Gabe Newell: fun is NOT realism, but reinforcement 

The fun: _"SHIT, I've missed so many times..."_

My new litmus test for a fun game: If I can't draw a penis in-game in every level (so Duke Nukem Forever doesn't get points), the game isn't fun.

But what about LOOT BOXES?!?!?!

@@adriannalockhart9639 2017 was almost 7 years ago

Underrated comment. There was a time when this consideration flew under devs' radar as unnecessary coding/effort.

Don’t forget about a blue critter saving animals from a fat scientist

​@@Polychi1998sonic doesn't come as near as successful as Mario is, and i prefer sonic for the most part (as in, anything sonic before 2009)

An italian that was made by a Japanese fella should also be included

Some games look pretty bizarre once you start thinking about them for long enough

@@AlyphRat Zuma: "You're a frog spitting marbles to defeat Mesoamerican deities."

I felt that, too. Don't accuse the white wizard of selfishness, he doesn't want to harm you.

Just check how he introduced the 2023 international

@@TaydolfSwifter Was about to type that XD

watch how hes gonna get super ripped in like two more years

or he old and dying

@@yoursleepparalysisdemon1828 lmfao

the ancient magic is getting to him

it's his stand-in, Nate Gewell

same

Such a mood that someone can not release a game in like 20 years and still get toe suckers using obnoxious terms like “such a mood”

@@sirspongadoodle Stay mad lil bro

@@nopenaw9846 ok troll

just tell them your capable of finding games that are timeless. (if good game lol)

That is such a hotline miami moment

@@Zuamzaka I don't play hotline miami, please explain

Too bad, they don't give a sh*t, all they care is our money and that's it, only a few good company now but it not enough to change anything , and yet I don't wish for another 83s crisis, back then Nintendo save us, but now if it happens again, no one can save gaming anymore

@@Vietnam_Gigachad It's pretty bad aside from a few indie devs carrying the scene. The only big names I can respect these days are fromsoft and Valve, everything else is just a product.

@@trickshot727 isn’t fromsoft that company that releases the games famous for being unnecessarily difficult in attempt to feel “realistic”? I don’t think that’s a good example to put in for realism not being good.

​@@PotaraP ??? The games are far from unnecessarily hard and the only realistic part about any of the souls games is that you're absolutely gonna die, and the guy said nothing about fromsoft making games that weren't realistic, just that they're one of the few companies that don't farm people for money. I apologize if this comes off a little strong but you're statement was just so wrong it hurt me not to say anything

Yeah enough with this cinematic crap and focus on grounded realism from Hollywood dropout writers who want to make games into movies. God of War reboot is such a big offender, it killed so much because it wanted to take the "grounded in realism" approach

Do people really complain in that way though?

@@redakdalstarfield isn’t fun anyways lol

@@PHeMoX Alot, many fps and strategy game always being complained as 'not realistic"

or they'll say why a mechanic isn't in a game because it "wouldn't be realistic otherwise". one of the dumbest excuses

He is the santa claus of gaming

To be fair, following the philosophy of the developer of the fps Black for the ps2 "I think that if you have a gun you still should be able to have fun even in an empty room."

As in Starfields criticisms are not warranted after all?

My problem isn't the empty planets, but that they all look the damn same. That's just an inherent flaw with procedural generation

@@no-replies no that's just bad generation them being boring isn't because procedural generation as a concept is bad it's because Bethesda made a bad procedural generation system

@@segismundosaulalex3065 That's right and going into space as an example for "Starfield's planet exploration" is already fighting against the concept of realism in the sense that it's already science fiction, virtually anything can occur in space as we ourselves did not explore enough of it, so what is stopping developers from building random encounters in space whether it be like an abandoned asteroid mine for you to go explore and loot or fight creepy enemies or a frigate asking for help from space pirates, jumping from warp space straight into a battle as a random encounter, you get stopped half way through your destination so you don't collide with ships and they get destroyed or anything like that, there is so much that can be done as it's still a concept that's not fully explored and so much that can be created just out of our own minds.

I know Fireaxis (makes of Civilization and the new XCOM games) uses a similar definition, they actually have this math formula, basically they measure how many meaningful decision a player makes per minute, as a way to measure how engaging a game is

Well, everyone wants acknowledgement in real world. That alone makes a video game both fun and realistic.

That's the difference between immersion and realism which I'm ngl I like realism in my games but I don't expect every game to be realistic, however I admire games like squad, hell let loose, tarkov, and Arma for their "realism" cause it immersing for me, that being said games like doom, new vegas, balders gate, and spec ops the line immerse me with music, story being effected by choices, actually trying something and it works, and voice acting (specifically the voice lines changing in spec ops the worse his mental state gets). Ngl though seeing a gun work improperly as someone who knows alot about firearms is very immersion breaking but realism should only be flavoring to fun for games that use realistic features for immersion.

Sounds depressing

Jeez you need to go outside

honestly yeah, the first time i watched this I was like whoa gabe let's chill a little here, but that's what happens when you speak from the heart - you can't keep your emotions from spilling over

Gabe unleashed his anger only one time, scientists call that day the big bang

@@Tulip_bipThe Big Gabe

@@Tulip_bip *the resonance cascade

No? If you watched his interview on ps3 development he also shows emotion.

Duke Nukem 3D came out the year before, so that wasn't the case. You talked to people who played modern games, not old ones, old games had super reactive levels. Doom and Quake had levels that would change at random and pieces you had to shoot.

@@trabuco9 i think its more about people that try to play it nowadays

@@stroyosh4670 Exactly what I meant. It's even more obvious when you watch people try to play HL2 for the first time today, because they will always struggle with the first few physics puzzles. But when it came out in 2004, when everyone knew the excellent physics engine was one of the game's main selling points, it was much more intuitive. Buoyant barrels under an item will push them up, cinder blocks stacked on top will weigh them down - obvious when you know it's possible in the game world, inconceivable if you're conditioned to think it's not.

Nowadays games have to basically beat into you that is a mechanic since nobody expects it to be one

I’ve noticed that many people literally don’t try anything beyond what’s immediately obvious when playing games, consequently getting frustrated and bored. It frankly boggles my mind.

I agree except for the fact that he did want to make money, he just wanted to make money by providing the best products and services possible. that's honorable

The point of Steam was, at launch, a way of adding DRM to HL2. You needed Steam to play HL2, even though all the game content was on disc. At the time this got a lot of flak and even some boycotting, but it is clear that regardless of what it was in 1998, Valve is now 'the company that made Steam' far more than 'the company that made HL1', beyond a doubt. Gabe wanted to make a great game, sure, but to be clear Valve is exceptionally money-hungry and has been since around 2005 or 2006. They have one of the best profit-per-employee ratios in not just games, but in the world, when it comes to privately owned corporations. It would be a mistake to think Valve invented Steam to make it easier for the consumer. It received about a proportional amount of backlash as the Epic Games Store did when it launched.

@@disseminate4 still a far more respectable version then what came after, at least there was a want to make something good

Inserting some real facts: Valve Corporation generated $10B in revenue from the Steam Store in 2022, and Gaben is a billionaire. Their last game apart from the tiny VR half-life episode was Dota 2 in 2013, coinciding with the year Gaben got the BAFTA award. 😢

Valve just has a higher internal standard of a quality product. Of course that doesn't always translate to reality (e.g. Artifact lol) but its why they have such strong brand loyalty. The focus on quality over quantity is why their games have done so well (but is also why we have never gotten Half Life 3) Also they have Steam printing them free money so they aren't in need of releasing a new game every 2 years to keep that cash flow.

Now that you mention it, now I see one more reason why Undertale exploded in popularity.

​​@@klerobatoforcaI wouldn't consider Undertale to be an RPG. It's more of a JRPG. It has linear story paths akin to Shin Megami Tensei's alignments, which tracks with Undertale's other influence being SMT.

stalker (call of pripyat, i forgot how quests go in other games)

@@CJojo_13_ Yes it is an RPG, the genre with the loosest definition out of them all. It can't be a JRPG because the game isn't Japanese, it's a WRPG with heavy influence from JRPGs sure.

@@CJojo_13_ Strange comment... JRPGs are a subset of RPGs. Every JRPG is an RPG!

it hasnt taken the industry thirty years to figure out fun, games were already fun but we got to a period where developers got obsessed with making every game too realistic and too cinematic when there needs to be a balance

I can hear the British in your comment "My favorite bit about this entire bit roight"

I doubt Gabe's that passionate about games. He's passionate about tech and industry innovation; most every Valve game title was just a platform to push out new tech. If he cared about games themselves he wouldn't have let all Valve's gold IPs just slough into atrophy.

Gaben raises some great points, but I would like to say that realism still is important to a certain degree in games where the setting is based on history. If you screw up your realism there, you could really throw off the immersion and world-building. Outside of this specific context, realism is not that important.

@@TaRAAASHBAGS you doubt the founder of Valve is that passionate about games when he's basically giving you his thesis statement on what fun in gaming is? to each his own.

I would say the term grounded works too.

Things should still be believable, even in fantasy!

Verisimilitude

Exactly. I don't ask, "is this realistic?" I ask "is this immersive, can I suspend my disbelief?" And Half-Life does very well with the latter, it's one of the most immersive shooters I've played.

it's suspension of disbelief

Sums up modern gaming quite well.

My favourite part of TLOU2 is when Hydrogen by M.O.O.N. plays because it reminds me of Hotline Miami (a game that’s actually good)

And to think that Cuckman, the master of the 7 "REAL" awards wants to make a Hotline Miami game....

@@CosmeaYT it’ll probably be movie cutscenes with some gameplay and generic third person shooter gameplay sprinkle in, and pull a lame Undertale message about “we’re the real monsters” and lots of expedition.

@@CosmeaYT Didn’t the devs say that HM3 was never happening though? Also the ending of HM2 literally shows everyone being wiped out.

The worst part is, you're probably right. This might just be what they're taking away from this.

@@Mike14264 I mean they don't even need to. Economy encourages making games in multiple ways. Gabe is definitely towards "make games that I'd enjoy myself", which is arguably the best way to know people are gonna buy. But there's also "make games from statistics". Stick to what's mainstream. FPS, open world, ultra hd _because ppl investing into GPUs feel lame running ps2 graphics on it_ , a sick trailer to rise the hype, bonus points for nostalgic license. Sadly or not, people just buy these. Marketting department "knows" we're gonna love it, and when we see it, we recognize this stuff, remember it's once been fun, and that pushes the purchase. I think in the current gaming industry, they don't need this "reinforcement theory bs". Understanding stats is enough to trick people into purchasing. Kinda sounds evil, but I wish AI takes over the gaming industry : Compiling and interpreting stats is what it's best at, so it would make it so easy to create the "best" game possible that it would discourage studios from spamming the same stuff over and over. Meanwhile, could AI recreate games as unique as Undertale, Omori and all that stuff? Yes, but it would also generate an infinite amount of games alongside these so that no one would have enough of its life to even find them, so I think that would still leave room to game devs. Or everything I said could just be all wrong lol

@@eglaiosdeminecraft9259 I actually not once ever thought about buying an FPS game back then and even now, ironically. Hmm, interesting plan you have over there, but I'm not sure just how willing would be they be to stop mass-producing games by stats. Plus, well, misuse of AI, obvs

Graphics are the easiest thing you can brag about in ads and to clueless 65-year-old investors, that's why they're so important to them.

"ai" cannot "create" anything that hasn't been there before. It can only rearrange

Aka points of disinterest

The only ubisoft game that has eschewed this is r6 siege.

Damn that's so true. At that point you're just doing countless meaningless task after meaningless task.

Hey hey hey! I'm really against meaningless chores but Horizon didn't have stuff like that. 115 hours and I did every single thing and explored every bit, unlocked achievements and it all felt like it was meant to be there and everything had meaning. It was hard sometimes but it was always worth it. Not like Rise of the Tomb Raider for example, where they throw a bunch of stuff without any thoughts before, to make a shitty day even shittier.

This sentiment is exactly why I avoid using fast travel in games unless the travel is tedious and/or ridiculous. If I don't get to experience every interesting thing in-between, then why bother with an open world?

The energy these kinds of clips have is so perfect. Highly respected, legendary creator weighs in on commonly contentious topic to essentially say "it's bullshit" in the clearest and most well put together way possible while subtly calling anyone who disagrees a dumbass.

@@jameshibberd5134 There are reasons they actually created the great works of fiction that they did, and a grounded attitude like that is a huge one. The guy who wastes time obsessing over pointless details will be lucky to finish a project at all.

Fun can be escapism in itself. Bro.

@@tearex8688 agree.

blame open world games for that, chase after immersion gave rise to realism ,you just gotta immerse yourself as the loser you are in real life as the protag, over time this skews mentalities.

@@MGrey-qb5xz I remember a time where we were excited for the idea of open world games. like, imagine having the same quality of linear single player game but ten time bigger and ten time the content. (few games did it sadly) this why i hate movie games (mostly Sony games) it's all look but lackluster gameplay. and they get treated better over more deserving games because of their looks. the "my graphics" guys are the worst.

I'm glad that's the feeling I have when I play Pokemon and Monster Hunter. I can have gripes and I certainly don't grind it for hours to get that perfect thing, but I know that I wake up, pick up my Switch, and the first thing I did was play the games that I had fun with, even if I don't play them now as often.

Max Payne 1 pfp, respect

a good way of putting it imo is internal consistency. I can accept any set of rules a game puts in front of me as long as it abides by its own rules, and as long as I'm having fun while doing it. take Spyro as an example, it doesn't matter one iota that talking purple dragons aren't realistic, the game has a set of rules (collect-a-thon, 3D platformer, time attack, etc) that it never deviates from. There's never a point where the game penalizes you for going for an objective and that's more important than 🤓 well akshually magic gems aren't real and it's highly unlikely for there to be a fire breathing lizard that talks like Tom Kenny 🤓

suspension of disbelief

This is something I thought about for a long time but never tried to consciously word...fiction in general, not just games needs to make just enough sense, after that, go wild. It doesn't need to be 1000% real life accurate logic, just enough to be believable / understandable / immersive and so on and after that introduce all the Gmans and Borealises you want.

Believability is more relevant than realistic, like how in star wars you can hear sounds in space. It's not realistic, but it's believable.

Yeah, but Valve DID pretty much popularise lootboxes and microtransactions in videogames.

@@TabbuEme Yeah I wonder if Gabe is feeling like Oppenheimer on what he just done to the gaming industry lol.

Only Nintendo is better.

@@philharrison2991 Nintendo? Why?

Hopefully these messages can leave an impact strong enough for the message to live on in practice too, in AAA games made by other companies that aren't Nintendo.

I trust Gabe to choose the right exec as his successor. I don't think he'll let valve crumble that easily.

Go back to playing those games. They have not left.

@@TylerMcNamer They are already in my game library. You don't need to tell me about that

That's not true at all. There will always be money men who try to leech any industry and suck all the profits out of it. But, over time, these guys fail. This cycle has already happened in the computer hardware industry. The marketing types showed up in companies like HP, IBM, AMD, even Intel. They thought they could come up with creative ways to generate more profits without having to spend so much on research and development. All those companies lost tons of market share in the process. HP is now a shell of what it once was. IBM had to significantly restructure to still have a place in the industry. Everyone knows the Apple story. AMD went through several terrible CEOs before hiring Lisa Su who completely turned the company around. This will happen with gaming too. Shitty CEOs will come and go. Many many years from now Gabe Newell will pass away. But other passionate and creative people will come along and create entertainment the likes of which we cannot even imagine now reaching new heights in creativity.

He understood it way back in 1998.

@@conyo985 and the fact he still stands by it is more impressive

Go watch Miyamoto talking about how they made Mario. He got it when there were no games.

@@Beunibster thank you

@@Beunibster Many games came out before Mario lol

As a Borderlands player This is why I play the games. Are the Guns realistic? Hell no The setting is pure sci fi with mega corporations straight out of cyberpunk bandits that talk insane gibberish, claptrap won't shut up. And magie women with space magic ( Sirens) But the series is pure fun personified

@@michaelknox3715 *Yes!* 110% I agree!

"Most people try and argue boring games are good because of realism." Literally everyone who defends The Calisto Protocol because of "muh facial animation" or something. Like, I don't give a rat's ass about how good the character's face looks (especially when I'm staring at the back of their head 90% of the time), I care about the combat and level design. Both of which are terrible, btw. I'd describe TCP as "A somehow even more basic Mike Tyson's Punch-Out gameplay loop against generic zombies in linear levels that consist of random concrete corridors that make absolutely no logical sense as a real place. Oh, and it's not even scary." The sheer graphical "realism" even goes so far as to directly impact gameplay negatively. Dead Space lets you just instantly absorb a medpak from your inventory without any animation. This lets you play more risky, and get more aggressive (which is more fun than methodically chipping down every enemy in the most optimized way to avoid damage) since you can top-off at any moment. In TCP, because of "muh realizm", it'd break "immersion" to just insta-use a medkit like that, so instead he has to pull it out of his inventory, slowly kneel down, carefully drive the syringe into his neck, slowly push the plunger to inject the fluid, wince, look at the syringe to make sure it's empty, and then stand back up while rubbing his neck. It makes it so it is utter suicide to use a medkit in combat, punishing risky playstyles that might've tried to make TCP's boring gameplay loop at least marginally enjoyable. Sorry for rant :)

There is a “boring” game called voices of the void, but it makes you more paranoid the more monotonous it gets(it’s a horror game btw) which builds tension upon tension upon tension, the games genuinely horrifying after a few hours.

These "most people" are a figment of your imagination. They are not real. Nobody would argue a boring game is good because of realism.

Go to at least 1 video about DETAIL in gta 5 and there would be people saying about gta 4 trust me @@theobell2002

Late reply, but Rdr2 is a boring game compared to the first one and also one of the most awarded ever despite its mediocre gameplay because "realism".

so glad there's finally a sign we can tap on, whenever some numbskull goes "but dis annoying mechanic is good because its realistic!!" or "dis mechanic is bad because it's not realistic!!" with no other reasoning

I tell those people this: "You want realism so much then why don't you touch grass? The most fun and realistic thing ever."

Can you use other word? Because based for gamers means bigot

@@mathinho1237 Bigot? Bigot on what

@@mathinho1237 Based: "A strong, potentially controversial statement based in fact, made with disregard to naysayers". Also means "someone being themselves, i.e. courageous and unique or not caring what others think". That's the meaning I meant to imply here.

I haven't really forgiven steam for not finishing the series; if Gabe really cares about gaming, I don't see why he can't afford the resources for a finale for a game going on 2 decades unfinished.

​​@@nyarlat2609They're saving it for when they're doing badly financially or whenever they need to sell hardware.

@@nyarlat2609 valve owns steam

They didn't. CoD is a mainstream game because it's mostly a movie. Other than that, tons of games picked up Half-Life's elements and built on it. Play the following FPS to completion and talk after that: Bioshock, FEAR, Painkiller, DOOM3,2016,Eternal, Titanfall 2, No One Lives Forever, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein:The New Order, Prey, Serious Sam, Far Cry, Dishonored, Crysis etc. Plenty more out there which are hybrids and whatnot but those come off the top of my head. Nevermind all the DOOM clones that do an excellent job as well as the retro modern shooters like Dusk or Ultrakill

This

Lol, this sounds like why I dropped The Division 1 after 7 hours of playtime. Game was pretty but I hated how it felt like I was making no regional progress and was just moving from set piece to set piece.

gordon would be way scarier than the division 2 guy, bro can run headfirst into a combine hyper scary base or something and he walks out the front door 10 minutes later with the combine facility falling out of reality or some crazy shit kliener cooked up

Bad take. Division 2 is a good game and you're not meant to "win" the "war" on your own. You're a single agent out of many trying to contain the goddamn apocalypse. It's a team effort. You're not a newbie, you're one man out of thousands. You piece NY & Washington DC back together. Half life 1 simply doesn't have that same immersion, and frankly Half life 2 doesn't either. I felt actual progress in The Division and I was immersed in a broken NY. I felt no such progress in Half life, no immersion.

@@ThunderTheBlackShadowKitty Yeah I felt soooooo much immersion hearing same shit from npc over and over again.

but then, not realistic airplane piloting can be fun, if not even funnier than realistic one. compare for example war thunder, where plane stuff is incredibly realistic, and games like Project Wingman or Ace Combat 7. are these two realistic? quite the opposite, imo. are they fun, yes! but to some people its the opposite, where they enjoy WT more than the other two. i guess its about the persons preferences

What is this comment supposed to mean?

i like the idea like those walls in wolfenstein in doom where they look like a normal wall but is actually a secret door except there's one "wall" where you shoot it, it smashes you at 300mph after a few seconds

@@thewiseowl8804 walls are largely indifferent to you in any context. there’s an expression “talking to a wall”, meaning you are being ignored. gabe was talking about how bullet holes reinforce immersion because that’s a response, that makes it feel less like you’re being ignored by the world, especially when it’s coming from something that’s not inherently very responsive. you should take the “wise” out of your handle if you didn’t get that.

Walls do that, yes... until it's something like Red Faction: Guerilla. Then their existence is more a suggestion than an obstruction.

@@logandunlap9156 If you're going to speak for someone else, could you at least _try_ to answer what I _actually_ want answered? Very embarrassing power trip and misunderstanding.

And if any studios try anything unique or interesting or new they get shit on for being unrealistic or otherwise. The gaming industry is very toxic.

I’m now adverse to anything labeled as “AAA” outside of Nintendo and Valve. It’s nearly the same as “blockbuster” movies. Top heavy over bloated budget media that exists only to make its investment back in the blandest way possible.

we also had ghost recon, rainbow six, swat, delta force, commandos and a lot of all sorts of flight sims. they were also very fun and quite challanging. they knew perfectly well how to mix realism with fun.

DID SOMEBODY SAY GEX?

@@quarterburnt Rockstar is still goated as well Grand theft auto and Red dead redemption are always instant classics

I don't know, pissing in red dead 2 is entertaining

next elder scrolls game you defo won't be allowed to swim naked in glaciers cause "mah immersion" , i already modded it out but i so so hate how bethesda forces you to use a chair to wait like wtf. WHat you can't sit on the ground

@@MGrey-qb5xz that becomes unrealistic when they restrict you through stuff you can do in real life like sit on the ground

@@circleinforthecube5170 Like a game having a hunger mechanic but I can't get literal days' worth of meat from killing a cow. Just look at Fallout 4 and how little meat you get off of Brahmin. Like if it was actually realistic, I'd be having to spend the whole day cooking and drying the meat to get the most use of it all. Though F4's realism difficulty still makes enemies more damage spongey than Normal, so it's kind of breaking in a lot of ways...

tlou 2 fits gabe's definition of fun

@@Handonforehead No it doesn't lmao

To be fair, a game doesn't have to be "fun" to be enjoyable. I don't watch a depressing WW2 film to have "fun", but it's still an experience I get something from

@@Ben-Rogue you can use "fun" in the sense that you enjoyed it or had a good time with it.

​@@Ben-RogueGood movies are fun, war movies are fun, combat is fun Seeing soldiers stand around doing nothing all day without a good narrative or fun characters isn't fun. Also videogames aren't movies.

I've always thought of unrealistic stories as superior to realistic ones, because they're just the optimal way to convey pure emotions and ideas. We see reality every day and our brain makes many associations. If I show you an ordinary scene, you will probably naturally recall an experience or yours, which can even be of profound meaning to you, but isn't something I originally planned in my narration. I didn't mean to make you recall that. Of course this is very less frequent in less familiar unrealistic subjects, so you're more likely to understand what the original meaning was. Reality is flawed to an extent.

@@samueleproiettimicozzi8134 During the past few years I find much more fun when studying about actual history than reading fictions. For example, the plot of Game of Thrones just sucks. Its political intrigues are very flat and expectable. Maybe this is a 'curse of believablity', causing the story to be plagued by overused cliches, while the actual history is seasoned with unbelievable miracles, coincidences and ambiguities (uncoverable mysteries because the records are gone or even deliberatly erased).

How can somebody say that after they managed to release one of THE GREATEST video game "celebration" updates of all time?

No. Just leave things as they are before we get portal 3....4.... etc.

We did get CS2 recently

tf2 fans are suffering

ip.

Some people are just bad critics incapable to explain their criticisms in details and coherent manners such as those complaining about "realism" and some of them can't explain it further other than expecting you to agree without question. Hence, the confusion on what "realism" really means in video game.

Yes, it really is a case where the vocabulary we use to describe games have become outdated. I think that when something gives you agency in a game and it feels ”natural” we use the words ”realistic” as a definition. We have used that word in the gaming world for decades, but it is many times just interpreted as ”good graphics”, to the detriment of gaming development as a whole.

I rather like very realistic games, like Kingdom Come and Way of the Hunter. A good designer knows, however, when to fudge realism for fun. So if you want a challenge, you can just crank up difficulty without much extra grind. It's the same as being a GM for a tabletop game. You know when to fudge rolls for your players when the result can make the game more exciting or dynamic, while keeping things fair. But if you completely sacrifice the illusion of every roll being legit, then players question every roll. And if you fudge nothing, then players can become frustrated by a run of horrible luck, or give up the chance for a player's daring gambit to pay off, encouraging further risk taking. If you want it to be dynamic and exciting, you have to take liberties with reality, while keeping it realistic in context.

Plus, Escape from Tarkov is a very good realistic extraction FPS game. The risk and reward system is pretty good and challenging.

@@emperorfaiz parroting a quote from a gamedev i heard once, "people are good at figuring out when something is wrong, but not what is wrong" basically, when a gamer is having a bad time with a mechanic in a videogame, they know they aren't having fun and they're getting frustrated, but they come up with answers (such as the classic realism argument) to try and figure out why they're having such a bad time.

It’s GayBen :)

I think in certain survival games realism can be fun. Maybe the player shouldn't need to shit that's obvious, but seeing the seasons slowly change and the length of the days changing with it is surreal and unexpected from a survival game. Bonus points if the game acts like there's an equator and changes the length of the seasons relative to your distance from it. I want the world to feel alive and it feeling alive will depend in part on my ability to interact with the world and the world's ability to change.

@@dright928 Absolutely, the point of my comment was I both wanted to make the point everyone else is making about realism being unnecessary in some instances, but I also wanted to make it point that realism isn’t exclusively taking away from the fun, it can be part of the fun and survival games are an example of this. I want the idea to be that developers need to think about realism in a way of it being able to add something to a game, but it also taking time and resources from other parts of the game, and finding their own middle ground between including the right amount of realism, whilst being able to allocate enough resources to other parts of their game that may need it.

The obsession with realism has been around since we first got glimpses of great 3d graphics. Somewhere around the ps3 era people became obsessed with "but thats not realistic" attitude towards everything. Its why clowns are no longer seen as funny but creepy. Why Pee Wee is often seen as a crazy weirdo instead of an innocent man child. Hopefully this trend is on the downfall because I wish people could just have fun again with media instead of everything being so serious and "realistic".

@@BoyoLoco-rd2fi Seriousness and realism have a place within media but I do agree that perhaps some more lightheartedness and wackiness could be present in media.

@@dright928 another thing is that when electronics in games are interactable, like in gta 5 i'd like to be able to use a tv than can access the vlc media player in my pc and play videos or use a computer in-game to get more worldbuilding info

As I said in an earlier comment, It's like how sound effects are always extreme over the top versions of the real life sound they represent

Feedback from your actions also helps you learn the game, hollow knight never tells you that you can hit spikes with a downward swing to get knocked upward, but when you hit spikes from the side you get knocked backward.

What do microtransactions have to do with games acknowledging the way you play? In csgo if you shoot at a wall, it shows a decal. It seems it does everything Newell said, except soldiers running away because now they're real people.

@@Linkale_ Good question. I already did differentiate above that I think Gabe Newell’s argument in context applied to narrative, single player game design and not competitive multiplayer design. But even going beyond that, I think the key word that entails what we’re talking about is thoughtfulness, “consideration for the needs of other people”. I specifically think if Gabe’s complaint of “the wall is ignoring my existing as a narcissistic injury” as not a pejorative for wall decals and destructible environments, but a mandate on the player’s behalf to iterate in ways to reward the player their time and investment in the world. The issue with microtransaction, games-as-a-service should then be obvious…the value isn’t meant to be provided, but taken from the player for their time. The confusion seems to be the cause and effect in the point. One thing like wall decals and physics in combat and AI are effects stemming from a cause that is not the same as what Gaben mentions. Rainbow Six Siege has a lot of the same destructible, interactive features as something like Valve’s Counterstrike but it is clearly not from a philosophy of iteration, but a need to be able to sell more (increasingly) empowered player-characters who can exert their agency on other players…Case in point, the iteration in the game’s development beyond the sellable player characters has ceased. Same goes for TF2 and CS:GO with their only remaining focus being principally on cosmetics, at least until Source 2 was finishing development, and now we will see what follows. But don’t take my word on it, how would you interpret Valve’s actions towards gamers with their failure to either make new single player games at all or have debacles like with Artifact? Does (or does not) the difference in actions as a Company reflects a change in philosophy of what Gaben speaks here for HL1?

@@Linkale_ If the above reply is too long-whinded, consider this. In a lot of 2000s “classic” hits, especially Valve productions, the game itself is the product made for us, “by gamers for gamers”, you could say. In the 2010’s onwards, we as gamers are the products for the games. And it has been a lot more exploitative of a dynamic, right? The devs themselves are crunched by budgets and forced into spending their time and efforts into, for example, designing gambling/loot boxes, player markets that require real money for cosmetics, microtransactions, incessant data collection, season passes, endless dlcs, esport promotion, cyclical multiplayer focus that intentionally plays off dopamine cycles, and general timed game design made to take more of player’s time to keep them engaged ad infinitum, rather than taking less out of consideration and to reach an end goal.)

​@fictionalfan7306 Portal 2 and half life alyx show all of their design philosophies just as much as their old games did. And them taking a long time to make new games isn't a change to their philosophy at all, they've always been about perfectionism. They don't care how long it takes to make something as long as it ends up the way they want it to

@@Tulip_bip This response seems very accusatory. No one disputes that Portal 2 and Half Life: Alyx were great games, the accusation against Valve is that they abandoned their original mandate (that Gabe Newell discusses ad naseum in this documentary) to continue making more games like them. The gap between Portal 2 (2011) and Half Life Alyx (2020) speaks for itself.

I saw a few clips of the realistic animations for skinning animals etc, and realised I wanted no part in it!

The industry had far better games and the AAA budget scene wasn't even a thing back then. The problem was and always will be the investors behind a company. The developers should make the games they want to make not the investors and corporations.

They are too busy trying to shove a Battlepass or MTX in your face. * *2003:* _I used to go into a store to find a game,_ * *2023:* _Now I go into a game to find a store._ Microtransactions have become SO greedy they should be called *macrotransactions.*

@@MichaelPohoreski thats a really good way of saying it

that concept could be kinda cool, your in danger but its dead silent and you can only use your eyes

I've never heard anyone say that and I've played a lot of space games

@@circleinforthecube5170 Look at the game Duskers. It makes great use of silence.

I think the issue is games who don't go far enough either way. Grounded enough to feel like a slog but not deep enough in their mechanics to make you care or keep engaged. The newest Need for Speeds come to mind.

@@trabuco9 When I worked on _Need For Speed_ (PS1) I learnt the distinction between arcade, simcade, and simulation racing. It helped explain why NFS settled for simcade. Arcade racers like _Mario Kart_ and simcades like _Gran Turismo_ toss out realism when they allow rubberbanding because it makes multiplayer much more interesting when drivers are neck and neck. It allows those with less skill to catch up to those with more skill. *Fun is the focus at the expense of realism.* Simracers _don’t_ allow rubberbanding because the focus is on raw skill not artificial crutches or cheating. Which one is right? Depends on what people want for “house rules”! Some find arcade racing to be trivial toys; others find simracers to be complicated. *What is fun for one person may not be fun for another.* Consistency and the world _feeling_ alive by reacting to players is mandatory if players want to experience fun.

Not really, pretty much everything has been tried and done

they're still probably making games, they just haven't made one that is worth releasing yet

Half-Life Alyx is amazing

Nah, we need put that meme culture bullshit aside

No

@@mathinho1237 ok virgin

it never died

Until it breaks immersion or becomes a chore like goal to grind past a high score.

@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive It's not a chore. It's reinforcement. Competition in a fully reinforced activity feels amazing. Its power play

@@sakesaurus Competition in a singleplayer game?

@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive yes.

@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive ever heard of speedrunning?