Make games I do. Gameplay in games. Realism in games, adds sometimes to gameplay. Good that is. Other times, detracts it does from gameplay. Bad that is. Uber alles gameplay is, realism is but tool for creator. No opposition between the two, there exists!!

/Apoztel
Going degobaen while stating the obvious.

I am not a programmer.

It seems to me Dauntless' original post has more to do with the level of abstraction between the player and the game than it does with the realism vs. fun argument.

In the case of complex games, very realistic flight simulators for example, the rewards have to do with the player accomplishing some mental task, some actual learning activity. You've had to assimilate some complex technical information and learn to do something, such as land a plane on an aircraft carrier. Here there is personal satisfaction derived from accomplishing some knowledge-based task.

In the other example, the enjoyment comes more from the *character* accomplishing some task, rather than the player. So, we feel a sense of accomplishment if JC Denton manages to fight or sneak or hack his way through some high-security military facility. These are not things we had to learn to do ourselves. Sure, we (the players) had to initially learn to manipulate some simple interfaces within the game world (the iceBreaker in DX, for example), but we don't have to refer to a manual that teaches us now to hack into a security system.

I'm not sure if that explanation is as clear as it could be, but hopefully some people will follow what I'm trying to say. I think these are really two completely different kinds of 'fun', or enjoyment, or fulfillment, or however you'd like to label it. And these two types of fun appeal to different gamers, or different sensibilities in the same gamers.

R.

[edited by - tacit on May 28, 2002 5:24:53 PM]