Ehh, those military shooters like Socom and Call of Duty are also fantasy. Your average soldier isn't doing any of that shit. They're probably guarding base parking lots or mowing the base golf course.

Realism is just a style. It's like saying the only good art is photorealism.

What about simulators, they are designed to simulate a certain experience.

Simulate: to do or make something that looks real but is not real.

;)

Okay but I enjoy realistic milsim games. You don't have to play them. Weird take.

Upvoted as unpopular. I disagree with it though.

The problem is not with players complaining about what they believe to be lack of realism in games. It's instead that game designers don't dig further into those complains to know what exactly is wrong, and how to fix it: lack of internal consistency, limitations that feel unjustified, balance issues, etc.

Stop playing AAA slop. There I fixed video games for you. To overfixate on the hype and marketing machine will only make you miserable and poison your brain with stupid ideas like "the problem with video games". Video games are an extremely broad set of experiences. A digital implementation of a board game is a video game, and a painstakingly detailed simulation of the operations of an airliner down to waiting in real time for refuel is also a video game. And there's an audience with taste for both and every other of the hundreds of genres that exist. A problem with one hyper specific genre of video games is not a problem with video games.

Got to upvote this opinion, because it's unpopular and wrong.

I had a very long explanation ready but I didn't feel like bothering people to read all this, so in short:

Look up what suspension of disbelief is. Try to show empathy towards people who can immerse themselves into a game because it looks as realistic as possible. Accept that games are as diverse as other forms of art and understand that you are just showing preferences, that doesn't mean the other form is wrong. Don't pick something like CoD as a measure for anything other than pure greed.

Large game publisher are not your friends, they only want your money. The realism approach isn't wrong, it's the consumers who buy the shit games. The graphics of the game don't matter, it's what companies can get away with and so they'll repeat it.

Games can be different, some realistic, some not.

Not all games need to be games you personally like, why shouldn't people who like realistic games have them?

video games aren't meant to be realistic.

There is an entire genre called Sims, short for simulation and everything in-between.

Slow clap

I personally don't enjoy games like COD, but it's disingenuous to believe one of the most lucrative franchises to exist, played and enjoyed by billions worldwide, is garbage. You may not like it, but you can't declare it a garbage game as it certainly has its appeal. Doing so reeks of 'old-man-yelling-at-kids-to-get-off-his-lawn'.
As for your other point, it is certainly an unpopular opinion. For a lot of people gaming is an escape from reality, yes, but video games as an artistic expression can also represent reality and even mirror it. I don't know what you mean by 'realism'; is it graphical fidelity? Is it mechanics and its level of abstraction to model our world? There is certainly a conversation to be had here, but I would say how closely a game should mirror real life should depend on what type of game we are talking about, after all.

While the rant part isn't interesting, this is a genuinely unpopular opinion in every way.

I tend to agree with you that playing real world plausible scenarios isn't fun, with the caveat that the scenario isn't as big a factor in that level of fun as the people playing. I'll have tons of fun playing with chill people, mostly friends, no matter what I'm playing. But random players online, the ones that prefer that type of game tend to not only be competitive rather than cooperative, but tend to be jerks about it.

That makes ignoring the game content and premise impossible, and it starts sucking more.

I don't object to such games existing per se, but the focus on that kind of game makes other efforts harder to find for online multiplayer options. Too many developers want to milk that audience, so other styles get abandoned or done halfassed.

But I agree completely that most remasters are blatant cash grabs that suck, cod in particular

horrible opinion. other people like other things. complaining about things you don't like is better than complaining about other people that don't like the same things as you. just play games you like, others wanting realistic stuff doesn't hurt you in any way. there's more unrealistic games than you could ever play. upvoted.

First game I played was Icicle Works in 1984. Every game I played in the next thirty years I kept thinking "Man this game is good but I wish the graphics were more realistic"

So no, terrible opinion, they're only just getting there now

Upvoted

I think realistic videogames have a niche called "Simulators". And while they stay there, I'm absolutely fine with it.

The problem, I believe, is that people often confuse realism with level of detail. And the main issue with this is that the line separating both is extremely thin sometimes. Additionally, a degree of realism is welcome in any game, as long as the game keeps being a game and not a simulator (e.g. on a car racing game, I want the cars to look like cars and to drive like cars, even if I want it to stay arcade-y enough)

Would you say Breath of the Wild is a realistic game? I think it isn't, but the level of detail put in their physics engine is so detailed that it's almost real, but at the same time feels like a videogame and not like a simulator.

In all the games you mentioned, there is a degree of realism (for example, in metal gear, it's realistic that enemies can't see you behind a wall or that they get alerted if they see a corpse), just not enough to make them look like a simulator instead of a game, this is what I mean with level of detail.

Gee, here I thought corporate greed and a captive userbase were the problem.

What is "realistic" is on a spectrum and is hard to pinpoint. Even first person shooters like CoD have adjustability on how much lead you can eat before you drop dead and a medical kit on a grave wound can bring you from "should've retired yesterday" to "top shape soldier" so there are aspects that are not true realism. On the other side, Baldur's Gate tries to somewhat realistically simulate the feeling of what it would be like to be in a Dungeons and Dragons world full of magic wielding creatures and adventure, without comic-ifying or arcad-ifying it too much.

However, the type of bullshit tactics you describe with games don't have to come from Activision/Microsoft and to me are unrelated to the realism. Just as one example, Nintendo has done similar, with releasing a Super Mario Sunshine + 64 + Galaxy port for a limited time to maximize FOMO but keep getting them to buy these on every new console.

But my gold pieces should have weight! It's unrealistic that I can carry around 100k gold and 50+ sets of armor!

/s

I hate these people too. Make your own mods if you want to suffer, I certainly don't. I'm more concerned that many RPGs devolve into Murder Hobo Simulator 2024 within an hour of starting, but hey, that's games.

The only thing killing games now is micro transactions.