This has been Dugg like mad today, but it's worth pointing to for those who haven't seen it. The Popular Mechanics website has posted an article entitled 'Shooting For Realism: How Accurate are Videogame Weapons?'. It's an interesting look at how game guns are evolving, and at whether realism is a genuine goal.
Sure, advances in technology are allowing developers to include more data every time a bullet is fired - "If someone shoots through a plant, then a car door, then it hits Level 3 body armor, all of that effects the force of the round," explains Rainbow Six Vegas 2 designer, Philippe Theiren. Indeed, both CoD4 and RSV2 allow certain weapons to shoot through walls and other objects. However, developers are aware that gamers are more interested in the perceived character of favourite gun types, rather than their real-life performance:
"I take these weapons, and look at what defines them, or what people think defines them," Theiren explains. "For an Uzi, people think it fires lots of bullets, and it's really inaccurate." That, he knows, has nothing to do with reality--if anything, Uzis are considered some of the most reliable and accurate submachine guns around. But the 80s (and Miami Vice in particular) offered us the Uzi as a low-life villain's weapon, spit-fire and out-of-control. "So I make it fire faster than it should. It's about taking the personality of a weapon, and making it shine in the game," Theiren says.
The personality of a gun? I'd never thought of that, but it's true - most gamers, for example, feel a palpable excitement when they discover a shotgun, not because of its real-life performance, but because it makes a lot of noise and it's messy. We all think of Hicks in Aliens, jamming one in the throat of an incoming beast, yelling 'eat this!' and performing a particularly invasive piece of cranial surgery - it's so much more fulfilling than the rat-a-tat from the marines' massive techno guns.
The piece doesn't mention Far Cry 2 which adds a new wrinkle to the depiction of weapons in games: wear and tear. During the FPS sequel, your gun will fill with dust and grime, becoming less and less reliable and frequently jamming mid-firefight. There's a great re-loading animation which shows your character forcefully ramming ammo into his rifle before smacking it a few times to get the rounds to engage. Apparently, it's best to get hold of an AK-47, which, of course, has a real-world reputation for reliability in even the harshest environments.
I've talked about the similarities between the depiction of guns and cars in games before; when portraying both, developers merge realistic performance statistics and authentic modeling with a certain amount of creative license to produce objects of heightened desirability. How soon before gun manufacturers are courting studios to include their latest models? It is probably already happening.
How authentic are the weapons in modern shooters? And do they even want to be?
