead in all directions.
At any rate, exactly what fun does that inaccuracy bring? Games have been balanced just fine and had interesting weapons even in the "stone age" when guns were hitscan weapons. And games like WoW still are such a bad offshoot of hitscan that you can even see the projectile curving and even zig-zaging to its target, and sold more copies than a lot of the "but it's realistic!!" (if you don't know how guns work, that is) idiocies. _Someone_ must like that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm a bit of a war.tech.geek. My favourite subjectmatter is ww2 weapons; and so I get a thrill out of detailed games that portray such creations. I love to see and interact with a detailed pletora of weapons that i recognize. I do, however, get more picky when the weapon systems get "up close and personal". When the game portrays the notion that you control an existing weapon directly, I do expect some of it's characteristics to be reflected in the game.
:/. Most ww2 hollywood tank portrayals pre-"saving private ryan" are horrendous.
Immersion & "draft damage": Having been a conscript for 8 months, I've had my perception of small arms altered. I know now that regular infantry man usually engages the enemy with single fire, and that the precision and stopping power afforded by a modern assault rifle is something thats too often is only portrayed by sniper rifles in games. I tire of the inability to take proper aim, and alter the firing mode in many games. Crouching and going prone is also something that's often being shunned by the industry.
We're are, as the article puts it, often left with a hollywood version of weapons. I'm not suggesting that each virtual m16 should come with a virtual cleaning kit, but I would like to see more "portrayed" realism in the handling: that the (deadly) tool can be operated with some of the freedom and functionality that it provides in real life. I realize that this approach is not for all types of games.
I realize that games are abstractions and aspects of realism can be costly and complex to implement in carefully balanced game mechanics; especially if they're intended to provide a competitive space for players.
For gun nuts: I was trained with a Diemaco C7 with an elcan optical sight
P.s: We we're missing a proper ww2 tank movie
- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
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.
Hey guys, first of all, this headline is misleading. I didn't wrote this article as a Crytek Dev, I just happen to work at Crytek and this is my personal opinion. The article was written for gun-nuts to explain to them why guns are often portrayed wrongly in games, not for gamers. Also, since I just joined Crytek I'm not responsible for anything you've seen in our released games. So, remember: This has nothing to do with Crytek. Also, I want to make it very clear that my article was about games that are set in "realistic" environments, like MW, Crysis, CS, BC and so forth. I absolutely agree, that realism is not at all needed in games like UT, Serious Sam etc. The job of the gun-designer in these sort of games is completely different: he has to create an "Icon" or a recognizable shape so the player knows what he is holding without even directly looking at it. Something like the rocket launcher in Q3 or the flak in UT99. This weapon does not need to be designed around internals, but have to have a certain feel for the power and limitations of the weapon. A good "funweapon" is designed around a unique shape, something a kid could doodle on a desk at school. I personally don't like the UT3 Weapons because they are overly detailed and not as recognizable as the original guns. Thanx, iPeg
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?
Captain Obvious here :-)
hey man, this article was written for gun-nuts who have no clue how games are made. I didn't ask slashdot to post it here, but I can see how they got confused since these are two topics in one.
Also, guns are tools, no mater what your personal view on gun control is. This was written from a design point of view and maybe you should read the whole article, because it's on designing sci-fi weapons not an advertisement for buying guns.
Cheers mate, keep it up :-)
That show was Penn and Tellers "Bullshit" and I was extremely dissapointed with that demonstration. Thier "Hero" marine appeared to give the child no instruction in the proper technique for the use of the firearm. And he specifically failed to correct the child who was holding the weapon in an inproper firing position. As a result it appears that he was struck in the face or glasses by the charging handle, or triangular projection on the left side of the weapon (sorry I havent used that (or any model) since my army days so I dont remember the proper name of that part.
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.
You might not want to tell that to the people shooting the different pistol competitions. We sure consider it a lot of fun.
IDPA, USPSA, IPSC, and Cowboy Action shooting are all very much like video games with real guns. And they are a helluva lot of fun.
You still have to be careful, because a gun is still a dangerous tool. But it's safer than car or dirt bike racing, which both use tools to have a ton of fun.
Sure if you take a little kid, hand him a gun that's too powerful for him to control, and don't tell him how to shoot it right he's not going to enjoy himself. He'll cut his hand on the slide, have the barrel hit him in the face because of recoil, and not be able to hit anything. Similarly, if you just hand a kid a bicycle without teaching him how to ride it he's going to think it's the dumbest thing in the world.
But if you start him out in a caliber he can control and teach him to shoot it properly, he'll enjoy it as much as the 18 million americans who went target shooting for fun last year (http://blog.nssf.org/target-shooting/).
Slashdot prides itself on the accuracy of its headlines. I don't believe we've had a misleading one since the 2003 incident.
There are a lot of professional tools in a gun shop.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
hunting rabbits with my .20 guage shotgun
I'm not sure what a guage is, but a .20 gauge shotgun, if such a thing existed, would probably tear your shoulder off with recoil. A 20 gauge shotgun is quite controllable and suitable for rabbit-hunting.
and squirrels with my .22 caliber rifle
On the other hand, a .22 caliber rifle (again, if such a thing existed) would pose little threat to even the smallest squirrel -- the critter might feel a bit of a sting when you hit it, but that's about all. A 22 caliber rifle, of course, will do for a squirrel quite nicely.
Maybe if Crytek hired people with three digit IQs they could make some fun games; this guy's obviously one of the 50% of humanity with a two digit quotient.
Beam. Eye. Pot. Kettle.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Dan I'm a little confused.
You're picking on someone for mis-spelling gauge as guage. Okay, I got that one no problem. You progress to sarcastically point out that a .20 gauge shotgun would "tear your shoulder off with recoil". I'd ask you where you're getting this idea? The smaller the gauge of a shotgun the LESS powerful it is. Commonly available progression in order of most to least powerful is 10, 12, 18, and 20. You're already wickedly confused so I'm going to leave out the .410.
Once you're done displaying your ignorance in the scatter-gun category you move on to displaying it in the rifle category. The correct expression is .22, not 22 as you state. A 22 Caliber rifle very possibly COULD "tear your arm off" with recoil.
It's incredibly obvious that you don't understand the first thing about how to calculate a Gauge OR how to calculate a Caliber. In fact I'm calling into question whether you know anything about firearms at all.
Here is your own comment turned back on you - "Beam. Eye. Pot. Kettle."
The next time you're going to pick on someone for their ignorance perhaps you should check to make sure that your own knowledge is up to par.
Gauge - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_(bore_diameter)
Caliber - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliber
Mods - Mr. Dvorkin's post is not informative, it's WRONG.
22 caliber, when written, is informal usage. When spoken, the decimal is always assumed to be there unless specified otherwise.
Any parent letting a politician or political organisation control their child's perception of the world should be sterilised at gunpoint.
I say that one as a person who likes Australia's gun control methods (Read: gun license required, dear gun nuts).
In many parts of the world people are bough up to not treat guns as toys in the same way they are taught not to treat carving knives as toys. Many Australian's have shot a gun, it's not hard to go down the range and fork over $30 (half of that is just paying the staff) but only 5% of Australians feel the desire to have a firearms license and as part of that 5% I can tell you it's not hard. Some places in Europe require young men to learn how to operate and care for a firearm. Greece and Sweden have national service and I've yet to meet a Swede that couldn't shoot (yes, one day that chef on the Muppets will crack and the frog will get it). Israel makes sure all it's citizens can shoot, male and female.
Please dont display US propaganda as being real. Most anti-gun ban activists do not actually know the gun laws of other nations they protest against such as the only thing preventing an Australian from getting a gun license is a violent criminal record or psychiatric episode (institutionalisation) which leaves oh, 99% of the Australian population eligible, the damn things are easier to get then a drivers license these days. More often then not they drag up laws that were repealed years ago, for example how many times have you heard that the Nazi's instituted gun control when in fact the Nazi's relaxed it (by 1938, any Nazi party member could buy, use and carry firearms without question, most German citizens received no grief about guns, the only real ban was against Jews having guns (shock horror)). The referenced gun control laws were implemented by the Weirmar republic as a requirement of the Treaty of Versailles (the on the US and French made them sign and Winston Churchill was against) before Hitler even joined the Nazi party and relaxed in 1933 then virtually eliminated in 1938.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.