2010-03-10

The meaning of "realistic" in FPS games

Grog News wrote long and interesting article about reality of guns, gears and tactics in FPS games. Even games most rated as "realistic" have large discrepancies vs reality.

Although gaming industry considers fun more important over realistic features, new FPS games are incorporating more complicated graphics, physics and AI engines, to raise playing experience to the next level.

Games having good balanced reality and fun, are tough enough to keep interest of players for a long time (like Counter Strike type games). Too much realistic constraints in game are resulting in too hard and annoying experience (f.e. player can't jump 20 meters down, or can't run long distance keeping constant high speed). It's an entertainment industry so usually more fun means more profit.

I have to admit that even simple change in details pointed in Grog News article, could improve both fun and reality. It doesn't even had to be some kind of new fancy physics engine. Let's take for example weapons and ammunition/magazine compatibility issues or bunny jumping tactic to avoid shots. I really would like to have features like ricochets effects, but there is a field to improve simple mechanisms first.

There is a bright future for "reality simulating" games, these are just slow evolving.

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