In his editorial titled “An Argument for Surrealism in Games“, Ben Gowing decries the game industry’s obsession with making games look real, at the expense of missing out on the great immersive and escapist value potential found in more surreal games. In fact, Gowing points out the fact that games are necessarily unrealistic:
“The problem I find most troubling with realism in games, is that video games are inherently unrealistic. By definition, even, video games must adhere to some sense of absurdity.” (Ben Gowing)
Trying to be too realistic? Or not realistic enough?
I suppose he’s right in that the video games we play are not real in the strictest sense, and that can turn some players off when the illusion is shattered during game play. But what if they’re just not real enough… yet? While Gowing is discussing these game design paradigms in relation to what consumer-gamers expect and/or want to play (and the fiscal risk that game companies would assume if they veer too far from the beaten path), there is more to consider here than just simple design/gameplay aesthetics and their effects on consumers.
When Gowing places games like Uncharted or Call of Duty (those that aspire to be “realistic”) in opposition to more fanciful titles like Alice: Madness Returns, he makes the claim that the drive to be realistic in the former games both hinders their ability to provide innovative game play and actually reduces their realism because of the many times the constraints of reality are broken to facilitate game play. Players in these “realistic” games don’t die easily, are unreasonably over-skilled, and further extend beyond the realm of what most players would consider truly realistic, thus breaking the illusion.
So I return to my question: what if the games just aren’t realistic enough? I see a parallel to Masahiro Mori’s concept of the “uncanny valley”, where humans experience a linearly increasing familiarity with a non-human object as it appears increasingly human, but very suddenly begin to find the object very creepy in that space preceding what would be nearly indistinguishable from human. The diagram below will help:
Masahiro Mori's Uncanny Valley (source: Wikipedia)
What if our ultra-realistic games today are simply stuck in the deep valley of uncanniness, as they continue getting closer and closer to near-indistinguishable realistic visuals and experiences? If this is indeed the case, then the games of today aren’t trying too hard to be realistic, they’re just not trying hard enough. The constraints imposed by an imperfect rendering of reality make all the chinks in these games’ armour be all the more obvious and off-putting. Players’ illusions of real adventure or combat are being disrupted by the imperfect reality, and writers like Gowing implore game designers to abandon their quest for realism and focus instead on novel fanciful gameplay.
I posit, however, that if games can progress enough—both visually and experientially—to a point where they could be mistaken for real visuals and real experiences, that then the biggest opportunities for novel engaging game play can emerge. Fanciful forests and twisted creatures in Alice: Madness Returns are all well and good today, but if they could be rendered with picture-perfect realism, the horror, magic, and sheer surreal excitement would be magnified all the more.
MOBIgaming 