Sunday, August 29, 2010

Really Real or Just Really Fun

So this idea came directly from Miss Lindsey. She was talking a couple blogs ago about how her real life would be more fun if it was on a video game. So that got me thinking, are games more fun if they are wild and imaginative, or more fun if they are realistic ?

The games that are less realistic blow past the limits of our imagination. Looking at my game collection right now, I could be a mage, elf, orc, alien, zombie, a figment of someones imagination, and almost any kind of animal including King Kong. I can toy around in space or travel back to the old west. I can try to survive in a post-apocalypse or actually cause an apocalypse. None of it is realistic but its all fun.

On the other side of the coin, there are developers that pride themselves on realism. Teams will go out to test weapons and make sure that they capture every detail for the latest and greatest FPS. Portable games can encourage smaller children to treat their canine friends humanely with regular feedings and play time. And as Lindsey pointed out, it is inexplicably fun to recreate your daily life in simulation games.

There are games that bridge the gap, but for the most part they are one extreme or the other. In the end it all comes down to preference. Do you want to get away from it all and have an unexpected adventure ? Or would you rather give reality another try, maybe doing things a little different this time ? Luckily the possibilities are pretty much endless.

1 comment:

Linz said...

My favorite are the ones that perfectly combine the two styles: a game that takes me into a different reality (like outer space, WoW, Fallout 3....) but they do it really realistically so that I can totally immerse myself in my "new reality".