Re: Great Debate: Realism vs. fun
Posted: June 13th, 2015, 10:36 am
Howdy ya'll,
Great post TundraPuppy and I agree with you in many points. I even understand and admire your ambition to have this game fun for everyone, but it's simply not possible to achieve this goal.
Sure, as a game designer you might have the goal to see a game build that everyone enjoys and I would totally support this ambition, if there wasn't this little thing called reality.
Please, let me explain, why I sound ironic on this topic. My personal background reads as follows:
I have been hunting in my younger days, been a project manager for many well known and lesser known companies. I have managed projects from scratch till their natural end. This also involves marketing. And this is the point!
Building a product - like a video game - anybody might enjoy, have fun with and one may identify with is one thing. theHunter established a great basis and broadened this one with it's further development.
The other thing is to place it at the market and sell it. "most realistic hunting experience" is more than just a redline a game is developed by. Like you already stated this phrase raises expectations. Let's take a closer look at it. Whom is it aimed at?
Every market for any product has it's segments and in these segments different target groups are found. You prioritize your groups and address your product at them. So much for the theory.
I have been in many meetings where e.g. advertising companies were asking "Can we say....?" "I believe you could, if it rains on a monday and....." "I take that as a YES!". "Is thehunter a game with the most realistic hunting experience?" "Well, I haven't heard of any other." (Just an imaginary situation to state my point).
As I stated earlier, theHunter has its target groups. The past years EW seemed to have reached this group and taking the given success into account, they satisfied their groups. So, what has changed would be the question we need to answer.
It for sure still is the "most realistic" hunting game available on the market. Even though the degree of realism is not stated. For this I'd rather refer to my earlier post than just simply repeating all of it again.
But one thing actually changed and this one thing really had an tremendous impact. Not on the game itself, but - and this is where I agree with you TundraPuppy - on the way it is looked at and the gamer's expectations. theHunter was released on STEAM and advertised as Free-2-Play.
What actually happened, there was a new market segment defined and new groups targeted, that actually are not linked with any interest in hunting or - let's just call it - simulation. It's free of charge and has awesome models, real world guns and phantastic sceneries. Many downloaded it, took a look, worte a devastating review and left. Some got stuck with it. So, theHunter broadened it's target group. I don't know if that was intentionally or just by "accident", but quite fast people came to the game with very different expectations. The game itself didn't really change. the setting was still the same and gameplay didn't really underly major changes. OK, fall damage was introduced later and now came dogs, but both is rather linked to real world experiences and at least the last is a long time demand, if I got that right.
The conclusion out of this brings me to a rather young discipline in marketing: CEM - Customer Experience Management. Which translates to rather succeeding than just meeting customer expectations. One part of it is this forum and this debate. But the major question would be if the main target group has changed up to now and if it did, what are their expectations?
No personal offense SQWEE, but I want to take you as an example. I imagine you quite fit the profile of an hunting enthusiast, but as I understood you this game is not realistic enough. You prefer a mirror of the real hunt. May I ask if you have ever been on a hunt in Germany? Let's just take two reserves as an example: Hirschfelden (the name let's one assume it could be situated in Germany) and Redfeather Falls (inspired by the US state Washington). If it was a mirror of the real world we already are talking about 2 different hunting regulations and laws. If we also take Val-des-Boise into account and assume it was situated in France (easier for this example) we do have a 3rd one. In Germany I am not allowed to hunt with a bow in France I am. In Germany I may not use the .30-06 (depending on the ammunition as far as I know) on a roe deer, because of 6 joules energy missing, in the US I may shoot bucks with it.
This is where I agree with TundraPuppy for the sake of gameplay the game has to abstract from reality. But I also disagree with the opinion everyone should have fun. The main target groups need to be satisfied and not everyone taking a look at the game! Everything that has been introduced to the game so far is linked to the real world. Still the player may use his imagination and memories in it. Like a novel it inspires. That's what a game should do. A mirror of the real daily life hunting where you need days or even months to learn the behavior of an animal could never achieve this. Also a game strolling away from it would not do that. For example there once was this survey, I don't actually recall when it took place, in which there was the question if paintball should be included into the game. Well, the answer was a clear NO, NO WAY AT ALL! A few wanted it though and may be they would have had their fun with it, but the majority didn't understand why paintball should be implemented into a hunting game. There simply is no link to it. It wouldn't feel like it's real. This is the point of fun. One has fun when he is entertained, experiences positive feedback, emotions. theHunter uses a portion of realism to inspire your imagination and memories in order to achieve this. (Well, excluding this Primal shotgun which actually has a devastating effect according to my memories and feelings.)
Good hunt ya'll
Me
Great post TundraPuppy and I agree with you in many points. I even understand and admire your ambition to have this game fun for everyone, but it's simply not possible to achieve this goal.
Sure, as a game designer you might have the goal to see a game build that everyone enjoys and I would totally support this ambition, if there wasn't this little thing called reality.
Please, let me explain, why I sound ironic on this topic. My personal background reads as follows:
I have been hunting in my younger days, been a project manager for many well known and lesser known companies. I have managed projects from scratch till their natural end. This also involves marketing. And this is the point!
Building a product - like a video game - anybody might enjoy, have fun with and one may identify with is one thing. theHunter established a great basis and broadened this one with it's further development.
The other thing is to place it at the market and sell it. "most realistic hunting experience" is more than just a redline a game is developed by. Like you already stated this phrase raises expectations. Let's take a closer look at it. Whom is it aimed at?
Every market for any product has it's segments and in these segments different target groups are found. You prioritize your groups and address your product at them. So much for the theory.
I have been in many meetings where e.g. advertising companies were asking "Can we say....?" "I believe you could, if it rains on a monday and....." "I take that as a YES!". "Is thehunter a game with the most realistic hunting experience?" "Well, I haven't heard of any other." (Just an imaginary situation to state my point).
As I stated earlier, theHunter has its target groups. The past years EW seemed to have reached this group and taking the given success into account, they satisfied their groups. So, what has changed would be the question we need to answer.
It for sure still is the "most realistic" hunting game available on the market. Even though the degree of realism is not stated. For this I'd rather refer to my earlier post than just simply repeating all of it again.
But one thing actually changed and this one thing really had an tremendous impact. Not on the game itself, but - and this is where I agree with you TundraPuppy - on the way it is looked at and the gamer's expectations. theHunter was released on STEAM and advertised as Free-2-Play.
What actually happened, there was a new market segment defined and new groups targeted, that actually are not linked with any interest in hunting or - let's just call it - simulation. It's free of charge and has awesome models, real world guns and phantastic sceneries. Many downloaded it, took a look, worte a devastating review and left. Some got stuck with it. So, theHunter broadened it's target group. I don't know if that was intentionally or just by "accident", but quite fast people came to the game with very different expectations. The game itself didn't really change. the setting was still the same and gameplay didn't really underly major changes. OK, fall damage was introduced later and now came dogs, but both is rather linked to real world experiences and at least the last is a long time demand, if I got that right.
The conclusion out of this brings me to a rather young discipline in marketing: CEM - Customer Experience Management. Which translates to rather succeeding than just meeting customer expectations. One part of it is this forum and this debate. But the major question would be if the main target group has changed up to now and if it did, what are their expectations?
No personal offense SQWEE, but I want to take you as an example. I imagine you quite fit the profile of an hunting enthusiast, but as I understood you this game is not realistic enough. You prefer a mirror of the real hunt. May I ask if you have ever been on a hunt in Germany? Let's just take two reserves as an example: Hirschfelden (the name let's one assume it could be situated in Germany) and Redfeather Falls (inspired by the US state Washington). If it was a mirror of the real world we already are talking about 2 different hunting regulations and laws. If we also take Val-des-Boise into account and assume it was situated in France (easier for this example) we do have a 3rd one. In Germany I am not allowed to hunt with a bow in France I am. In Germany I may not use the .30-06 (depending on the ammunition as far as I know) on a roe deer, because of 6 joules energy missing, in the US I may shoot bucks with it.
This is where I agree with TundraPuppy for the sake of gameplay the game has to abstract from reality. But I also disagree with the opinion everyone should have fun. The main target groups need to be satisfied and not everyone taking a look at the game! Everything that has been introduced to the game so far is linked to the real world. Still the player may use his imagination and memories in it. Like a novel it inspires. That's what a game should do. A mirror of the real daily life hunting where you need days or even months to learn the behavior of an animal could never achieve this. Also a game strolling away from it would not do that. For example there once was this survey, I don't actually recall when it took place, in which there was the question if paintball should be included into the game. Well, the answer was a clear NO, NO WAY AT ALL! A few wanted it though and may be they would have had their fun with it, but the majority didn't understand why paintball should be implemented into a hunting game. There simply is no link to it. It wouldn't feel like it's real. This is the point of fun. One has fun when he is entertained, experiences positive feedback, emotions. theHunter uses a portion of realism to inspire your imagination and memories in order to achieve this. (Well, excluding this Primal shotgun which actually has a devastating effect according to my memories and feelings.)
Good hunt ya'll
Me