The Case For Surrealism In Games

An editorial at PikiGeek takes the position that gaming's trend toward realism can be detrimental in many situations, with the quest for graphical precision supplanting creativity and uniqueness. Quoting: "The problem I find most troubling with realism in games is that video games are inherently unrealistic. By definition, even, video games must adhere to some sense of absurdity. In Uncharted, no matter how realistic and convincing the characters and environments may be, the fact is that Nathan Drake can take a hell of a lot of damage, and is a little too good with every gun known to man. In Call of Duty, if realism is such a coveted aspect of the series, why does your character only bleed out of his eyes, and why is damage rarely permanent? The 'game' part of these games keeps them from being truly realistic, and in turn makes them even less believable. Characters like Link, or even Master Chief, are believable in even the most absurd situations, as the worlds that they belong to don't try to conform to the world that we live in."

Comments

I blame Counterstrike

[cyclomedia]

This tend towards realism was started by Counterstrike, in my opinion. Before that deathmatch was a supersonic brawl over the rocket launcher with infinite lives and team games were similarly fast and chaotic. Now game characters are slooow, you're lucky if you're allowed to respawn, guns are, well guns and environments completely lack lava and floaty platforms.

Also, finally played Portal for the first time this weekend, boy that's one surreal game! (and i'm not talking about the physicsy stuff!)

Re:I blame Counterstrike

[Anonymous Coward]

valve eventually went for the cartoony look in team fortress 2 because the gameplay was so absurd. If you're pushing for realism, how do you explain the 2 sides building their bases 40 feet away from each other?

Re:I blame Counterstrike

[mcvos]

Counterstrike realistic? I haven't played it much, but my impression was that everybody moved at insane ridiculous speeds. I'm no FPS fan, but I did like America's Army somewhat, exactly because it was pretty realistic.

The problem isn't realism, the problem is half-hearted realism. A thin veneer of realism over gameplay that is very unrealistic. That mismatch spoils the experience. But a game that honestly tries to make the gameplay as realistic as possible can be a lot of fun. At least to people who appreciate realism, which I do. I liked Frontier/First Encounter's Newtonian physics, even if it made space combat ridiculously hard. I don't mind a challenge if there's a good reason for it.

But if you don't want realism, then don't pretend it's realistic. I like wacky over-the-top stuff too. Or gameplay that's designed with a very specific kind of gameplay or balance in mind. Just pick what your goal is, and do it right.

Re:I blame Counterstrike

[mikael_j]

The original Counter Strike game featured slow running (at least Beta 5,6,7 and 1.0).

However, it was plagued by the half-hearted realism you mentioned. On one hand you ran slow, on the other hand bunny hopping was commonly used to avoid getting shot (combined with various exploits of glitches like jump-duck-shoot-jump-duck-shoot to instantly steady your aim). Not to mention when they crippled a bunch of the "regular" weapons while still leaving the game in a state that favored snipers. Or knife running (you ran a lot faster when holding a knife than any other weapon, one favorite trick was to have a macro for the left mouse button that instantly switched to your main weapon, fired and then switched back to the knife). Or flashbang grenades that would blind you even though you were on the other side of a wall and looking away from it. Or (on programmable mice) macro-ing so holding the left mouse button equaled clicking it really fast (since popping off one round at a time as fast as auto fire was extremely accurate while auto fire immediately sprayed bullets everywhere but where you wanted them to go).

So yes, half-hearted realism, and the slow running was the biggest thing you noticed in terms of "realism".

Re:I blame Counterstrike

[TheRaven64]

Counterstrike wasn't the first. Action Quake II was the first mod I played that went in for realism, and was released about a year before Counterstrike. It was awful. You got shot, and you started to bleed, walked slowly, and had to find a first aid kit to bandage yourself to stop bleeding (and losing health). Even then, you didn't heal, you just stopped being more injured. You had so little ammo that you only got a couple of shots before having to resort to trying to knife your opponents.

It was the most realistic FPS I'd played - more realistic than Counterstrike a year later - and the least fun.

Re:I blame Counterstrike

[UnknownSoldier]

> This tend towards realism was started by Counterstrike, in my opinion.

The "Red Herring of Realism" was alive _long_ before 1999 young grasshopper. Tactical Shooters are not the only way games were slowly being more realistic. (e.g. Nethack had death come very easy -- meaning your are faced with permanent consequences, and have to restart.)

Advances in (real-time) computer graphics & physics are what drove this. Then game designers got sucked into the red herring of realism without understanding what games truely are: an _alternate_ "reality". i.e. Oooh, look, it would be cool, if in driving games, you could actually _flip_ and _roll_ the cars, it would be realistic if when you shot an enemy in the leg he limped, etc. without questioning what -effect- it would have on gameplay.

Here is the scale of realism with their corresponding game labels

No Realism -------- Max Realism
"Arcadey" .............. "Simulation"

How _much_ realism is called for, depends on the what you are trying to _achieve_ and _express_ with your game. Most gamers find 100% simulation to be NOT FUN. Conversely, they find total lack of realism, to be "too arcadey." The popular games tend to have a healthy mix of both. Quake-style / TF2 jumping / air-control is the perfect example: When you jump, you are able to turn in mid-air 360 degrees, and even stop your acceleration. Completely unrealistic, but fun as hell.

Here is the perfect example. Almost all driving games "cheat" -- that is, they dampen the impact when you hit an enemy car -- because players would just ram the cars off the road and win. But a win without a struggle doesn't mean (or feel) anything. It's why cheating is so shallow -- it doesn't mean anything when there are no challenge(s) or obstacle(s) to overcome. So driving games cheat -- they want to provide some realism to maintain the immersion, but they can't be 100% realistic as that hinders the gameplay / fun mechanics.

Sid Meier said great game design was about keeping giving the player interesting choices to make. FPS's moved towards the model where you could only carry limited (~2) weapons -- partially because of realism, but because it forced the player to "make an interesting choice of what to carry."

Now I am not against realism in a game. There is a time and place for it _depending_ on your game design. When most people complain about realism, what they _really_ are complaining about, is that

a) they are forgetting they are playing a _game_,
b) the game is not letting you do something within that world that you think should be able to do.

People want _logical_ _consistency_ in the game.

When was the last time you heard people complaining about: Magic The Gathering as being too realistic? Most people don't confuse card games with reality. But as soon as you put the game experience in a virtual 3d world, people will _immediately_ start complaining, "Hey this game isn't realistic! I can't swim, explore over this mountain, etc..."

> Now game characters are slooow, you're lucky if you're allowed to respawn, guns are, well guns and environments completely lack lava and floaty platforms.

That's because game designers and publishers are

a) drinking the red herring of realism Kool-Aid without understanding what games (and game design) are about.
b) It is easier to model reality, then engage your imagination and creativity -- there is a topic in game design what I call "Frame of Reference", but that is a topic for another day. If you are interested, I'll post a follow-up.

In closing, if you are going to complain about realism, surrealism, or the lack of it (!), please research some game design history first. There is a time and a place for realism, but one must first understand the deeper problem of what the "game" is trying to represent.

Re:I blame Counterstrike

[Jesus_666]

a) drinking the red herring of realism Kool-Aid without understanding what games (and game design) are about. b) It is easier to model reality, then engage your imagination and creativity -- there is a topic in game design what I call "Frame of Reference", but that is a topic for another day. If you are interested, I'll post a follow-up.

Consider me interested.

Oh, and I entirely agree with your post. I value consistency highly in video games and not just in the gameplay sense. I think that graphically, 3D games are just getting to the point where they might start looking as good as 2D games mainly because of consistency issues. I find many 3D games, especially newer ones, somewhat jarring because on one hand they have highly detailed surroundings and characters with plausible-looking skin and what not and on the other hand they use special effects that aren't nearly as lifelike - for example non-volumetric smoke. It was more jarring to see a puff of smoke halfway clip through a wall in, say, F.E.A.R. (where I really noticed it) than in Unreal because the former looked much more realistic otherwise. In 2D games such issues are more easily ignored since the graphics don't even pretend to be lifelike.

Consistency applies to many aspects of a game and it's fairly hard to get right. Graphical consistency can run into machine limitations - we can easily apply huge textures with displacement maps but volumetric smoke or plausible refractions are more expensive. Gameplay consistency requires you to think about things that ordinarily wouldn't even be design decisions and may require you to scrap mechanics that are cool but don't quite fit in. Of course some developers cut corners and go for "good enough" - after all, it's good enough. But excellency does require extra work.

Re:I blame Counterstrike

[madhatter256]

I disagree... It wasn't counterstrike that thrived for realism...

It was Rainbow Six.

One shot kills forced you to truly strategize your entry to A) save the hostages and B) keep all of your men alive.

Re:I blame Counterstrike

[FingerSoup]

IRT the realism of graphics vice the mechanics of gameplay... If you RTFA, it solely concerns itself with graphics because gameplay has been perfected, as if these are the two major factors in a game... I disagree. The story and the stylistic choices are two major contributing factors that make this argument irrelevant...

Realistic graphics are just a tool. Realism is by no means required, but realism can make introducing the surreal that much more impacting.

Take the horror FPS genre... You use realistic and gritty scenes to set the tone... You slowly (or abruptly) twist it on its ear with small surreal aspects (ghosts, shadows rushing by, strange noises) to make people feel uneasy, and then start an assault. Good gaming with a high (although not perfect) level of realism results. But because the world and storyline dictate some unreal occurrence, this is forgivable. If your ghost is a flickering translucent spectre, then it adds to the realism. If it looks like a ghost from Pacman, or a guy with a sheet over his head, well, you've ruined the game with surrealism...

Or in war FPS games... Realism lends a certain credibility to the chosen mechanics of game play. If you want to relive storming the beaches of Normandy in WW2, then semi-accurate maps along with realistic looking environments, period and situation accurate decor and dress, and accurate weapons and vehicles, are what is going to make that experience fun.

On the other hand, if you want to relive storming the beaches of Normandy, and you do it in a cell-shaded world, then it doesn't FEEL like storming the beaches of Normandy... I'd expect (and want) it to be more "arcade"-style game play. Likewise, if you throw in railguns, jetpacks and other things that weren't part of WW2, it wouldn't be as fulfilling an experience for a game set in World War 2. (And before I get flamed, Wolfenstein was never intended to simulate WW2, and never really had much realism to begin with).

Basically, if your game's level of realism is consistent with game play, story, and style, then realism is perfectly justifiable.

Re:I blame Counterstrike

[TheRaven64]

For some reason, the original Rainbow 6 slipped my mind in my above post. That was much more realistic than either. It was really, really tedious in multiplayer. Rounds usually involved 10 minutes of waiting and slight shuffling, then a 10 second firefight. Counterstrike was often similar, although it was a bit less realistic, so there would be more shoot, retreat, try attacking from another direction.

That said, I recently played Ghost Recon, and it was still fun, although I only played the single-player campaign. Very realistic: if you're lucky, you can survive a single shot, but if it's anywhere in the head or chest you're down immediately, guns had a realistic amount of ammunition and reload times, and only a few were accurate over moderate or long ranges. One thing made it unrealistic: if you messed up, you could restore from a save game from a minute or so earlier. Playing through the entire thing without resorting to saves and restores would be possible, but really tedious.

Ultimate game realism

[sjames]

Follow John Smith's exciting adventures as he buys groceries, fills out his 1040 and waits in line at the DMV...

Re:Ultimate game realism

[Hahnsoo]

So you are playing The Sims? In all seriousness, even The Sims takes you a step out of reality. While we were housecleaning this past week, my girlfriend sighed and commented "You know, cleaning up the house is a lot easier in The Sims. You just point and click."

Still, some people play video games to escape from reality. But some folks play video games to explore things in reality that they cannot possibly do on their own, due to their wealth, social status, language barrier, etc. Flight Simulators are a prime example of this. Not everyone can afford a plane, but they can turn to a Flight Simulator to give them an experience that they could not afford otherwise.

You could always make your video game universe more and more surreal, with no limit to the imagination (look at The Void or Zeno Clash). But you are limited by technical restraints when you want to push for realism.

Re:Ultimate game realism

[sjames]

Even flight simulators limit the realism to a degree. No filling out paperwork for fuel, filing your flight plan, no walkaround, fuel consumption calculations, sitting around waiting for 6 other planes to take off, etc. They choose to be as realistic as possible about limited aspects of flying.

Re:Ultimate game realism

[Anonymous Coward]

They do - I build class D flight simulators - the type that a pilot can train in and then theoretically go fly the actual plane as it's the actual plane's cockpit with the sim built around it - and we only focus on the actual flight aspect

It's only a game, for crying out loud !

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever I see people so damn serious about a game - whether it be surreal or otherwise - I know something is wrong.

Don't you guys have better things to do than worrying if the surrealism in games might bring on some unrealistic expectation or whatnot?

Re:It's only a game, for crying out loud !

[genner]

Don't you guys have better things to do than worrying if the surrealism in games might bring on some unrealistic expectation or whatnot?

No not really.

Re:It's only a game, for crying out loud !

[Stormwatch]

Video games are art. You can be damn serious about art, or just relax and enjoy it.

Re:It's only a game, for crying out loud !

[tecnico.hitos]

Possibly, but gaming is how I spend significant amount of my free time. During this time, I'd rather play quality games, so it's interesting to clarify which factors can make a game better or worse. That would allow me to choose better games to play, as well as recommending better games to interested people. Hobby or not, if you pour thousands of hours over the years into something, it's not surprising it starts being given more importance.

Discussion of this nature might reach the attention of people involved with the game industry. That way, the player opinions can influence, even if slightly, the direction that the gaming medium goes. Also, don't forget that, for the people involved with the game industry, discussions of this nature are undeniably serious, since they involve considerable amounts of very real money, their livelihoods and investments.

Besides, I do have an interest in game design myself, just as people may be interested in literature, paintings, music and the most diverse subjects. Are we not allowed to? What is the problem in discussing seriously about something that you like? Why would not taking it seriously be better in any way?

Nintendo called

[whiteboy86]

Wii is not even HD capable console, few people are bothered with that. Their games are non-realistic in low resolution. The lack of realism hasn't affected them much.

Arma2...

[incognito84]

Whoever wrote this article obviously hasn't played it. Its a game that is astonishingly close to "realism." As, much as possible anyway.

I would simply argue that concessions away from realism in "realistic" titles exist in video games because a mouse and keyboard is a poor substitute for your body and a monitor is a poor substitute for your eyes.

Once we have more "immersive" input/output hardware, the lines between reality and the game world will become blurry.

Game developers aren't shooting for 100% realism.

[flimflammer]

And you shouldn't expect them to. "Realistic" games break realism for the sake of gameplay. Not everyone (and dare I say most people) don't want to play a game where you get grazed in the leg with a bullet and your movement becomes entirely awkward, your character develops some sort of infection and then his leg needs to be amputated in the middle of the jungle with charlies everywhere, then being required to finish the rest of the game with one leg. (surely one person will reply to this begging for that)

It's a game. It's entertainment, and they also have to account for users controlling these characters. Sure games like Call of Duty put in realistic weapons and what have you but it's still not aiming to be a completely realistic combat shooter. In fact I doubt anyone would even think it's trying to be. If you want something "realistic" then I think Arma 2 would be a better choice.

Movies also try to be "real" but when you see Tom Cruise jumping out of helicopters or Bruce Willis driving a car up a ramp into a helicopter all while the surroundings and story are meant to be more or less realistic, you don't go complaining how unrealistic the movie is. It's a movie. it's entertainment. If you want a true-to-life story then look out your Window and watch the mailman deliver the mail.

Re:Film

[TheRaven64]

You have three options.

First, don't aim for realism. Allow respawns because that's the way the game mechanic works and you like it that way. This worked well for Quake and earlier games. Why do you get to respawn? Because that makes the game fun. End of story.

Second, make it really hard to actually die. If you do die, then that's it, but generally you won't. Think of Monkey Island. There are only a few places where it's actually possible to die, and you need to try really hard. Or, to make it a bit harder, like Elite, where characters that had something to lose could buy escape pods and would then be able to survive their ship being destroyed (likely in a universe that is approximately 90% hostile spacecraft by mass).

Finally, work the respawning into the story. Have a friendly sorcerer resurrect the player in a fantasy game. In a futuristic game, have teleporters record the person that travels through them so that, if you die, you step out of the teleporter again with none of the experience or items you've collected since then. Or have it so that respawning doesn't really involve coming back to life, but rather taking control of a new person. This works fairly well in the Tom Clancy games.

Re:Surrealism in the oddest places

[Anonymous Coward]

In Portal 2, a robot tells you you're fat.

Sounds like pretty much every digital scale I have ver owned.

Re:Game developers aren't shooting for 100% realis

[m50d]

when you see Tom Cruise jumping out of helicopters or Bruce Willis driving a car up a ramp into a helicopter all while the surroundings and story are meant to be more or less realistic, you don't go complaining how unrealistic the movie is.

Um, it seems to me most serious movie critics do exactly that.