So as this successful genre continues to deliver best-selling titles, will increasingly powerful PCs and game consoles allow military shooters to become more realistic than ever?
… the answer is a big, fat “sort of.”
It’s about taking the personality of a weapon, and making it shine in the game
Realism versus gameplay, always a problem.
The real challenge isn’t making anything, whether it’s a car, a plane, or a firearm, mirror its real world counterpart. The challenge is making something behave in a manner so that someone who does not have the requisite training to use it can still operate it with some efficiency.
As someone who has fired many types of firearms, both military and civilian (the M60 is still my favorite) I can tell you that anyone without training cannot simply pick up a handgun and expect to hit anything with any amount of accuracy, even at a mere 10 feet. This becomes even more true if someone like me, who only understands the base mechanics of flight, were to operate the F-22 fighter jet.
I’m not disagreeing with the makers of RB6V2 or AA that they quoted in the article. I think they are actually saying the same thing but for different reasons. In all honesty, gamers don’t really want a truly realistic depiction of the M4 carbine because they would not be able to hit squat with it even on semiauto. The idea, even in “realistic” models is to have it be “reasonably” realistic while making sure to apply the same standards to every firearm in a game.
In other words, you’re going to have to adjust your model to account for me being able to feel like the elite commando I’m playing in the game. If you make a weapon realistic and then put someone in a situation only a true elite commando could succeed in, then any gamer without Navy SEAL or SWAT training is never going to get past the first mission.
@Jason – You bring up a good point. I definitely would have trouble hitting any target smaller than the side of a barn if I were to pick up a military grade firearm. But modeling a trained commando should be able to, so the model has to balance the two.
Not an easy thing to do.