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Over the past five years, I've been actively researching game-development. The truth is that everything you see in-game is faked in one way or another. Faking t

by slimsag 11y ago

Over the past five years, I've been actively researching game-development. The truth is that everything you see in-game is faked in one way or another. Faking things is _really really hard_. Realistic death doesn't tie into the general character animation model because they're skeletal-based animations and not physical ones (again, fake). When rag-doll physics is employed the skeletal-based animated body is simply swapped-out in-place. It's _really hard_ to physically simulate 'a bullet going through a human stomach', and honestly there are more important things in games to focus on financially. > the most apparent conclusion is that games are using this fatalism as a crutch, because they don't know what else to do with it. It's sentences like these that make me think the author has completely neglected the technical and financial difficulty of game development. Morally, the author does a great job portraying the non-gamer (read: "normal person") ideology of what death should be: special, eventful, meaningful, a thought-provoking once in a lifetime experience and conclusion to your story. As someone whose dealt with death more in his life than most probably will in their entire life -- it's not any of those things _to the person dying_. Death for you _is_ a binary switch, and once you're gone, you are gone. Games do a good job portraying that. I'll end this with just one of my favorite quotes. "Nothing" isn't better or worse than anything. Nothing is just... Nothing..." - Aria Stark, GoT

breadbox 11y ago
> It's sentences like these that make me think the author has completely neglected the technical and financial difficulty of game development. I tend to disagree. If the creators (and/or the players) thought it was important to portray death more accurately, effort would go into it. Look at the effort that goes into boob physics. The fact that that's even a term shows that video game writers are more than willing to work on simulating things that are _really hard_ if they think it will sell games. The fact that it wouldn't is the point.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I disagree with the part you quoted too. First of all, games are art form, they're not purely money driven, and some are not even tech driven, but they drive tech. Secondly, games were experimenting a lot with death. It used to be that your character just fell and disappeared. Then you could wound or chop off its limbs. It would die differently when shot than when falling, etc. Heck, Dwarf Fortress actually does simulate arrows penetrating internal organs and its consequences in great detail. The ultimate reason why games portray death in simplified, binary way is the same as reason why movies portray death in simplified, binary way - because if you went into gory details of last moments of a person with a lung punctured by a bullet, desperately trying to catch a breath while slowly bleeding out, calling out to his god or his family, your player would freak out and probably puke. That is assuming that you'd be allowed to sell the game in the first place. Games and movies are meant to be enjoyable, not disturbing, so death is always simplified, unless there's a strong reason to go into details.
- anonymfus 11y ago
  Mortal Kombat is example of game series where significant effort was spent on death scenes ("fatalities"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatality_(Mortal_Kombat) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatality_(Mortal_Kombat)
0359B02149AB 11y ago
> Death for you _is_ a binary switch, and once you're gone, you are gone. Games do a good job portraying that. Yea, I think this culture is way too obsessed with the idea of binary opposites. It's just as hard to demonstrate that what seems like two distinct and opposing things are actually the same thing, and it's just that you've allowed yourself to grow into this mind that believes otherwise. You can see every life as something that is in a constant decay towards death, and you can see everything that has decayed to contribute to the creation of new life. Stars don't have life or death, yet we come from them. At some point our own complexity perplexes us, and is that where we draw the line? As someone who has as well, dealt with more thinking about death than most people ever will in their life, I don't know if I'll ever see how I see things get expressed in a video game. I just don't think it's capable of being expressed.

by slimsag 11y ago

breadbox 11y ago

> It's sentences like these that make me think the author has completely neglected the technical and financial difficulty of game development. I tend to disagree. If the creators (and/or the players) thought it was important to portray death more accurately, effort would go into it. Look at the effort that goes into boob physics. The fact that that's even a term shows that video game writers are more than willing to work on simulating things that are _really hard_ if they think it will sell games. The fact that it wouldn't is the point.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
I disagree with the part you quoted too. First of all, games are art form, they're not purely money driven, and some are not even tech driven, but they drive tech. Secondly, games were experimenting a lot with death. It used to be that your character just fell and disappeared. Then you could wound or chop off its limbs. It would die differently when shot than when falling, etc. Heck, Dwarf Fortress actually does simulate arrows penetrating internal organs and its consequences in great detail. The ultimate reason why games portray death in simplified, binary way is the same as reason why movies portray death in simplified, binary way - because if you went into gory details of last moments of a person with a lung punctured by a bullet, desperately trying to catch a breath while slowly bleeding out, calling out to his god or his family, your player would freak out and probably puke. That is assuming that you'd be allowed to sell the game in the first place. Games and movies are meant to be enjoyable, not disturbing, so death is always simplified, unless there's a strong reason to go into details.
anonymfus 11y ago
Mortal Kombat is example of game series where significant effort was spent on death scenes ("fatalities"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatality_(Mortal_Kombat) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatality_(Mortal_Kombat)

0359B02149AB 11y ago

> Death for you _is_ a binary switch, and once you're gone, you are gone. Games do a good job portraying that. Yea, I think this culture is way too obsessed with the idea of binary opposites. It's just as hard to demonstrate that what seems like two distinct and opposing things are actually the same thing, and it's just that you've allowed yourself to grow into this mind that believes otherwise. You can see every life as something that is in a constant decay towards death, and you can see everything that has decayed to contribute to the creation of new life. Stars don't have life or death, yet we come from them. At some point our own complexity perplexes us, and is that where we draw the line? As someone who has as well, dealt with more thinking about death than most people ever will in their life, I don't know if I'll ever see how I see things get expressed in a video game. I just don't think it's capable of being expressed.