Ehh, those military shooters like Socom and Call of Duty are also fantasy. Your average soldier isn't doing any of that shit. They're probably guarding base parking lots or mowing the base golf course.
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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Yeah, CoD is not realistic in terms of 'how things work', it only has a realistic aesthetic.
Try playing Arma with a whole bunch of realism mods.
Oh, you have an rpg, 2 extra rounds for it and a PKM, 600 rounds of ammo, and the tripod you you have to set it up on...?
... and you decided to sprint a mile across field?
Congratulations! You had a heart attack and died at about the half mile mark. Your respawn time is 15 minutes.
Of course most people enjoy a more casual experience, a more streamlined, less technical one, but there are dedicated fanbases for people that love the intricacies of stupendously detailed shooters.
Respawn time? Nah there should be a milsim where upon death you get permabanned.
I mean, there are some milsim servers/groups/events that just don't let you respawn. Its usually just changing a value for respawn time or a bit of a modified server set up.
In my experience its more common for that to happen in a combat flight sim, or naval sim.
But also: Counter Strike and many many other games and game modes still function on a repeating round based system where there is no respawning in a round.
Fucking Space Station 13 and Barotrauma work that way, last I checked. Well... barring a crazed geneticist revives you as a frankenstein monster zombie or something.
The only game I can think of that you can truly only play once was some old, narrative driven flash game where no matter what you do, the world ends... but it has many different possible endings depending on what you do and say... but it would either use your ip or a cookie or something to register when you'd hit one ending, and if you ever came back to it, it would just be the specific 'game over' you got.
Realism is just a style. It's like saying the only good art is photorealism.
What about simulators, they are designed to simulate a certain experience.
Simulate: to do or make something that looks real but is not real.
;)
Not real enough.
When I'm playing American Truck Simulator, I want that realism where cops pull me over for a shakedown, townsfolks chase me out of town because of the color of my skin, I refill on resources at a gas station and almost die from a meth head, and my cargo company's health coverage doesn't cover my status debuffs because they were "pre-existing conditions".
Okay but I enjoy realistic milsim games. You don't have to play them. Weird take.
Stop playing AAA slop. There I fixed video games for you. To overfixate on the hype and marketing machine will only make you miserable and poison your brain with stupid ideas like "the problem with video games". Video games are an extremely broad set of experiences. A digital implementation of a board game is a video game, and a painstakingly detailed simulation of the operations of an airliner down to waiting in real time for refuel is also a video game. And there's an audience with taste for both and every other of the hundreds of genres that exist. A problem with one hyper specific genre of video games is not a problem with video games.
Upvoted as unpopular. I disagree with it though.
The problem is not with players complaining about what they believe to be lack of realism in games. It's instead that game designers don't dig further into those complains to know what exactly is wrong, and how to fix it: lack of internal consistency, limitations that feel unjustified, balance issues, etc.
Got to upvote this opinion, because it's unpopular and wrong.
I had a very long explanation ready but I didn't feel like bothering people to read all this, so in short:
Look up what suspension of disbelief is. Try to show empathy towards people who can immerse themselves into a game because it looks as realistic as possible. Accept that games are as diverse as other forms of art and understand that you are just showing preferences, that doesn't mean the other form is wrong. Don't pick something like CoD as a measure for anything other than pure greed.
Large game publisher are not your friends, they only want your money. The realism approach isn't wrong, it's the consumers who buy the shit games. The graphics of the game don't matter, it's what companies can get away with and so they'll repeat it.
Why do people who can immerse need empathy? I know exactly what you're saying and I get that you're essentially saying "let people like what they want to like" and I'm not stopping anyone from doing that. But this is just my opinion. My opinion doesn't change anyone's life, and isn't that the point?
To answer your first question first, empathy is a social skill and if you truly want to understand other people's opinions, it's a skill you must hone. No one is saying you must be empathic, but if you want to truly get why some people like it more when they can immerse themselves in a piece of art, then you do need to be able to try to walk in their shoes.
Regarding your second point, you framed the original post as a fact of life and not an opinion ('games are not supposed to be realistic' vs 'i think games shouldn't be realistic') so don't be surprised when people argue against your opinion as if it were fact.
But the community I posted it in is unpopular OPINION
Yeah, which invites people to discuss and to offer counter-arguments. So why are you on the defensive about it? When you open up a topic for discussion and people have a different opinion than you, usually instead of resorting to 'is my opinion, deal with it', people often offer a footing for their argument to stand on.
You accused me of claiming something as a fact of life. I'm defensive because it seems you misunderstood my intentions and have criticized me upon that misunderstanding. You aren't expressing a counter argument, you're expressing an accusation
I expressed my counter argument in my first comment. You then replied with a non-answer, trying to justify your lack of argument with the community name.
And let me be clear, I'm not criticizing you, I'm criticizing your debating. You started the original post making an assumption and stating it as fact while failing to provide a compelling argument to back it up, so when people inevitably try to discuss it, you did hide behind the curtain of 'it's my opinion, I'm not harming anyone'. Which makes it the more ironic when you brought to attention the community name in response to me calling you out.
You claimed I regarded my post as a fact. That is not true. Observing the community I posted it in, proves otherwise and you have built an argument under the assumption that I believe it's a fact. It's not my problem that you wonder into a community with "opinion" in the name and think people who post here believe life should change for what they say. You take yourself way too serious
You keep referencing the community as if I wasn't aware. I made a comment yesterday here in this very thread referencing it, so I clearly know this is a place for unpopular opinions, that's why I'm debating in good faith and that's why I said in my previous comment it was ironic.
But no, please re-read what I said, that you started the post with an assumption, and you presented it as fact. That's not debatable, you stated that games aren't supposed to be realistic. You didn't back that up with an argument, you just repeated how you think games should be perceived and then proceeded to trash a popular franchise as an example.
Like I said, I mean no animosity towards you. But I chimed in literally because this community invites to debate
Bro. I'm just going to give you about 15 minutes to read this, then I'm going to block you. You have constantly ignored the fact that you're not treating it as an opinion, and treating it like you believe what I say is an absolute. Leave this community because you think what you have to say is special to people trying to share their opinions. You're not debating, you're accusing, and you seem to not understand the difference, and I have zero interest to explain the difference to you any further. My advice would be to avoid this community in the future because you seem to not know the difference between opinion and rule
Games can be different, some realistic, some not.
video games aren't meant to be realistic.
There is an entire genre called Sims, short for simulation and everything in-between.
Slow clap
I personally don't enjoy games like COD, but it's disingenuous to believe one of the most lucrative franchises to exist, played and enjoyed by billions worldwide, is garbage. You may not like it, but you can't declare it a garbage game as it certainly has its appeal. Doing so reeks of 'old-man-yelling-at-kids-to-get-off-his-lawn'.
As for your other point, it is certainly an unpopular opinion. For a lot of people gaming is an escape from reality, yes, but video games as an artistic expression can also represent reality and even mirror it. I don't know what you mean by 'realism'; is it graphical fidelity? Is it mechanics and its level of abstraction to model our world? There is certainly a conversation to be had here, but I would say how closely a game should mirror real life should depend on what type of game we are talking about, after all.
Not all games need to be games you personally like, why shouldn't people who like realistic games have them?
While the rant part isn't interesting, this is a genuinely unpopular opinion in every way.
I tend to agree with you that playing real world plausible scenarios isn't fun, with the caveat that the scenario isn't as big a factor in that level of fun as the people playing. I'll have tons of fun playing with chill people, mostly friends, no matter what I'm playing. But random players online, the ones that prefer that type of game tend to not only be competitive rather than cooperative, but tend to be jerks about it.
That makes ignoring the game content and premise impossible, and it starts sucking more.
I don't object to such games existing per se, but the focus on that kind of game makes other efforts harder to find for online multiplayer options. Too many developers want to milk that audience, so other styles get abandoned or done halfassed.
But I agree completely that most remasters are blatant cash grabs that suck, cod in particular
horrible opinion. other people like other things. complaining about things you don't like is better than complaining about other people that don't like the same things as you. just play games you like, others wanting realistic stuff doesn't hurt you in any way. there's more unrealistic games than you could ever play. upvoted.
I think realistic videogames have a niche called "Simulators". And while they stay there, I'm absolutely fine with it.
The problem, I believe, is that people often confuse realism with level of detail. And the main issue with this is that the line separating both is extremely thin sometimes. Additionally, a degree of realism is welcome in any game, as long as the game keeps being a game and not a simulator (e.g. on a car racing game, I want the cars to look like cars and to drive like cars, even if I want it to stay arcade-y enough)
Would you say Breath of the Wild is a realistic game? I think it isn't, but the level of detail put in their physics engine is so detailed that it's almost real, but at the same time feels like a videogame and not like a simulator.
In all the games you mentioned, there is a degree of realism (for example, in metal gear, it's realistic that enemies can't see you behind a wall or that they get alerted if they see a corpse), just not enough to make them look like a simulator instead of a game, this is what I mean with level of detail.
First game I played was Icicle Works in 1984. Every game I played in the next thirty years I kept thinking "Man this game is good but I wish the graphics were more realistic"
So no, terrible opinion, they're only just getting there now
Upvoted
Gee, here I thought corporate greed and a captive userbase were the problem.
There's plenty of blame to go around.
What is "realistic" is on a spectrum and is hard to pinpoint. Even first person shooters like CoD have adjustability on how much lead you can eat before you drop dead and a medical kit on a grave wound can bring you from "should've retired yesterday" to "top shape soldier" so there are aspects that are not true realism. On the other side, Baldur's Gate tries to somewhat realistically simulate the feeling of what it would be like to be in a Dungeons and Dragons world full of magic wielding creatures and adventure, without comic-ifying or arcad-ifying it too much.
However, the type of bullshit tactics you describe with games don't have to come from Activision/Microsoft and to me are unrelated to the realism. Just as one example, Nintendo has done similar, with releasing a Super Mario Sunshine + 64 + Galaxy port for a limited time to maximize FOMO but keep getting them to buy these on every new console.
But my gold pieces should have weight! It's unrealistic that I can carry around 100k gold and 50+ sets of armor!
/s
I hate these people too. Make your own mods if you want to suffer, I certainly don't. I'm more concerned that many RPGs devolve into Murder Hobo Simulator 2024 within an hour of starting, but hey, that's games.
Someone made a comment about why we have inventory limits in Skyrim and Starfield. I grew up in the era where it was common to micromanage your inventory. There's literally casual games of people organizing their Diablo 2-esque inventory.
So it never crossed my mind why we have limits.
After playing Elden Ring, I'm convinced.
Inventory weight is really really stupid.
The only thing killing games now is micro transactions.