Realism in Games

In today's blog post I will be evaluating different types of realism in games, and how it also fits into the Super Mario and Pokemon franchises. These are two series of games which are very-much known for not using many realistic elements, but they do include realism in less obvious places. I will be evaluating this starting with what realism is, with supporting evidence from (Siong Low, 2001).

According to (Galloway, 2004), there are various types and levels of realism games can take. Such as: abstract, stylisation, surrealism, hyper-realistic and photo-realistic. These are listed in order, which I will explain one by one. First are abstract graphics which have very few realistic elements, and instead the graphical style being very 'out there' (like a pixel art visual style), however almost every game has a realistic element of some kind, like the ball bouncing physics in the abstract 'Pong'. Stylisation on the other hand can still have many realistic elements (like gravity), however it normally has a very specific theme to it, such as bright and cartoony colours or a palliated black and white look. Stylisation helps give a game a distinct theme to help give itself more of an identity when being spotted by the consumer. Next are surreal graphics, which normally can include elements of realism in an unnatural way. An example of this in action is used in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, where surreal graphics can take a concept (like walking about in the world), and distort it greatly to create something else that's identifiable, but odd to look at (in Skyward Sword's Case the game is set on floating islands above the clouds, everyone knows what the sky and islands are, but it's incredibly strange to see them suspended in mid-air but oddly satisfying to behold).

Skyloft, a surreal land set in the sky that uses elements people are already familiar with. (Micheal, 2013)

Now onto hyper-realism, which is (as discussed by (Lynda D, 2014)) designed for games to have a realistic looking appearance, but using a large amount of hyperbole to cut back on small/unnecessary features and details. This is usually done due to hardware limitations that the game is being played on, to prevent unnecessary strain on the device. This can also be done to not overcrowd the screen real-estate and not have too much going on at once, or else it may become distracting for the player to physically look at. Finally there is photo-realism, not to be confused with hyper-realism, which is the visual style most graphically intensive video games use, photo-realism strives to look as life-like as possible, to the point where it looks like we're viewing the virtual world through our own eyes. This style is most commonly used for TV shows and movies, since these are pre-rendered and set up frame-by-frame before they're printed onto a disc, unlike games, which are rendered in real time by the hardware itself... And as a result performance would be very slow on everything except very high-end computers, since the device just wouldn't be able to process that much information at once, and the framerate would drop consequentially to that.

In my opinion realism in games is nice to have, and can help make the experience feel more immersive but it's not compulsory to craft a great gaming experience. This is something also discussed by Forbes journalist (Kain, 2012), who also stated that realistic graphics in a game are pretty to look at and nice to have, but not needed. To quote him: "When we watch a Pixar film, we aren’t docking points for unrealistic human faces. Mr. Incredible is enjoyable precisely because of his outsize proportions, but none of the characters in The Incredibles is realistically built. Their eyes are too big. Their heads are shaped funny. They’re not realistic, and we don’t care.". For example, in games where character animations start clipping through objects, you see really low-quality textures on walls and floors and when a game is too graphically demanding there are numerous FPS drops with stuttering, it can be quite distracting for me and even sometimes breaks the illusion of a game being a living, breathing world since you're sat there looking at those graphical impurities. I don't think that realism and a hyper-realistic visual style is necessary for a game to be good however, in fact it's the opposite in my opinion.

I very much enjoy games like Okami and Yoshi's Woolly World with a very stylised, unique and a colourful visual style, as different and creative visuals can only been seen in virtual media, whereas I feel if you want photo-realistic graphics all you have to do is look out the window. And I find myself able to immerse myself into games with colourful graphics easily, especially if there are lovable characters with engaging gameplay. So realism is nice to have, but not at all compulsory for a game to be objectively good, since a game's graphics doesn't really affect the core gameplay, story, characters, etc  In my opinion all realism is when boiled down from a visual style perspective is eye-candy to look, at without too much substance to back it up. And even then, I don't think a game can ever become truly 'realistic', as there's always going to be some in-game graphical bug or oddity to make it not a 100% perfect simulation. Even right now we're restricted by both physical computing hardware as well as our displays, since TVs only have so many pixels displayed on the screen at once, and the real world isn't made out of pixels in the first place! Even a hypothetical 8K screen wouldn't produce graphical detail on the level level as reality.

Yoshi's Woolly World, the game where everything is made of yarn (Simpson, 2015) 

Realism in Unrealistic Games:

First is Pokemon, turn-based RPG that involves you travelling around and collecting various types of monsters. The game is generally disregarded as being realistic, since the monsters you catch come in all sorts of shapes and sizes that live in the wild with tremendous amounts of power, and these monsters fit inside tiny capsules for you to carry them around in once caught. The whole concept bares resemblance to different species of wild animals, but if real animals had half of much power as the average wild Pokemon then the entire ecosystem would probably be in ruin. Likewise, technology today is nowhere near the advance level of shrinking living creatures down in size and regrowing them at will. However, interestingly Pokemon does follow some realistic guidelines with it's 'type' system used in battles, where there are essentially 19 different elements in the game that work similarly to rock paper scissors. All 721 Pokemon have their own assigned type (either one single type or two different types at once), and every type of element has their own strengths and weaknesses which follow realistic guidelines similarly to the real world. For example in the game like real-life water extinguishes fire, fire burns plants and plants grow in water.

With all of these types it can get pretty intensive and logical, including numerous scientific methods behind type advantages. Such as: ice beating ground due to 'freeze-thaw weathering' on underground rocks (BBC Bitesize, 2013), psychic being strong against fighting (because of the old saying 'brains over brawn') and psychic types being weak to ghost, dark and bug types, since those are the most common irrational human fears. These types are a very clever system, and help make sense for the target audience of children who play Pokemon, as many of these scientific reasonings are taught at schools, and kids are then able to apply their real-world knowledge directly into the Pokemon games, and see if their theories actually work in practise. The game may not look realistic, but some of the fundamental mechanics are alarmingly realistically complicated.

A comprehensive table depicting every single possible combination of type matchups in the game, also showing with their damage multipliers. 1x deals neutral damage (so nothing is stronger or weaker), 0.5x is weak (like fire against water), 2x is strong (such as electricity against water- since water conducts electricity) and 0x deals no damage at all (like ground against flying types, since if you're flying you're not touching the ground to get hurt!) (kebasketball, 2013)

The typing system isn't always accurate in Pokemon though, sometimes the realism just doesn't work and hit the mark as intended. Such as the ghost type being weak to dark type attacks... It doesn't make any sense! Ghosts by nature are supposed to live in dark places, and ghost Pokemon are found in shadowy and spooky locations in the game, the fact that they're weak to the element that they live in is pretty bizarre. Likewise, the fairy type is weak to steel and poison, but completely resists dragons. There doesn't seem to be any logic behind that decision, and I can't imagine a big bad dragon being terrified of a fairy because it's weak to that type, likewise fairly being weak to metal or poinsonous attacks doesn't seem to have any logic behind it either, at least at first. As hypothesised by (Rougeau, 2013), in the old Peter Pan movie Tinkberbell the fairy was trapped inside the villain's metal lantern... and was forced to consume poison to save the hero's life. It's a bit of a push, but this type's inclusion could be a possible reference to the film, but still with no scientific or realistic value whatever way you slice it, making this type a bit of an anomaly.

The Super Mario games are also very famous for being very unrealistic, which was stated by the game's creator Miyamoto during an interview with (BBC Radio 4, 2009), as them wanting to create their own fun style with their games, and even make their own realism conventions (like Mario being able to break blocks from below), which is a returning feature applied into almost every future Mario title. With the proportionally incorrect characters running around a colourful world, collecting goodies and jumping high into the air, it seems to be largely based on a surreal fantasy setting. Since it uses elements everyone is familiar with, like running, jumping and collecting money, but twists them into a game concept that would normally seem incredibly bizarre (in a world before video games having your currency floating in the air would be very weird), but because Mario games have been around for so many years now everyone's largely gotten used to the concept. There are a few realistic elements in the games combined with the surrealism though, Mario is affected by a realistic gravity for a start, and in some games like Super Mario 64 he takes damage after falling from a high place. This is obviously similar to real gravity, where you could injure yourself after falling from a great height. Likewise he can use fire to light torches, and see in the dark with these lit torches. Just like how light reacts in the real world.

The lit torches in Mario 3d World help the player see through a dark jungle (Kyle, 2013)

Realism isn't always needed in a game, and as documented by Cracked gaming journalist (Stevens, 2015), it can actually detract for the experience. Games like Shenmue II forces the player to spend hours traversing the land to get to their destination, favouring realism in travelling through the countryside than actually good game design techniques, omitting quality of life features like a fast-travel system. It even forces the player to do other monotonous tasks like working a day job, and is a prime example of a game which really tried to drill in the feeling of playing as a character in a living, breathing world... at the expense of actually having fun.

All in all though I feel that the many unrealistic features combined with slight realism in these two games is a very good thing to have, it just makes a game so much more enjoyable for me. As you don't just have to learn about the world and its characters like in a typical game focused on realism, you need to analyse the physics of the game and the world's rules too, and from there you will need to master these set rules as you progress through your journey. All the while this is going on the games will introduce even more new mechanics for you to learn, like seeing new types of Pokemon, or discovering different enemies in later Mario levels which pose more of a challenge.