Keep it real: bad advice for game designers

Okay, here's another thing that elicits the wrath of Pong: the philosophy of the supremacy of realism as a guiding tenet of great game design.

Gran Turismo. One of my favorite games of all time. Possibly top three.

Why? Oh, no reason, really ... except that I get to drive on the mother-loving Nürburgring Nordschleife in my choice of a Lotus Elise, BMW M5, Aston Martin Vanquish, Nissan Skyline GT-R, or any other of dozens and dozens of kick-tail choices. Or how about on the Circuit de la Sarthe or Laguna Seca or Infineon? All presented in more realistic beauty and detail than anyone else has done. Yes please.

Okay, so I slipped in the word I promised to malign: realistic. I have nothing against it; am, in fact, all for it ... to a point.

THIS is what Star Trek fans would call the Prime Directive. It is the heart of all intelligent and great game design. It is this: in the realm of games, because of the nature of a game (as I touched on in my previous post), realism -- as every other aspect of game design -- is subservient to fun. All must bow to fun. Fun, in games, is not like any earthly king, but like the Lord God Himself. He will always be king, for eternity. It is impossible in the fullest sense of the word to dethrone Him. So it is with fun.

Games will never not be primarily, fundamentally about fun. They are not about achievements in graphics or sound or music or design or technology. We have the amazing Xbox 360, now, and there are still people who pull out their Pac-Mans and enjoy every minute (that turns into hours) of it.

Pac-Man (and the Ms.) are phenomenal games. I try not to use such words lightly, because I think we all too often do. It was, first of all, verifiably a phenomenon of culture. But I believe it was also a legitimate phenomenon of design. Pac-Man is a fantastic example of a game that could piss you off, but do it fairly. If the game beat you, you were beat, you could get better. There was none of this, "Yeah, but what we're trying to do here is make it drive like a real rally car."

I see, so you don't care whether I can play the game or not; you're more concerned about your personal achievement. Gotchya. And, by the way, don't kid yourself. You're never going to be able to achieve true realism, so accept it and find out where realism can meet design and produce something more than a relatively few people can enjoy and be willing to (I know you'll like this one) buy.

Wow, the cars in Gran Turismo react so realisitically! Yeah, you mean like when they bounce off the railings like a wet Nerf football? I know what ya mean. It's like I'm there!

Seriously, I understand your desire for realism, but it inherently cannot happen. And even if it were possible, realistically, it takes gargantuan talent, dedication, and financing to race a cars on the world's finest raceways. That's why I want a game; so I can do something easily, have fun at it, that I just don't have enough of the other stuff to do in real life.

That said, I bought Gran Turismo 4 the week it came out. I love the game. I've played it more than just about every other game in my collection -- just like GT3. And am reasonably certain I'm at least in the top 50th percentile in skill of the people who play the game. I do all right. But I really don't feel like I'm so out of line to ask for a great game that doesn't absolutely require me to do something which clearly happens to be just a bit beyond my scope to unlock any portion of the the goodies in the game, and takes its turns in pissing me off more than just about every other thing in my life! That's ludicrous.

To be fair, that probably says as much about my life as video games.