Krist Novoselic, bassist of Nirvana, tries out Rock Band:
More recently, while walking through a one-stop shopping center, I encountered the Rock Band 2 video game. It was set up on display for customers to try.
I know about Rock Band, because Nirvana has some songs on it. I had never tried the game before, so I gave it a go. I worked through the menu and found the song “In Bloom.” I picked up the little guitar-shaped controller and hit the stage.
I knew the bass line to the song, of course, but I couldn’t quite master this new, different way of playing it.
The game reminded me of Space Invaders. I tried to hit the notes cascading down the screen, but could barely keep up.
Meanwhile, this kid was watching me fumble with the game. I became self-conscious and took the controller off. I handed it to him, and he proceeded to jam on the song—and was really good! He had no idea that I was the musician he was emulating on the game, and I didn’t tell him.
Life goes on: I walked away to buy some paint supplies, groceries, and other items from the store. [via Seattle Weekly]
Here’s the thing: Novoselic’s got it just right. The fact that a professional might be lousy at a game built to simulate his profession — even his very own work — doesn’t mean anything.
Simulation is not inherently virtuous. Accuracy is not advantageous in itself. Rock Band is clearly a good game. It is successful. It is wildly popular. It seems to be great fun. It refuses to be held back by realism. This is not a fluke.
In a game like Rock Band, this relationship between the game and its subject is obvious and no big deal, even though it relies on real and familiar songs for its popularity. (Would anyone care about these games if they used original songs created specifically to facilitate play?) I doubt that realism would improve this game at all.
Players cite “unrealistic” things as problem areas in games they dislike, but excuse it immediately in games they like. The reason for this is simple: they already don’t like the game.
I submit that no one has ever disliked a game for being unrealistic. First they didn’t like it. Then they called it unrealistic.
Making a game more realistic in response to that criticism won’t help you. First you’ve got to make them like it. Realism may be able to help improve a game that’s already good, but it cannot make it good.
It’s a very true point, but I think sometimes when people say something is ‘unrealistic’ they may really mean ‘counterintuitive’ which is possibly a more reasonable objection.
If you had a game where the goal was to ‘play music’ as in Rock Band, but the mechanism was through driving a car around a racing track avoiding obstacles and other cars, it would be a very quirky game but not completely counterintuitive. You avoid the obstacles, the song goes well. There’s a sense of rhythm and dexterity. But a game where all the challenge was in setting your car up first, with spoiler angles, brake bias and tyre compound choice would be different. Softer tyres may lead to better cornering, but there’s no point of reference for how this would affect how well the song is played, which makes it counterintuitive. And it would be rather dull to watch the AI drive your car around while music was played badly.
High levels of abstraction are fine, and many games thrive of them. I think ‘unrealistic’, if is has a place as a fair criticism, has it to describe a very deep, simulationist set of rules which fail to encapsulate the key behaviour of a system or the key decisions that affect it.
As an example, I discovered after playing Babylon 5: A Call to Arms that the weapons traits don’t behave as you might expect. For example, the Twin-Linked trait, which you imagine would be a boon to attacking small, nimble ships, is actually no better at it than a normal weapon. In fact, it’s best against heavily-armoured targets, and better than an Armour Piercing weapon with an equivalent number of dice. There’s nothing technically wrong with that, it just runs counter to what you would expect. It’s only a small gripe, but each problem like that is a little obstacle to suspending your disbelief in a game.
But more than once I’ve seen someone dislike a game, then rationalise reasons for their dislike. I’m certain I’ve done it myself, although I try not to. ‘I just don’t like it, really’ is all the explanation you need. It’s a hobby, after all.
Hallelujah, brother. The question isn’t weather a game is realistic or not, but how well it manages the suspension of disbelief. In a simulation-centric game — like Rock Band or Need for Speed or Madden — a lot of that comes down to how intuitive the systems and controls are. In games with a more elaborate fantasy (most RPGs and Shooters) intuitiveness is still critical, but so is the presentation of the game world and its social rules. There consistency and internal logic come into play.
I am not sure that you can say that no one ever has disliked a game for not being realistic, but I completely agree that realism is an impossible and undesirable goal. In fact, the more realistic you try to make a game, you get a weird thing where the less realistic it ends up being.
Queex, “counterintuitive” is exactly the word I didn’t know I was looking for to describe why I dislike Cosmic Encounter so much. As Will points out, “unrealistic” isn’t quite the correct objection, unless you take as your definition of “realism” something like “performs according to expectations.” (Because as we all know, the real world always performs according to expectations.)
So, when Will writes, “Making a game more realistic in response to that criticism won’t help you. First you’ve got to make them like it,” I think he’s right on. However, if you, as the designer, hear the “unrealistic” criticism as “doesn’t work intuitively,” you may have a more clear direction for revision.
Sometimes those games based on a simulation model shoot themselves in the foot because they claim to be realistic – where the accuracy of the simulation is part of the whole selling point of the product. When that happens I think its a more fair reaction to dislike the game for its lack of realism.
A fair point, Steven, but I make a distinction between the game as game and the game as product. Certainly more than one WWII game has put a .30 round from its M1 Garand through its own standard-issue boot by selling itself as realistic but turning out to be not realistic enough. Which goes back to expectations, I suppose. No amount of realism was going to make Return to Castle Wolfenstein into a game without zombies.
The simulation and the game are different contraptions, each capable of living independently. The best flight simulators may be lousy games, and Rock Band is a pretty terrible simulator. When you dislike the simulation, is that the same as disliking the game? I don’t think so.
You’re certainly right, though, that the issue of realism as it pertains to the product is important. Would you have liked that unrealistic game if it hadn’t claimed to be realistic?
I’m with Phil. I don’t care about “realistic,” I’m much more a proponent of “believable.”
Since your comment, Phil, I’ve been percolating on the relationship between what’s intuitive and what’s believable. Certainly intuitiveness can smooth the way for suspension of disbelief, but you’ve got me thinking about various games and how/if their controls have changed my suspension of disbelief. I must think more on it.