People who complain about video games not being realistic enough are the problem with video games
Videos games aren't supposed to be realistic. I'm not supposed to put myself in the position of a real socom or seal or delta or recons or X18 for that matter. I don't want to.play a video game that represents reality. That's not what video games are about. Video games are supposed to be void of reality. Destiny, baldurs gate, elder scrolls, Mario, metal gear, etc... That's what video gaming is supposed to be. Not real situations that could/would occur like call of duty. CoD is a garbage game and it's offensive for them to remaster the bullshit and then expect people to pay for the bullshit that they couldn't justify having paid for when the game(s] was first released. Do not fall for the Microsoft trap
Ehh, those military shooters like Socom and Call of Duty are also fantasy. Your average soldier isn't doing any of that shit. They're probably guarding base parking lots or mowing the base golf course.
Yeah, CoD is not realistic in terms of 'how things work', it only has a realistic aesthetic.
Try playing Arma with a whole bunch of realism mods.
Oh, you have an rpg, 2 extra rounds for it and a PKM, 600 rounds of ammo, and the tripod you you have to set it up on...?
... and you decided to sprint a mile across field?
Congratulations! You had a heart attack and died at about the half mile mark. Your respawn time is 15 minutes.
Of course most people enjoy a more casual experience, a more streamlined, less technical one, but there are dedicated fanbases for people that love the intricacies of stupendously detailed shooters.
When I'm playing American Truck Simulator, I want that realism where cops pull me over for a shakedown, townsfolks chase me out of town because of the color of my skin, I refill on resources at a gas station and almost die from a meth head, and my cargo company's health coverage doesn't cover my status debuffs because they were "pre-existing conditions".
Ah yes, Tarkov, where you die of inanition after 30 minutes without food and where jumping 2 meters breaks both your legs, which you can just fix in like 20 seconds with some splints. Very realistic.
I usually mean stuff like Arma, squad and so on for milsim. The coordination, different assets and the wounding. Most these games even if you do survive it takes a good length of time to heal and multiple items. That’s the realism, as opposed to the famous “bleeding out the eyeballs until I spontaneously heal in 30 seconds.” EFT is still in the same vein don’t get me wrong but way less coordination than other milsims.
Stop playing AAA slop. There I fixed video games for you. To overfixate on the hype and marketing machine will only make you miserable and poison your brain with stupid ideas like "the problem with video games". Video games are an extremely broad set of experiences. A digital implementation of a board game is a video game, and a painstakingly detailed simulation of the operations of an airliner down to waiting in real time for refuel is also a video game. And there's an audience with taste for both and every other of the hundreds of genres that exist. A problem with one hyper specific genre of video games is not a problem with video games.
The problem is not with players complaining about what they believe to be lack of realism in games. It's instead that game designers don't dig further into those complains to know what exactly is wrong, and how to fix it: lack of internal consistency, limitations that feel unjustified, balance issues, etc.
Got to upvote this opinion, because it's unpopular and wrong.
I had a very long explanation ready but I didn't feel like bothering people to read all this, so in short:
Look up what suspension of disbelief is. Try to show empathy towards people who can immerse themselves into a game because it looks as realistic as possible. Accept that games are as diverse as other forms of art and understand that you are just showing preferences, that doesn't mean the other form is wrong. Don't pick something like CoD as a measure for anything other than pure greed.
Large game publisher are not your friends, they only want your money. The realism approach isn't wrong, it's the consumers who buy the shit games. The graphics of the game don't matter, it's what companies can get away with and so they'll repeat it.
Why do people who can immerse need empathy? I know exactly what you're saying and I get that you're essentially saying "let people like what they want to like" and I'm not stopping anyone from doing that. But this is just my opinion. My opinion doesn't change anyone's life, and isn't that the point?
To answer your first question first, empathy is a social skill and if you truly want to understand other people's opinions, it's a skill you must hone. No one is saying you must be empathic, but if you want to truly get why some people like it more when they can immerse themselves in a piece of art, then you do need to be able to try to walk in their shoes.
Regarding your second point, you framed the original post as a fact of life and not an opinion ('games are not supposed to be realistic' vs 'i think games shouldn't be realistic') so don't be surprised when people argue against your opinion as if it were fact.
I personally don't enjoy games like COD, but it's disingenuous to believe one of the most lucrative franchises to exist, played and enjoyed by billions worldwide, is garbage. You may not like it, but you can't declare it a garbage game as it certainly has its appeal. Doing so reeks of 'old-man-yelling-at-kids-to-get-off-his-lawn'.
As for your other point, it is certainly an unpopular opinion. For a lot of people gaming is an escape from reality, yes, but video games as an artistic expression can also represent reality and even mirror it. I don't know what you mean by 'realism'; is it graphical fidelity? Is it mechanics and its level of abstraction to model our world? There is certainly a conversation to be had here, but I would say how closely a game should mirror real life should depend on what type of game we are talking about, after all.
I can whole heartedly state that COD is garbage. It’s been enshittified into the ground for years, and recent additions are overwhelmingly negative on steam. COD hasn’t been good for at least a decade, if not more. It’s not what it was in its prime, at all.
While the rant part isn't interesting, this is a genuinely unpopular opinion in every way.
I tend to agree with you that playing real world plausible scenarios isn't fun, with the caveat that the scenario isn't as big a factor in that level of fun as the people playing. I'll have tons of fun playing with chill people, mostly friends, no matter what I'm playing. But random players online, the ones that prefer that type of game tend to not only be competitive rather than cooperative, but tend to be jerks about it.
That makes ignoring the game content and premise impossible, and it starts sucking more.
I don't object to such games existing per se, but the focus on that kind of game makes other efforts harder to find for online multiplayer options. Too many developers want to milk that audience, so other styles get abandoned or done halfassed.
But I agree completely that most remasters are blatant cash grabs that suck, cod in particular
horrible opinion. other people like other things. complaining about things you don't like is better than complaining about other people that don't like the same things as you. just play games you like, others wanting realistic stuff doesn't hurt you in any way. there's more unrealistic games than you could ever play. upvoted.
First game I played was Icicle Works in 1984. Every game I played in the next thirty years I kept thinking "Man this game is good but I wish the graphics were more realistic"
So no, terrible opinion, they're only just getting there now
I think realistic videogames have a niche called "Simulators". And while they stay there, I'm absolutely fine with it.
The problem, I believe, is that people often confuse realism with level of detail. And the main issue with this is that the line separating both is extremely thin sometimes. Additionally, a degree of realism is welcome in any game, as long as the game keeps being a game and not a simulator (e.g. on a car racing game, I want the cars to look like cars and to drive like cars, even if I want it to stay arcade-y enough)
Would you say Breath of the Wild is a realistic game? I think it isn't, but the level of detail put in their physics engine is so detailed that it's almost real, but at the same time feels like a videogame and not like a simulator.
In all the games you mentioned, there is a degree of realism (for example, in metal gear, it's realistic that enemies can't see you behind a wall or that they get alerted if they see a corpse), just not enough to make them look like a simulator instead of a game, this is what I mean with level of detail.
But my gold pieces should have weight! It's unrealistic that I can carry around 100k gold and 50+ sets of armor!
/s
I hate these people too. Make your own mods if you want to suffer, I certainly don't. I'm more concerned that many RPGs devolve into Murder Hobo Simulator 2024 within an hour of starting, but hey, that's games.
Someone made a comment about why we have inventory limits in Skyrim and Starfield. I grew up in the era where it was common to micromanage your inventory. There's literally casual games of people organizing their Diablo 2-esque inventory.
What is "realistic" is on a spectrum and is hard to pinpoint. Even first person shooters like CoD have adjustability on how much lead you can eat before you drop dead and a medical kit on a grave wound can bring you from "should've retired yesterday" to "top shape soldier" so there are aspects that are not true realism. On the other side, Baldur's Gate tries to somewhat realistically simulate the feeling of what it would be like to be in a Dungeons and Dragons world full of magic wielding creatures and adventure, without comic-ifying or arcad-ifying it too much.
However, the type of bullshit tactics you describe with games don't have to come from Activision/Microsoft and to me are unrelated to the realism. Just as one example, Nintendo has done similar, with releasing a Super Mario Sunshine + 64 + Galaxy port for a limited time to maximize FOMO but keep getting them to buy these on every new console.