Gunshots and games.
StarTrekMike
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I don't really ever make topics but I think this one could make for some interesting discussion...so I figured I would offer the topic to the best forum that I visit (genuine belief...not sucking up.)
We have all played shooters in one form of another for a long time and we have all seen some very different ways that games handle the actual effect that a gunshot has on a body put in the bullets path.
Over the years we have seen giant amazing leaps in both graphic and physics tech that make our games more real or immersive.
Why on earth have we not seen a game that actually makes shooting something feel more real!
To explain what I mean.
When you shoot someone in even the most modern game, all you really will get is a animation and a blood effect and possibly a dismemberment that really does not reflect the power of the weapon being used.
Games like Soldier of Fortune tried to do a good effect but it still felt hollow in execution.
Think of playing a game where not only were the guns accurate, but also added a system that made you feel that shooting the weapon was a big deal...a better damage system would go a long way for that.
Mike
We have all played shooters in one form of another for a long time and we have all seen some very different ways that games handle the actual effect that a gunshot has on a body put in the bullets path.
Over the years we have seen giant amazing leaps in both graphic and physics tech that make our games more real or immersive.
Why on earth have we not seen a game that actually makes shooting something feel more real!
To explain what I mean.
When you shoot someone in even the most modern game, all you really will get is a animation and a blood effect and possibly a dismemberment that really does not reflect the power of the weapon being used.
Games like Soldier of Fortune tried to do a good effect but it still felt hollow in execution.
Think of playing a game where not only were the guns accurate, but also added a system that made you feel that shooting the weapon was a big deal...a better damage system would go a long way for that.
Mike
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- I think we're getting to the point now where we're pretty much at that threshold anyway, with things like Iraq/Afghanistan veterans having PTSD related episodes and flashbacks triggered by modern videogames. We've come a long way from the original throatclutch in Doom to the cartoonish gibs in Quake to the entrance and exist wounds in Kingpin to the dismemberments in Soldier of Fortune and beyond.
- I also think that if every shooter starts being released with functionally accurate amounts of gore and body violence, we (gamers) will have a shitstorm from the Violent Games Promote Violence crowd to look forward to. We can hate them all we like, but they're the ones who write the legislation.
Also, don't sign your posts.
Especially when your forum name ALSO contains your real name.
The problem with a more realistic feeling system is that we still haven't figured out everything about how it works in real life. Terminal ballistics is a very complicated subject with very inconsistent results outside of some high caliber weapons. The US military has a cycle of debating whether the current weapons it uses are effective enough despite what would in theory be a lot of data to pull from. I've heard from a police officer unable to stop an aggressive dog despite hitting it from close range with a shotgun and of people killed by weapons normally considered only good for squirrel hunting. Until we can get a good handle on how this stuff works in real life, we won't be able to model it in a game.
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Black spent a lot of time and money researching 'how guns feel and fire', and the end result of that?
People want a good solid story and good solid gameplay, the 'real look and feel' of weaponry only goes so far, and that's not far enough to sell games.
And if that IS enough to sell games, I don't want that person or that person's kids going to my kid's schools.
Don't we know how this stuff works, and that is, it's reliant on a complex myriad of factors unrealistic to include in a video game?
What kind of gun are you using. How clean is it. What kind of ammunition is it. What is the weather. What is the distance. What layers of garment is the projectile passing through. What thickness of flesh. What angle is it entering at. Is it hitting a bone. At what angle. Are any arteries hit. Organs.
If you want to move beyond "blood effects" and animations, you're going to have to start simulating all this shit, and it is going to waste resources both in development and execution. It's fun to think of a game engine that simulates the entire planet perfectly, but it's not happening.
Anyways, I don't know much about ballistics, but isn't Soldier of Fortune the opposite of realistic? Or do rifle rounds tear off limbs that consistently?
Stay on topic.
I'm in favor of gunshots and games.
No one wants a game that accurately depicts post-shootout gore, because that shit is disgusting. They don't want the actual weight, recoil and attendant fatigue and sore ears of firing an actual gun. As in an action movie, people want the titillation that comes with contained, sanitized violence.
Nobody wants to play a game where rounds from a shootout in a bar go through a thin wall and rip the throat out of the college student renting a room next door.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Kotaku Article With Gameplay
I don't know that we need more realism in the form of more blood and gore, but I would like to see ragdolls react more realistically when a bullet hits them.
Actually, this would be funny to see.
"Ok, so you know how like, every time a game came out where you could shoot someone like 50 times with a machine gun and they'd just start limping, and then their car would explode, and we'd complain about how games were portraying violent acts with 100% realism and it was desensitizing people?
Well ok now this time we're serious so. It's bad now!"
Now, back to that example. Is MW2 an actual realistic showing of what combat is really like? Absolutely not. Is any video game/movie/TV Show/whatever? Absolutely not.
But sometimes the 'atmosphere' of the game (or any media) can really hit home. What I mean by that is when you're watching a war movie or playing a combat game and the developers have put a lot of effort into making the language and sound effects as authentic as possible, and then the fact that the game or movie can really draw you in, immerse you even, that can be a little problematic.
Because, it can be difficult to sit through that, even if you're not suffering from PTSD, and just..remember. Remember hearing the same kind of talk Sgt. Foley or whoever is saying in the game, and go back to not so distant time when it was you, in real life, hearing very similar things.
Hope that makes sense to anyone besides me.
We know how some of this stuff SHOULD work and have theories for the stuff we're not as sure about, but sometimes all this just seems to fly out of the window, like cases where someone gets shot in the heart but remains fighting for a while when no trace of drugs are found in the body after the autopsy. It's not common, but stuff like this happens and we just don't know why.
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Holy Dooley!
Developers (or directors) are attempting to immerse you in an atmosphere relevant to the subject matter, and convey certain themes. If you are vulnerable to being distressed by these from personal experience, it's more important you decide not to play that game rather than suggest the developer should have broached its creation differently.
It's like anything traumatizing. I've had a suicide in my family, and since I don't think I'm capable of not thinking about it whenever a suicide comes up in entertainment media. And sometimes it is dealt with jokingly or lightly. If I were not okay with that, then it would be my responsibility to try and shield myself from it, not everyone else's.
If I had to make an uneducated guess, I'd say it's the same reason why people can manage lift a car off of a pinned person now and then.
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That's why I could never get into the first Half-Life. The shooting always felt completely off to me.
I love these images:
Seeking entertainment out of gruesome realistic deaths from the bullet you just willingly shot in to them is not exactly a healthy mindstate.
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In other words, if I come around the corner and spray a baddie with a machine gun, I want him to hit the floor, not stumble for a moment then return fire. Granted, if we're talking about a science fiction or fantasy situation, thats different. I think the closest to this I've seen is stuff being powered by the Euphoria engine. Granted, I understand that if you could take out almost every single baddie with a single bullet, things might be a little easy, but if anything it might just make developers think up some more creative ways to increase the difficulty.
Increasing the difficulty wouldn't be hard at all.
A single shot also kills you.
The problem with that is that while it works in, say, Rainbow Six(old school R6) games, it doesn't work in, say, Gears of War/MW2 style games. If you're dealing with massive amounts of enemies all shooting at each other, the problem isn't difficulty which prevents this, but frustration. Walk 10 feet and die? Yeah, that's not fun.
1) we can't even model them consistently in real life, as is mentioned.
2) it's technically demanding if you are trying to model skin, muscle, bone, etc, or have all sorts of possible renderings for what can happen for any location struck by a bullet.
3) games that are about shooting wouldn't be very fun if getting shot were realistic. players would spend most of their time being shot from the shadows, or crawling uselessly along as they suffered from catastrophic organ failure or shattered joints or something. i prefer deadly games like rainbow six and that old Half Life mod Hostile Intent, but imagine a shooter where your health doesn't come back and medpacks don't fix you and you don't respawn. It might sound interesting, but it wouldn't be very fun to play - unless the game were focused on non-violent conflict resolution, and guns were that dangerous just to make fighting the last recourse. that kind of game would be wonderful, but it wouldn't spend all that energy on making realistic gunfighting if it were not the main gameplay focus.
and perhaps most interestingly, 4) games are abstract systems of rules and objectives. as graphics and physics and simulationism become more advanced, we progress towards realism in those ways, and we are starting to try for it in narrative, characterization, emotion, etc, although we're still a long way from those ones, i think.
the reason i can walk through a building full of enemy soldiers and shoot them all down and enjoy it, deriving visceral satisfaction from headshots and kills, is because it is an abstraction. it is a game; there is a kinetic pleasure in successfully defeating these challenges of reflex, planning and on-the-fly situational analysis. it's tied in with our experiences in cinematic gunfights and comic book gunfights and all these other glossed-over, abstracted violent events.
this is also the reason why playing violent games doesn't make you shoot people, to some extent. because shooting someone in a video game is absolutely nothing like shooting someone in real life; it can't desensitize you.
if it starts to get more realistic, it will make people uncomfortable, as people in this thread have said, but more than that, it will lose the arcade-ishness, the game-ishness, that is the core of what makes games like Modern Warfare and whatever fun. These are not simulations of real combat. They are abstract games with rules very distinct from reality, with a very well designed theme grounded in reality - a theme manifest in graphics, audio, and often influencing the development of the underlying game.
if you want real simulation (a hilarious phrase), you're going to have to deal with a game with a different goal than most games, one that is very interesting but also very separate from the kind of experience that we, as gamers, typically enjoy, whether we play RPGs or FPSs or RTSs or whatever acronym. and i don't think that game will sell very well, to be honest.
...Casket?
Imagine a game like Alan Wake or something of that nature, you are walking in a dark area with tension and suspense that is so thick you can breath it in.
As you round that last corner and see the bad guy, you raise that weapon (pistol or rifle or whatever) that you almost never get a chance to use due to the narrative style of the game and fire.
As games stand now, the effect would be a little "blood spot" type animation and maybe some overdone ragdoll and then the character would either die or take another shot until all the HP is gone.
what we could have is something a little more substantial...I am not talking about gore and I am not suffering from some type of pre-teen ultraviolence fantasy...but imagine how the narrative of the game could benefit from having to make a tough choice about using a firearm and trying to show semi accurate effects.
I am not talking about a gory mess, I mean the response the enemy would have to getting shot...maybe have some sort of panic or something...anything other than just falling over and done.
I guess my previous post sounded more like I wanted gore...what I want is for the game to give the player a more substantial feedback from the world when they fire a weapon...something that adds a sense of weight to the whole thing.
Not signing this post...sorry it is a habit from email.
and I got the hint the first time it was said...all other times were just childish.
And I was in the military also.
GTA4 is kinda special with its people physics which I enjoy. Dude is running away then aim for the leg and he'll tumble and try to get up in real time. I even think you can shoot their arm and they won't be able to aim at you.
So yes disabling enemies realistically is a needed nice touch now is what I totally agree with you on.
would the game be any less fun if the gun you carry was the last thing that you wanted to use, this is done in some stealth games but not with the same goal in mind.
I am thinking more along the lines of a movie where the hero is trying to figure something out and is on the run...he does not just shoot his attackers, but when he does it is done with a sense of weight and realism.
Mirror's Edge did that to a degree. Sadly, there were some areas later in the game that were easier if you took the time to shoot people.
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I think it would be a breath of fresh air to have a game treat firearms in a more serious manner. That is to say that there is a considerable amount of emotional weight to using one. Perhaps a game in which you have a pistol with only a single magazine of ammo for the entire game, or something like that.
Also speaking of reactions... Rock Paper Shotgun has an article up about a game... there are guns involved... and consequences. I should warn you that the game they are talking about is not a very nice game. It's not gory... but it's definitely NSFW. It's a 2 minute pixel game with a horrible slant. I only link it in this context because of his discussion of the game, near the end when he talks about shooting people for the mere fact that they are running towards you. I thought it had merit in this discussion. Link in spoiler... and remember... it's not a nice game.
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I think that I would like the idea of a game where using a weapon carried a much more extreme amount of impact, both physical and emotional I guess. In order to do that I think that weapons and ammo would have to be extremely limited in the game, since that emotional impact would go out the door the first time you changed clips.
The "only one pistol and clip throughout the entire game" idea would be interesting if it was done well.
I agree. It definitely works in games like RE or Dead Space, that feeling that you need to make every shot count. One of the things I hate most about Call of Duty is that every battle the ground is littered with guns of fallen enemies. Although realistic, it never gives you that sense of fear that your in any danger of running out of ammo.
Also to the OP, I think it would be nice to have slightly more realistic reactions to gun damage i.e. shoot them in the hand they drop the weapon or even proper movement depending on how you shot them. One of the 1st games I can remember that did this well was Golden Eye.
MW2 tends to anger me in that regard because who can take a .50 cal round to the chest or even a limb for that matter and still survive? Or get hit sevral times with an assault rifle but still run up and stab you. Unfortunately it's needed for game balance and such I guess, especially during multiplayer where everyone would start complaining about 1 hit kills being cheap. I would also like to see some damage from bullets too. Exit wounds, bullet holes, or some indication that I just emptied a clip into a guy. However, there is definitely a fine line to walk between fiction and reality.
"Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death." -HST
I think what you're talking about is adding some sort of emotional gravity to shooting, which is something I've often fantasized about seeing in games myself. The problem is that it is pursuing a goal incongruent with the genre's history and demographic.
I've always wanted a great sandbox noir world where cases can be randomly generated so that the characters and clues are never predictable, and so that you have the freedom to shoot, but have to consider why you are shooting, and what comes of it. This requires a character centric narrative that simply would not sell in FPS and 3rdPS games. I sympathize wanting that style of control and the immersion it can amplify, but it requires big budget resources that no publisher would deem recoupable unless there was a constant horde of enemies funneled to the player for him or her to mow down.
If you're not talking about this, and you just want a greater variety of death animations or procedurally generated responses to locational damage, and more detailed effects and acting within the combat... well, it will happen. And has, to assorted degrees. But you will never give a shit about the person it's happening to or that you're doing it, because there will be thousands of enemies.
Resident Evil 4 comes to mind, I just remember when explosions would go off and Leon would do his recover animation and you couldn't really do anything but watch until the animation is over. I just wish you could fall down to some cover or have more options than that.
And in any games that do have something like this (the first Red Faction, for example) the enemies will run around in fear, crying for mercy for 10, maybe 20 seconds. Then when they reach the end of that loop they reset, turn around, and start blasting at you again.
This happens in games, but you're right - to nowhere near the degree it should happen.
I can understand if I bust into a room filled with cult members or terrorists who are fanatically devout to the cause, they're going to fight till the last man, but your average gang member or street punk or whathaveyou might not be so committed.
This was one of the nice things about the Judge Dredd game. You can "challenge" a perp before shooting them if you want, to see if they will surrender, but sometimes if you waltz into an area with a bunch of enemies in it and grease a few, the rest will realize it's hopeless and assume the position and wait to be arrested.