A problem with video Games: The Realism Fracture
January 6th 2012 16:24
Category: No Category
Very qucily think about something you do when you first wake up; be it a piss and a stretch, or a stumble to turn off your alarm, or answering a phone call much earlier than you were hoping. Keep that thought in mind and try to picture your whole day as an interactive experience. Is your day fun? Chances are that it is not as interesting as fiction, with the only exception being that you are some kind of shark tamer.
People play games, read certain books, and watch movies because they want to escape from their lives for just a little while. However, I cannot think of a person who wants to escape entirely, always do they want to be rooted in some form of familiar reality. In example: Call of Duty MW3 you play as soldiers firing real guns at people from real countries on this planet, but this is not a real conflict/ it is fiction (bad Right Wing nationalist fan-fiction, but fiction all the same). The fantasy is rooted in reality. Star Wars is also rooted in reality, soldiers and knights fighting for what they believe in/ are told to do, humanoid creatures walking around, people firing guns, an evil crime boss, ect. ect.. When things get to foreign from our own experiences we no longer find them appealing and and steer clear of that particular form of escapism.
For games there has to be a healthy middle ground; not too far away from home, but not too similar as the player would be bored to tears. If a person played my game from above with the discount card they would have no idea what was going on, because there is basically no point of reference, so there would be little to no fun. On the other hand if a person played a pizza delivery boy who obeyed all of the traffic rules, was tipped fairly, and was always on time because of a helpful GPS then the player would also have no fun. Now that both extremes have been identified, it gives everyone the range in which to design and enjoy games. A game about a person's day will only be interesting if that person has an extraordinary life/job like a detective or professional football player. Or if they have a normal life and something takes a strange for the weird, games like Alan Wake and Heavy Rain do this very well, even if they weren't the best games they still were about normal people in extraordinary circumstances.
Now that we have that out of the way lets get to the real issue at hand. This was first brought to my attention after I had been playing Call of Duty for a few hours. I was playing and I continued to get stuck over and over again at crucial moments. I was stuck at a point and continued dying while my comrades continued to fight and even "died" but never got hurt. This is not the only instance in this game or any other game, these happen more often than should be allowed. These realism fracture comes when a person is taken completely out of the experience and are reminded what they are actually doing. The rules stated earlier are still followed and everything like that, but because of these fractures a game losses a big amount of points. Game makers should also spend extra time getting rid of glitches that will also cause these fractures. The fractures do not ruin a game, only that they should be polished up and be less drastic so as to keep the player fully enveloped in the game being played. If games want to take a more serious role in the market then the game must be a more immerse experience. Video games are placed at a very precarious position because it is the only true form of media that is entirely immersive. These fractures destroy the immersion and the illusion of being entirely enveloped by a game. In other words: these "reality fractures" can destroy a gaming experience as much as someone pouring ice down your shirt.
Pulled this out of my sternum...just another Thursday afternoon.
Pictured above is a discount card that you control through the reaches of an opthamascope. You must collect all the tear gas in time behind you that is absorbed by a backwards nickle. (doesn't make sense, does it?)
Game about a club promoter who uncovers the necranomica
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