There is a lot of talk in gaming, and has been for many years now, about realism. Realism is a holy grail, or at least a magical totem, something which developers are expected to strive for and gamers expected to appreciate.

But this reflexive attitude needs examination, because we actually don’t want realism at all. Or to be more precise, realism is only one path the getting what we really want, which is immersion. Realism has a couple of benefits compared to unrealism (Or perhaps more properly, non-realism), and I will come to those in a moment, but in my experience ‘realism’ is not in and of itself a recipe for a good game, and it may indeed be harmful to pursue it too far.

Let’s start with the benefits of realism though:

A) We have an unarguable, universal blueprint, in the form of… well, of reality. Realism, if pursued, is easier in at least the conceptual sense because we only have to look at the real world to see how things work. As an author I can confidently say that using reality as the basis for a novel is a lot easier than keeping track of all the unique rules you have invented for your universe! And moreover, because it is universal, everyone can see that something is realistic and doesn’t need to learn any new rules. (I know that Reality is Unrealistic but that’s not the point right now!)

B) Closely linked with the above, realism (If we assume it’s executed well) is very consistent and coherent. Cause and effect, relationships between objects and actions, all that stuff – reality is ultimately immersive.

That is what we’re really after – immersion.

But we don’t need realism for immersion, not by any stretch of the imagination. That’s why we have the term ‘suspension of disbelief’. We need coherence and consistency to be immersed – we need it to be realistic with reference to itself, not to our reality. To a large extent we are also talking about atmosphere, which is something occasionally ineffable. It’s a combination of mechanics, art (as opposed to graphics), sounds, music or its absence, and so forth. It does not require any particular degree of technical fidelity; Pike is plenty immersed in X-Com despite it being 20 years old and having pixels you can individually count. Immersion is not limited to games based in history, or to first-person shooters or any other given genre. Some of my most immersive games are sci-fi, like Deus Ex and X-Com, and tactical or strategy games, like Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.

Now, there are times when realism is desired. If you’re making a game about the Roman Empire, you should probably do some research, and I will simply refer you back to my post about why mods are great rather than go on a long rant about Rome: Total War, fantastic as it is. The more knowledgeable someone is about a topic the harder it is to suspend their disbelief – so the concessions made to playability over realism and accuracy can end up harming a game. Realistic games have their place – ArmA II is a great example of a game which takes a fairly realistic approach; in that video he scrambles around in the dark for five minutes before getting shot and killed by an enemy he hasn’t even seen. Fun? Absolutely! But I sure as hell wouldn’t want TimeSplitters to play like that! Plenty of immersive games aren’t realistic, but remain hugely engaging to the player.

And then again, immersion isn’t always what people want. Earth Defense Force 2017 is a shockingly lacking game in almost every sense – except for raw fun, which it is almost unmatched in. It is the quintessential B-game; bad graphics, voice acting that would make Barry Burton blush, questionable physics, and absolutely rollicking great fun from start to finish. Though I propound the capacity for games to be art, and encourage things in such a direction, not every game needs to be art. Not every movie needs to be Citizen Kane. Sometimes, Transformers is just more fun.

So in short, we have put the idea of realism up on a pedestal, when what we really want is immersion, which is a factor of coherence and consistency. Realism has a couple of benefits in that sense but any break from it will be easily noticed by the knowledgeable, making their disbelief even harder to suspend!

So, to turn this over to you, what games have you found most immersive and why? To what extent do you care about realism, if at all?