Dramatic Unrealism

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 29, 2015

Monsters in “dungeons” in RPGs don’t display “realistic” AI for the same reasons that enemy combatants in kung fu movies take turns getting clobbered by the hero / heroine. An organized defense (or offense) would… well, it wouldn’t be any fun.

But then, an organized attack against an actual entrenched forces dwelling underground in a “realistic” world would simply be plugging up the ventilation points and smoking them out (or to death). Or damming up a local stream and diverting the water to flood the place, and then literally mopping up afterwards. So long as you aren’t trying to rescue hostages or recover something that would be damaged by smoke or water, that would work nicely.

We accept these “ridiculous” tropes because they make the genre work. Same thing for big space battles. I’ve read one book series (The Lost Fleet, by John Campbell) and seen one anime TV series (Starship Operators) that focused on space combat in a somewhat more realistic manner and in such a way that it made things fun and interesting, but in general audiences want to see the Battle of Trafalgar in outer space. Close range, (relatively) slow speed, lots of guns blazing. Piecemeal damage to ships to raise the dramatic stakes rather than instant explosive decompression.

In Frayed Knights, I took some efforts to either give a pseudo-rational explanation or at least hang a lampshade over some of these tropes. But in the end — we do it because it’s fun, and as an audience, we accept it because it’s what we want to play. We’ll willingly suspend our disbelief so long as we’re not asked to go too far.

In playing any game or sport, the most interesting competition is against an opponent who is pretty close to your own skill level. This is true as an observer as well – we like to watch close games. Or in stories – we enjoy seeing the hero snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In fact, that’s a leading reason IMO why it’s so difficult to have a great player-driven story in video games… players naturally tend to avoid such close calls as possible, and will try and secure a victory as early as possible.

To that end, audiences will accept some level of unrealism (even if they may grouse about it) as long as it makes things more fun / interesting. I always take calls for “better AI” or “more realistic gameplay” to be more of a call for greater dramatic verisimilitude more than actual ‘realism.’ We want the enemies not to seem deliberately stupid when it’s being stupid in our favor. We want them to be smart enough to challenge us, but not smart enough to wipe the floor with us. We want to be able to do cool stuff in our virtual worlds that would seem reasonable in the real world (or in a cinematic world), but we don’t want to be hobbled with realistic human limitations.

Or again, maybe sometimes we do.

Tropes can be good, even if not very believable. They just need to be handled with care. Sometimes it’s good to reevaluate the conventions, and either reject them or embrace them with a little bit of a unique or interesting spin. The important thing for creators is that even if they embrace unrealistic conventions, they do so for the right reasons – to keep things interesting, fun, and dramatic.

Filed Under: Design, Writing - Comments: 3 Comments to Read



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