I was reading through this thread on 4X-style game development: http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=294180 When someone made this comment:

Quote:

Well I read through this thread as I myself am designing a 4x game. Though the thing I noticed while reading was the over emphasis on realism, it's like you lot want to make a simulation. I mean it's a game. Sure some peope will want the added realism, but I doubt the majority do. All this talk on technology trees, if it's going to interesting, fun, and not too complex, then realism shouldn't get totally in the way. Personally I think too much realism will take away from any 4x game, not to mention the audience will want a 4x game and not a simulation. Just my thoughts. :)

This struck me as a significant question because in the game I've been slowly developing, I have leaned heavily towards a realistic, hard science-fiction, simulator type environment. My reasons for doing so is that it would seem to me to generate a game environment for more meaningful and complex strategy. If the game universe operates in a realistic manner, it can also be manipulated in a realistic manner. Indeed, my design document describes the game as a simulator. However, I have tried to be sensitive to the other point of view, which is that it is just a game after all, and the point of playing a game is to have fun. So my question is, are most people willing to sacrifice realism for the sake of keeping it fun, as the original poster suggests? Or would players enjoy maintaining a strong sense of realism (as I would) in the hope that it facilities a more strategic and interactive environment (and making it fun in a different way)? (Example: I know that my opponent has a construction yard on a base positioned on Mars. This construction yard is building a formidable fleet that he intends to use against me. Knowing that the game universe works in a realistic manner, I decide that rather than attacking his base outright, I will instead attack a convoy of cargo freighters that is delivering food and supplies to the base. If I do this, I know he's going to have to re-stock his next supply shipment with food rather than the ship components he was going to use to build his fleet. This, at least, will slow him down, hopefully long enough for me to gather my own defensive measures.)

I think you can make a simulation game fun, even to people who arn't interested in what its simulating. Example:

Tiger Woods Golf series. So its just golf, right? Walk up to the ball, check the wind, aim, and powerup the swing. Hit the ball, it flies through the air lands in the rough.

I just missed out all the fun bits. Which are, respectively: Customisable golfer, you've unlocked content and styled your own avatar, Sexy GUI with changing colours for wind strength (I think), powering the swing takes concentration and is tricky enough to be realy satisfying when you get it spot on. A exagerated THWACK through your 5.1 system. The ball flies, with the camera tracking behind it, flying through the air over the fairway. When they make landing in the rough fun ill eat my hat.

You don't have to sacrifice realism to make a game fun, just exagerate the bits of it that are best and reduce the bits that are boring.

Dogcity said it right regarding removing the boring parts from the game and keeping only the fun ones...

There is one more thing. When you're aiming for realism in a game you should inform the player of the possibilities, and , for the cases where you don't tell him "you can do x like in real world" you'd better make sure that the game systems are so general and well done that all his asumptions are proven to be correct. What I mean is that while realism is hard to accomplish, it can be VERY fun if done correctly. If a player can do other things based on logic than the game says it can, and the things seem right, he will be happy.

One example comes to my mind here: newtonian flight models in space combat games. I-war series and Terminus to be more precise. While the tutorials teach you to fly forward, back, and do a myriad other things, they don't teach you to fight properly, because they tend to give the player the distinct idea that they're flying an airplane , not a spaceship in a frictionless,highly inertial environment. So, the player learns by himself and by using common sense that the key to winning fights is not zooming around shooting baddies, but actually keeping a low speed and move only when necessary to avoid blaster fire from other enemies. This way he minimizes the impact of inertia on his ship and increases the time he has for aiming and hitting enemies.

Frontier is another good example... too much simulation and not enough game? I still loved it though, back in the day.

I think on the other side of the spectrum, not enough realism also cuts out of the fun. For example: Battlefeild 1942 has some slight problems with this.
I throw a 0.5 lb high explosive grenade at an enemy soldiers feet and it blows him sky high. Okay, cool.
I shoot a 1.5 lb rocket at the same soldiers feet and the soldier brushes off the dust and shoots me.

Realistically you'd expect the rocket to blow the enemy to smithereens but it doesnt and it becomes a let-down.

:) Ensure your game focuses most of its attention on the "fun factors" and not so much on the simulation factors - unless your intent is to create the most realistic simulator around (which I usually find boring).