How Realistic are Video Game Weapons?
Just how accurately are weapons in video games modeled after their real life counterparts? I'm going to venture an educated supposition that the answer has a lot to do with how you react to the aim-and-trigger abstraction of a gamepad or remote (for the same reasons these can wreck the sense of control in an otherwise highly accurate driving simulation). But let's assume abstraction's not an issue -- just how accurate are those 7.62MM AKS-74Us and 500 Tactical Shotguns you're whipping out from your protagonist's invisible ordnance spin-wheel?
Popular Mechanics investigates and concludes what we all know intuitively: while increased realism is always on developers' minds, gameplay trumps realism, every time.
For example, people associate shotguns with doing massive close range damage, so even though buckshot penetrates poorly in reality, it's purposefully designed to shred walls and armor with ease in most video games (in RB6V2, for instance, the 500 Tactical Shotgun has "high penetration [to make it] ideal for defeating cover").
Another example in the article is the Uzi, which many (including me!) think of as a sloppy, inaccurate submachine gun, when in reality it's considered both reliable and accurate. In video games, it's thus often modeled to handle the way you'd imagine it would after watching a couple episodes of that popular 1980s unreality-instigator, Miami Vice. (And in RB6V2, it's called a VZ83 SMG with a "high rate of fire" that "trades accuracy for higher power").
"It's about taking the personality of a weapon, and making it shine in the game," says Rainbow Six Vegas 2 designer Philippe Theiren. "These consoles are so powerful, when you fire a bullet we could factor all of it in: windfall, range, everything about the history of that specific weapon, friction values for the barrel, how many times it’s been fired since it was last cleaned. We could make it as anally realistic as possible. But we’re not trying to make a live simulator.”
Of course some people are, say the folks behind the freebie online shooter and promotional recruiting tool, America's Army. You'd think, anyway. According to the article, AA's executive producer Phil Bossant appears to suggest that high frame rates trump gun realism for the AA development team. Popular Mechanics concludes this makes AA the inverse of the RB6V2 situation, where RB6V2's Theiren claims frame rate limitations aren't the issue so much as observing basic shooter conventions. Except for the part where even today's mid-grade PCs with dedicated video cards pack more powerful hardware than today's "now-gen" consoles.
I'm betting what Bossant really means, having played a lot of AA myself a few years ago, is more along the lines of "while we're several orders of magnitude more realistic than your average mainstream shooter in terms of modeling gun ballistics, being 100% accurate would impact the frame rate." But that doesn't mean AA isn't several double-digit percentage points more realistic than for-fun shooters like Call of Duty 4 or RB6V2, which for totally valid reasons attempt to please a broader swathe of players weaned on popular ballistic stereotypes.
Now in AA, part of the entertainment value lies in figuring out how to work around your preconceived perceptions about weapons-fire derived from exaggerations and caricatures in TV and books and movies. Mastering tactical combat in AA is more about retooling your ballistic sensibilities than sacrificing entertainment value.
Wouldn't it be interesting to see a developer take a serious crack at modeling your average SR2550 Sniper Rifles and AUG Para SMGs as perfectly as possible, then marketing the game on the premise that the entertainment value lies in mastering the weaponry as much as fast roping and rappelling and coordinating multi-phasic, multi-personnel assaults?
Replay
Fearless or feckless? Have your say below or pelt me with emails here.
PC World's Marketplace
PC World's Free Whitepapers
tech news tech blogs community & forums laptop prices software reviews downloads
I thoroughly agree with your last point. A lot of developers CLAIM that their shooters (mostly war FPS's) are the most realistic and they tout some new trademarked doohicky that has the most realistic physics etc. As a gun owner and avid shooter and shooter game fan, they are incorrect. I would love to see a developer just once try it to see what happens, but in todays age no one is willing to take any kind of risk of a game not selling. They could be worried also of a gamer being frustrated at not being able to hit a target. Far Cry and Crysis had those complaints, but it wasn't because of realistic gunplay. It was because Crytek wanted to try to make the game difficult.