barely fatal

The money and ingame item trading becomes bigger and bigger. Slashdot now has a very interesting article on MMOG money sellers. They went to a big “Gamers to Gamers” service company and asked them some rather critical questions from the Slashdot readership.

Find the article here: The MMOG Moneysellers Respond To Your Questions

I found a chewing gum in my living room this morning. I don’t know how it got there. I don’t eat any, I never wear shoes in my living room, the curtains were still closed and I would bet it wasn’t there the day before. Very mysterious.

I finally beat Jade Empire and I wanted to start it again from the beginning right away with another character. I can’t stress it enough, it’s such an awesome, original game. Love it.

So, Jumpgate Evolution has been … officially announced one might say, there are a few screenshots out there and you can register for the beta. So did all the veteran Shadows, and I did, too, of course. I’m quite excited, though it’s hard to tell what it will be like. I read about new AI – none-conflux. Well, my flight stick is catching dust, so hurry up, Netdevil(s)!

My neck aches, so does my back, my head and my stomach. Something’s wrong. No idea what it is, but it sucks. I’ll stay in bed for the next few days.

I say: A game must be realistic to be a success. And now I’m going to explain why and what I mean by that.

I believe that the most realistic games are good old table-top games. And that is because all the action happens only your head. You have to imagine characters, worlds and events, and although you never play alone, each adventure looks and feels different in each player’s mind. I dare saying that table-top games even beat live-action role playing. LARPers ride on trains, drive their cars or fly on a plane to get to an event. They wear 21st century-made gear, even if it looks medieval. What I’m trying to say is, you always touch the real world, and there is no way to prevent that – unless you role play a LARPer in the 21st century. No, the real game takes place in your mind.

Ever since the computer game evolution replaced text-based adventures with games that feature pictures, sound, animation and – most important – graphical user interfaces, the imagination of gamers has been put up to quite a challenge. Now we have to see and understand the worlds other people create – and believe in them. Of course, that has always been the same with books and stories, but have you never felt the disappointment when you saw some designer’s interpretation of something that you have always imagined to look completely different? Watch a movie, then read the book and try to get the images out of your head which you saw in the movie. Imagination is limited and easy to manipulate when it is influenced by other people’s thoughts.

Nonetheless, in the early days of graphical adventure games there was still a lot of room for your imagination. The games had crude, low-resolution images and horrible PC-speaker beeps and whistles. But we have come a long way. Current games still do not look real, but have you watched the trailers of upcoming titles like Crysis or Colin McRae Dirt? Photorealism is not far away from that. The more realistic looking games become, the greater the immersion.

Or really? I say, the more realistic a game looks, the more difficult it gets to keep the illusion of reality alive. You have all seen it: some computer controlled character suddenly acts up, speaking to the ground, running in circles. Or a piece of dialog is missing. Or your avatar’s arm disappears in a wall. That’s all to forgive if it happens in a comic-like scenario or a freaked-out fantasy world. If it happens in a game which tries to be all realistic, things like these can quickly destroy the immersion. And make you laugh – or at least frown.

But that’s only the half of it. Take World Of Warcraft, a colorful comic-world with dwarfs and elves and orcs. A universe out of proportion, as far from reality as can be. And yet it sucks you in, you believe in what you see, feel like a part of it. Why? The key factor is credibility. In a non-realistic game, you don’t expect realistic graphics or physics. You just have to be able to immerse yourself. WoW makes that possible by creating a world so consistent within itself, so streamlined and well-established by other games and fiction that many, many people can connect to its characters, story lines and settings. But to make that immersion possible in the first place, the game has to be credible. And that’s where “realistic” games like Colin McRae and “non-realistic” games like WoW meet, both types require realism – consistency, credibility – in their own context. The first has the extremely detailed real-life cars with the feel-like-real driving physics and damage models whilst the other one features beautiful, hand-designed landscapes, heroic fantasy battles and epic quest lines.

Realism doesn’t stop with graphics or a nice game world. The game mechanisms are just as important, especially in real-life imitating games. Illogical puzzles can kill an adventure. Open-ended story lines weaken every role playing game. Unbalanced weapons kick shooters into the bargain bin. If you can’t play it, there’s no fun trying. Realism enables games, and it does not always mean high dynamic range rendering or water animation; realism in the meaning of logic, consistency or continuity is crucial for every game.

Ah, and by consistency I do not mean “warehouse – office – sewers – warehouse – office – sewers – warehouse…” – in case any game designer should ever read this. Just saying.