Realism in shooters

mid_gen

mid_gen

mid_gen

Soldato
Joined
20 Dec 2004
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Was just thinking about this over the weekend...I fired up The Division for the first time in a while and as I was playing, running around, shooting these realistic people in New York, I started to find the whole thing a bit tasteless, was reminded of the stuff that went down in Munich and stopped playing.

Went back to Overwatch and enjoyed the whole fantasy abstractness of it.

With shootings becoming a regular occurrence now, I am really leaning towards shooters that exist in a very abstract world, like Overwatch, Destiny etc, rather than realistic stuff like, The Division, CS, CoD and the like. I was curious if anyone else feels the same?

I've built a new AI framework for UnrealEngine recently, and was about to start building out the behaviours which you would default to shooter mechanics, but I've decided to do something a bit different and write an AI that builds things rather than wrecks people, should be fun!

Before anyone jumps in with '*********' etc, I'm not calling for them to be banned, I'm not offended by them, I just found I don't really want to be playing them.
 
I feel empathy and sadness for people murdered in random shootings and terrorist acts, but I don't associate them with shooting games on a computer as form of escapism. I don't ever feel like I want to buy a gun and shoot somebody in real life, but I enjoy shooting things in a game. (I don't mean this to be an insult), but I am adult enough to be able to separate a form of entertainment for the fun and release factor, versus needless violent killing in real life.
 
I've always preferred stuff like i.e. Quake 2 where you are shooting monsters. I don't really play games to "kill" people though mostly fascination with the equipment and scenario so stuff like BF4 doesn't really bother me in that aspect.
 
Maybe it's partly that it's such an overdone genre, or I'm just getting old. I don't feel bad for anyone in the game! It's just after seeing so much real-life violence in the news recently I find myself not wanting to experience that sort of thing in my leisure time.

The Division is a funny one though, because it's not the usual 'you versus the bad guys' scenario. You're a government-trained killer set loose to murder your way through civilians in a quarantine zone.
 
I can understand seeing so much real-life violence, wanting a break when you're on the computer. The world is going mad these days.
 
I'm the same as OP, not interested in FPS people to kill, I get more of a buzz shooting a monster or something fantasy just seems more creative and interesting.
 
When I play cs go I dont even think about shooting the other team, for me its just about tactics and beating the other team. I dont really think about them dying or me shooting a gun that part of the game is just secondary to out thinking/out reacting the opponent.
Although I can understand that games like the division/gta on streets may feel different.
 
Being a martial artist trained in a variety of weapons, as well as a former soldier trained to actually kill people (specifically Irishmen at that particular time), I can say that a lot of these games are very UNrealistic and lacking in the visceral experience of the real, physical world.

There's a workd of difference between pressing buttons, wiggling analogue sticks and moving mice... compared to hefting a couple kilos of weight controlled by your entire body, while other people try to kill you in the full knowledge that you will not get a respawn...
In the same way there's a difference between doing 160mph in a driving game and doing 160mph down the M25. It's just not comparable. In fact, I have great difficulty doing in-game the sorts of things I can do in real life, for those very reasons.

Regarding the matter of poor taste, that's just your opinion.
There was a similar outcry among the re-enactment community who were doing Romans, Napoleonics, Medieval and even WW2, when groups started re-enacting Northern Ireland, The Gulf and even Afghanistan. Once upon a time it was considered to re-enact anything 'within living memory'. Nowadays almost nothing is off limits, apart from portraying certain attrocities like PoW camps and Nazi experimentation, but even then some messed up people still try it...

Whilst I can see your point on the one hand, both the games and the incidents are becoming so commonplace that there are plenty of people who don't share that view and so don't care. Some of them think "it's not my war", while others feel the two are separate and that because the games are fictional it's not an issue...

So for now, at this stage anyway, I'd say it's down to personal preference.
If enough people find it distasteful then sales will drop and Devs will look elsewhere at other things.

Incidentally - Would/do you feel the same about, say, space marines shooting up aliens, sci-fi samurai hacking things with laser swords, or Crusaders taking on Saracens? Or is it just modern event similarities?
 
Kiyoshi said:
I feel empathy and sadness for people murdered in random shootings and terrorist acts, but I don't associate them with shooting games on a computer as form of escapism. I don't ever feel like I want to buy a gun and shoot somebody in real life, but I enjoy shooting things in a game. (I don't mean this to be an insult), but I am adult enough to be able to separate a form of entertainment for the fun and release factor, versus needless violent killing in real life.
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I was going to post something very similar to this, but you captured my feelings on it pretty much perfectly.
 
I'm the opposite. I love realism in shooting games. At no point have I ever thought about real life scenarios when shooting someone or something. Apart from one CoD game where you shot up an airport, but I kinda liked that. :D
 
mid_gen said:
Maybe it's partly that it's such an overdone genre
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That's what I relate to. I played the dogcrap out of the COD and MoH series back in the day. That type of gameplay is passee to me now.

I still like shooters, but they need to have more skill requirements than just simply shooting for me to feel engaged. My favourtie games of recent years being examples: Tribes: Ascend - going fast and skiing, Natural Selection 2 & Evolve - mastering non-human classes, DayZ Mod - stealth, cunning. orienteering, etc.
 
ttaskmaster said:
Being a martial artist trained in a variety of weapons, as well as a former soldier trained to actually kill people (specifically Irishmen at that particular time), I can say that a lot of these games are very UNrealistic and lacking in the visceral experience of the real, physical world.

There's a workd of difference between pressing buttons, wiggling analogue sticks and moving mice... compared to hefting a couple kilos of weight controlled by your entire body, while other people try to kill you in the full knowledge that you will not get a respawn...
In the same way there's a difference between doing 160mph in a driving game and doing 160mph down the M25. It's just not comparable. In fact, I have great difficulty doing in-game the sorts of things I can do in real life, for those very reasons.

Regarding the matter of poor taste, that's just your opinion.
There was a similar outcry among the re-enactment community who were doing Romans, Napoleonics, Medieval and even WW2, when groups started re-enacting Northern Ireland, The Gulf and even Afghanistan. Once upon a time it was considered to re-enact anything 'within living memory'. Nowadays almost nothing is off limits, apart from portraying certain attrocities like PoW camps and Nazi experimentation, but even then some messed up people still try it...

Whilst I can see your point on the one hand, both the games and the incidents are becoming so commonplace that there are plenty of people who don't share that view and so don't care. Some of them think "it's not my war", while others feel the two are separate and that because the games are fictional it's not an issue...

So for now, at this stage anyway, I'd say it's down to personal preference.
If enough people find it distasteful then sales will drop and Devs will look elsewhere at other things.

Incidentally - Would/do you feel the same about, say, space marines shooting up aliens, sci-fi samurai hacking things with laser swords, or Crusaders taking on Saracens? Or is it just modern event similarities?
Click to expand...

Maybe distasteful was the wrong word....personally uncomfortable is better, I don't judge anyone for liking that stuff.

I don't doubt games don't come close to the visceral experience of real life! For me the borderline is in BF4. I'm fine with chugging around in tanks, shooting people etc, it's when you sneak up behind someone, slam a knife into their chest or snap their neck and get rewarded with some spangly dog tags, it starts to get a bit off for me, and detracts from the game.

The last point is exactly what I was getting at, I'm fine with violent, combative games, I've just found more over the years I've leaned towards abstract environments, less visceral gore where the actors involved are only vaguely human-like. Destiny where the bad guys are bad guys and the PvP is against immortal, endlessly reviving ephemeral characters.
 
I can't say I have any problems seperating reality from the games I play. I'll happily murder multiple police officers on GTA V even though I'm soon to be one, I don't care. It's a game.
 
I find realism in fps, both in visuals and gameplay, to be dull. I don't have a problem with it taste wise, however. This is what most pains me when comparing to the popular fps these days and what we had in the 90s. In the 90s we were super soldiers, flying through maps and taking names. Today not so much. Overwatch is a, albeit super spammy, breath of fresh air.
 
No problems here - I'm able to differentiate between games and reality.

The horror of real killings, cannot be recreated in gaming, to the degree that I'd put down my controller and reassess my gaming habits.

Shooting in Division is arcade, shooting in CoD often results in what looks like a puff of smoke, maybe a bit of blood - even Soldier of Fortune's over the top dismemberment wasn't that bad.

Though the current trend of killings so close to our land, seems to be getting worse, me gunning down looters or enemy soldiers; really isn't going to make the world a worse place for me imo.
 
Techno_Viking said:
I'm the opposite. I love realism in shooting games.
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See, what I'd really want in such games is more realistic psychology and AI behaviour.
For example, if I open up with a L86 or an L7 on a group of targets hiding behind a thin brick wall, I *guarantee* that absolutely NONE of them will get up and start walking toward me, much less keep firing while taking several rounds to the chest until they go down.
 
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