Games that Oppose Realism

[Curlypaul]

I agree that sports (and management?) games aside, all games are firmly wedged in fantasy land and there they should stay, but I see the split I think you are talking about in the majority of games..

While most mainstream games (like GTA4, Zelda, Final Fanatasy, Half-life) mimic real situations but are still very much a work of fantasy there is also a set of games that not only dont base their ideas on reality, but dont base them on any other game around at the time, or even since in the case of Vib Ribbon, or Electroplankton. These absract games are surely the most imaginative of all? Most artistic people base their work on there real life experiences, even sci-fi and fatanst novels have their plots based around human relationships/interactions and polictical situations like war we all have some kind of experience of, to dream up something utterly original is pretty damn impressive, although not impossible.

Interesting that technical limitations in the past may well have been instrumental in creating some of the most abstract games, forcing the designers to create games that were fun rather than trying to emulate life. Is the technical ability of current machines getting in the way of creative ideas? is the current level of immersion in a game becoming more important than how much fun it is?

[racketboy]

Well, you have games like Shenmue that try very hard to be realistic (and that was it's main weakness IMO -- could be quite boring at times)

[durkada]

Na, its cool man, you can wreck my thread. What your talking about is very important as it needs to be strongly clarified. Which is what I will do.

So the titles that I'll be focusing on are the titles that have pioneered this genre in their own way. Hence refer to my examples.

So any other ideas? I thought that Vib Ribbon was a good title.

Every time I post to this thread, I feel like a contrary ass-hole. With that used as a pseudo apology gfor the forthcoming, let me continue...

Vib Ribbon is a great game, but doesn't really help your list. And again, it doesn't help because, I think, you have degrees of realism which you need to delineate, in order for this to have any meaning or direction.

Jet Set Radio eschews realism, while attempting to mirror the mundane world. It interjects jet skates, silly police officers, and stylistic flair with its cel shading method. Here, they take reality and turn it off kilter. in a moment, I'll talk about why this isn't very interesting -- but I touched on it previously.

Vib-Ribbon on the other hand, is simply Other. Vib Ribbon is abstract -- its neither real nor unreal. And here, I think you would have a much more interesting list -- by counting off the most influential abstract games (of which, Geometry Wars would apply). Vib Ribbon has only a modicum of reality -- in that there is a rabbit like creature, and it walks. Nothing else pertains to this world. It is, as mentioned, abstract. A better way of thinking about this is something like Checkers; as a game, it exists in its own right and draws absolutely no parallels to real-life; meanwhile, a game such as 1830 is driven by a theme. 1830 attempts to simulate the building and selling of railroads; while its an abstraction of reality, it still has a fully realized world from which it distilled its game elements. Checkers? It exists only as a game system.

I think thats the meat of my argument: the only unrealistic games are abstracts. Those games which are not about our world, but about a series of rules.

But getting back to Jet Set Radio, briefly. Again, Jet Set Radio is a very normal game -- norm, at least, by what the industry pumps out. Its a 3D spatial game with elements of fantasy. The rules of the game are -- for the most part -- the rules of our spatial reality. People, buildings, gravity... In that, its no different than the most gritty first person shooters. Even the most realistic games introduce elements of complete fantasy -- sometimes in the forms of alien invasions, most usually in tossing out the elements of life which are counter-intuitive to the gameplay experience: when you play a first person shooter and get shot, once, does your character bend over, suffer from internal bleeding and slowly die? No, they get shot alot, pick up health packs, etc. This is one of the most unrealistic thing in games -- and permeates almost everyone of them. Thus, there isn't much that makes Jet Set Radio distinct from the vast majority of titles -- and to do anything with this topic, you have to distill things until you write about a minority.

So, with more unsolicited advice, if you are going to tackle this issue, I think you need to split things up into more logical and manageable doses. Perhaps create a series of thematicly related articles called:

"Screw the Real World"

* Abstract Games -- Pac-Man, Vib-Ribbon, et al. Really a retro-gamers wet dream, since these tend to emphasize pure gameplay over all else. These are the games of the early arcades -- shapes moving around in a set of rules. Whats really interesting would be modern examples of this, too (Geometry Wars, that new Emo Cube thing).
* The Living Cartoon -- Your Cel Shaders go here, and any other bizarre thematic games with a cartoonish feel, perhaps.
* The World Doesn't Work Like That -- Radical takes on reality, such as Crush, which has you switching the world from 3D to 2D. To hell with Newton, and other aberrations of physics. Parappa the Rapper, perhaps, would belong here. Um Jammer Lammy rules. Echrome, certainly.
* WTF -- Your non-anthropomorphic, semi-realized fantasy worlds. Game systems, generally, but more elaborate than your abstracts. Loco Roco would probably fit here.
* Misconceptions of the Dark Ages -- The world is flat, and here you can delve into games which exemplify 2D gameplay. Bomberman, Mario Bros, whatever.

So and so forth.

If you want to ignore realism/unreality as gameplay, you could focus your articles on artistic styles: Dadaism, Classical, Folk, Futurism, Bauhaus, Surrealism, Pre-Raphaelite, Post-Modern.... Okami is a very nice example of classical Japanese Bamboo Brush painting infused into a game. I don't know if I like the game itself, but it certainly is beautiful. I generally dislike classifications in art, but I think it would be quite interesting in terms of how art influences games.

[durkada]

I agree that sports (and management?) games aside, all games are firmly wedged in fantasy land and there they should stay, but I see the split I think you are talking about in the majority of games..

While most mainstream games (like GTA4, Zelda, Final Fanatasy, Half-life) mimic real situations but are still very much a work of fantasy there is also a set of games that not only dont base their ideas on reality, but dont base them on any other game around at the time, or even since in the case of Vib Ribbon, or Electroplankton. These absract games are surely the most imaginative of all? Most artistic people base their work on there real life experiences, even sci-fi and fatanst novels have their plots based around human relationships/interactions and polictical situations like war we all have some kind of experience of, to dream up something utterly original is pretty damn impressive, although not impossible.

Interesting that technical limitations in the past may well have been instrumental in creating some of the most abstract games, forcing the designers to create games that were fun rather than trying to emulate life. Is the technical ability of current machines getting in the way of creative ideas? is the current level of immersion in a game becoming more important than how much fun it is?

Wish I had read this rather than posting my massive missive. Could have just said "ditto".

[Daniel Primed]

I've had this thread at the back of my mind for the last few days. I'll review what you've said and think about it some more.

[Curlypaul]

I was leafing thru Games tm and I spotted 2 new games that made my think of this thread and your list of unrealistic games, firstly Patapon which looks very sytalized (I cant spell) and is apparently a cross between a rythm game and a platformer.
Even more fitting than that though is Echochrome which involves guiding a little manikin around impossible geometric mazes. I guess most puzzlers are pretty damn abstract although this even more than normal