Historical inaccuracies aside, when making a game it is essential to frequently stop and ask, “does this make the game more fun?”

A lot of realism mechanics make gameplay dreadful, boring, tedious, or frustrating. A simulation is one thing, but a game is another.

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Agentlien 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I had a discussion with my son son about recent (2015-2019) Need For Speed games I worked on. He asked why we didn't include keeping track of fuel and actually stopping to use the gas station like in real life (in game you just drive through and it repairs your car). And why don't repairs require you to leave the car for a few days and cost tons of money?

I told him it would be annoying rather than fun and negatively impact the pacing. It wouldn't work well in our specific games.

Actually, during development there are always so many interesting ideas which don't pan out because they wouldn't actually be fun. Some even get built then scrapped because it didn't work as well as one would think. That's the kind of thing you'll often see internet forums bring up framed like "why didn't the devs think of this?!"

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netsharc 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One of the first games I remember seeing (I was maybe 7 years old) was Test Drive, I still remember it features gas stations as checkpoints: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/b03NIAoH2g4/hq720.jpg?

	▲	internet_points 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		my first thought! fond memories, I remember it as being really hard

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left-struck 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It really depends on the audience though. I personally way prefer more realistic simulation like games, for example BeamNG. NFS has a broad appeal and is fun to play but it doesn’t feel anything like driving a real car. No offence though, I grew up with NFS underground 2 and it largely inspired my love of modified cars!

Edit: as a kid my friends and I dreamed of the day car games would have realistic and dynamic crash physics and well BeamNG gets pretty close.

	▲	Agentlien an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Right, which is why I wrote "It wouldn't work well in our specific games." There's an obvious appeal to sim racing for those who want realism and My Summer Car for those who... Well, it's an interesting project which I respect, at least. The thing to think about is always how well something fits in the specific game you are making. If it completely warps the focus and disrupts the intended moment to moment gameplay loop, then it probably isn't a good inclusion. But it might still be a great idea for another game. In some cases, and this happens often in early development, it can even mean that other game is what you should be making instead. But that rarely happens when working on a big established franchise.

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dwd 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Reminds me of an old joke from The Onion

https://theonion.com/ultra-realistic-modern-warfare-game-fea...

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internet_points 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I can't find it now, but someone made an ultra-realistic D-Day simulator where you basically portray one of the guys who never made it to the beach in Saving Private Ryan.

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qcnguy 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Battlefield 1 opens with a series of short battles that you can't win. Every time you die the camera moves to another nearby soldier who is also being overrun, and you fight for a while then die again. You see the graves of each person you played who died. It's one of the most powerful openings of a war game I ever played and really drives home the reality that whilst what follows is fun, the real WW1 is one you probably would not have survived.

	▲	jaryd 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for sharing I skipped this title and missed that scene.

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Tor3 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The "Johnny and the Dead" series by Terry Pratchett included a school mate of Johnny who liked to make computer games.. and he created a realistic game about flying your spaceship to some nearby star or somewhere. Everything was realistic.. you would stare at the black night of space for thousands of years (literally) while going there. For some reason people didn't flock to that game.

	▲	alberto-m 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I guess they preferred more casual games like “Desert Bus” (1995), a really existing title, built to show how a realistic long-distance bus driving simulator would look like. It is still played today as a joke, mainly for charity events.

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rmunn 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Precisely; the reason for omitting many realistic elements is because they would be boring. If I wanted to play through all the steps of plowing a field, planting the grain, irrigating the field, dealing with weeds, harvesting the grain, and hauling it to a market to sell I would play Farming Simulator. If I'm playing a city builder, I'm perfectly okay with those steps being reduced to "plant crops, wait for crops to grow, harvest crops", and to have workers auto-assigned to those tasks while I'm laying out roads and palisades.

Also, having my village randomly wiped out from time to time by events beyond my control (plague, wars, etc.) would be realistic, but no fun at all in a game.

	▲	kergonath 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Also, having my village randomly wiped out from time to time by events beyond my control (plague, wars, etc.) would be realistic, but no fun at all in a game. Besides, there’s Dwarf Fortress if you’re into this sort of thing.
	▲	Aeolun 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Especially with a static game seed, so even reloading won’t save you :)

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nottorp 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Never let realism get in the way of game play :)

Incidentally, when I last played Banished there was a loophole in its simulation and you could just build a few modules consisting of like 3 or 4 basic buildings and that solved all your survival problems with no need for later intervention.

Gamers gonna optimize.

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thmoonbus 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The article does address this directly at the end, for what it’s worth.

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CalRobert 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Same for why sim city didn’t have parking