High Fidelity

Section: 

It's funny where people draw lines. A person watching a film about giant alien spiders might get hung up on inaccurate portrayals of the ballistic properties of various firearms. A person who is perfectly at home with the notion of Egyptian mummies walking the earth might grind his teeth about how scarab beetles aren't carnivorous (they are, in fact, scavengers, eating carrion or decaying plants). Another person watching a movie about dinosaurs resurrected from extinction might spend hours ranting about how Unix isn't a magic word that makes the lights turn back on.

Those people all might or might not be the same person, and they might or might not be the author of what you're reading right now.

I have a thing for authenticity. Not in the Holden Caulfield sense of being obsessed with fakeness, but in the pedantic, fastidious way of a person who likes to read and remembers what he reads. It's important to me that certain things be accurate in my entertainment, which I don't think is a particularly uncommon affliction. I think most people have lines beyond which suspension of disbelief takes a backseat to that voice in the back of your mind that says, "Oh, come on now!"

For me, that line lies across areas where I have some modicum of knowledge – areas of knowledge which are, ostensibly, not affected by the fantasy laid out before me.

A firearm, for example, has certain physical and ballistic properties that should not be affected by the existence of a virus that makes people into walking corpses. So that five-hundred-meter shot from a .38 special with a three inch barrel, while strictly possible if performed in controlled conditions by the late Bob Munden, is not something that's going to happen when attempted by a person under pressure and who has never, before now, seen a real handgun. Narrative causality may demand that million-to-one chances necessarily succeed one-hundred percent of the time, but as a person who has actually been to a pistol range a few times, I can safely say: Oh, come on!

This craving for authenticity is, I think, what led me to the mundane simulator genre.

The mundane simulator genre – the king of which is SCS, makers of Euro Truck Simulator 2 and other favorites – is one of those genres that seems to be more popular than it has any right to be. Kind of like MOBAs and MMORPGs, when you try to put the features and draws of the mundane sim genre into a bulleted list, you realize that such a list is not only unconvincing to novices, but that it very nearly turns you off the genre as well.

I mean, consider this list of features:

  • Perform tedious, repetitive tasks for in-game points and currency!
  • Carefully manage your resources!
  • Shop smart, because 90% of what's out there is crap!
  • No real story, so you're never truly done!
  • Maintain your gear or suffer the consequences!
  • Of broken gear!
  • Seriously, all your friends will laugh at you if you don't maintain your equipment!

And that's just MMOs! The mundane sim genre adds reading real-world technical manuals to improve your skills!

Have you ever tried to read a technical manual for anything? I can barely make it through the data sheet for a PIC18f2522, and I get paid based on my knowledge of that. Now I'm going to read how to use a combine harvester for fun?

Yes, yes I am.

Why? For the same reason I wrote over 350 words before I even mentioned video games: Authenticity.*

Authenticity is a big part of the draw of the mundane sim. The player is presented with something that is completely ordinary and yet, simultaneously, completely foreign and exotic. Most of us will never drive a tractor trailer across Germany. Most of us will never own a farm (though we will all assuredly buy one. Wokka wokka.) Most of us will never drive a bus. These are all mundane parts of life, but they are nonetheless essential. Shipments have to be trucked out, and cargo must be shipped. Grain must be sown and reaped. Passengers must be bused.

One could argue that the person driving the truck full of bananas to your local grocery store without fail every day is as important as the space marine who shot a bunch of zombies. Saving the world is great, but people still gotta eat, and the sort of person who's good at annihilating hordes of monsters may not be the best person to manage warehouse logistics:

"Mr. Bald Marine! Our customers are complaining that their bananas are arriving mashed! What will we do?"

"Shoot them?"

"I don't think that would be appropriate, sir."

"Shoot them in the face?"

Besides that, the key mapping is all wrong.

The ordinariness of mundane sims is precisely the draw, though, because it can be modeled so incredibly accurately. The makers of Euro Truck Simulator 2 were unhappy with how the trucks sounded when hauling heavy loads. Their solution was to use the money they made selling DLC paint jobs and buy a truckload of sand so they could record the truck sounds when they hauled it.

That's dedication to authenticity. A textbook definition, and possibly a DSM V definition as well, of the kind of focus and drive it takes to get all the details right. Whatever book you find it in, it spells "awesome" to me.

Mundane sims can offer that kind of authenticity in a way that no other genre can. BioWare can't go take real photographs of the Normandy. Valve can't rip open an interdimensional portal to research lighting effects for the next Half Life. (HL3 confirmed!) CAPCOM can't hire real zombies to do motion capture for the next remake of Resident Evil 2.

At least, I hope not.

SCS, however, can get everything it needs to accurately and faithfully model whatever truck it can get a license to put in a game. That has to resonate with people, if only because we can recognize the craft that goes into it. Developers of mundane sims have to get the details right, because the details are where the fun is. The realism is the draw, because they can't rely on exotic locations or over-the-top action to sell their games.

So even if I know I'll never actually drive a giant Russian military vehicle through six feet of mud, I do know that Oovee put a whole lot of time into making the simulation of that experience as true as possible. When I play Spintires, I still won't have piloted one of those vehicles, but I'll know I got as close as I can without actually getting trapped hip-deep in a muddy wilderness.

It's not your typical videogame power fantasy. It doesn't need to be. There are a million great games that let you destroy stuff. Once in a while it's nice to pretend to build it back up again.

The more realistic, the better.

*359 words, in point of fact.

Comments

For sure not all video games are about Power, or being the most powerful, or most powerful on your friends list. The power fantasy, I believe, is based on a control fantasy. To have control over something is having power over it also. So the FPS guy that loves to control the map and have that power over life and death fires the same triggers as Truck simulator beating the bog. Just in a different way. We all enjoy, want, or need our escape from reality sometimes, some need a gun, some just need a different gear.

So I think the next logical step is that we need to get a real bus driver, a real farmer, a real mudder, and a real... Russian tank commander? and start a new review series.

Those people all might or might not be the same person, and they might or might not be the author of what you're reading right now.

Called it!

I mean, consider this list of features: ... And that's just MMOs!

LOL. The 90% figure there is probably being pretty generous, actually!

use the money they made selling DLC paint jobs and buy a truckload of sand

Now that's the kind of introverted problem-solving that I can get behind! (As opposed to connecting with a real truck driver hauling an actual heavy load of something, and getting the sound recorded that way.)

I want my fantasy to be realistic. Seriously, if I'm playing a Star Trek game, I'd better be scared when a D'Deridex class Romulan Warbird decloaks, not just pew pew kill it.

Those ships were more than a match for a Galaxy - Class, not cannon fodder! (Looking at you, Bethesda and your wasting of the Star Trek License.)

Great article, DT. You managed to make Euro Truck Simulator sound appealing!

Zoso1701 wrote:

I want my fantasy to be realistic. Seriously, if I'm playing a Star Trek game, I'd better be scared when a D'Deridex class Romulan Warbird decloaks, not just pew pew kill it.

Those ships were more than a match for a Galaxy - Class, not cannon fodder! (Looking at you, Bethesda and your wasting of the Star Trek License.)

True story: I'm actually curious what The Order: 1886 plays like on harder difficulties in case the developer actually put some extra care and time into the harder modes. That's what I really loved about Halo: CE and Halo: Reach, and I'm wondering if some games would be better experienced on higher difficulties. But the better question is, do developers put as much effort into those higher difficulties?

Zoso1701 wrote:

Great article, DT. You managed to make Euro Truck Simulator sound appealing!

+1. Mundane sims are now on my "when the pile is closer to defeated" list.

Great opening. What geek can't identify with drawing lines for suspension of disbelief in bizarre, arbitrary places?

Although the genre holds no appeal for me, I completely understand why it does for others.

Bubs14 wrote:
Zoso1701 wrote:

Great article, DT. You managed to make Euro Truck Simulator sound appealing!

+1. Mundane sims are now on my "when the pile is closer to defeated" list. :)

*begins work on Pile Simulator 3000*

AnyLameName wrote:

So I think the next logical step is that we need to get a real bus driver, a real farmer, a real mudder, and a real... Russian tank commander? and start a new review series.

I'll volunteer as the farmer! It does make me smile every time I see an add for Farming Simulator with pictures of equipment I drive nearly every day. That being said, I know a farmer's wife who apparently finds real farming unfulfilling based on the amount of Farmville invites I get from her.

Also - there is an open invite from my farm to GWJ for a ride-along fall or spring. If you prove yourself, I'll even let you sit in the driver seat while the tractor drives itself.

Now I have a strange urge to play Virtual Stuck Behind a Bus.

Wait, never mind. I live in Los Angeles already.

ccesarano wrote:

True story: I'm actually curious what The Order: 1886 plays like on harder difficulties in case the developer actually put some extra care and time into the harder modes. That's what I really loved about Halo: CE and Halo: Reach, and I'm wondering if some games would be better experienced on higher difficulties. But the better question is, do developers put as much effort into those higher difficulties?

Not having a context for any of those games, I can't really speak to them. Man I miss playing Halo games. Seems like now would be a really good time to score a 360 cheap just for that, yeah?

I don't know if realism means higher difficulty in all cases. I would like to see less enemies that present a greater challenge or fear one-on one as opposed to hordes of ramped up enemies.

Skyrim is coming to mind at the moment. If I get shot in the head, I should probably die. If I shoot even a strong boss-type human in the head, it should die. Balancing that with annoyances inherent in "cheap" shots, random deaths, etc... would be a challenge for developers and a hard sell to the audience.

It's also highly likely that this kind of game exists. But, is it fun?

I decided to skip the simulator route and go straight to driving a 70-foot tractor-trailer carrying 80,000 pounds of stuff.

What movie is it that has the giant alien spiders plural?

Spoiler:

Is it Ice Spiders? I can't remember if those were alien. All the ones I know about are usually genetic experiments, and in the case of Spiders (2000), I don't recall the ballistic properties of firearms being relevant, very sadly for the case of the characters in the movie.

I figured they were scarab beetles from hell.
Good article.
I care about realism as well, which is why I don't like *redacted* in my *redacted*.

RolandofGilead wrote:

What movie is it that has the giant alien spiders plural?

Authenticity is a big part of the draw of the mundane sim. The player is presented with something that is completely ordinary and yet, simultaneously, completely foreign and exotic.

That sums it up. And the authenticity aspect is really important, in the case of ETS2 which I can speak to personally—not that I've ever driven a real tractor, but that I feel like I can do so much with the tractors in ETS2. The trucks are modeled as carefully and accurately as the supercars in Forza, but I can do so much more with the trucks. Leaving aside the lack of motorsport in Forza Motorsport, just the pound-for-pound what-I-can-do-with-the-vehicles is hugely in favour of ETS2: wipers, headlights, high beams, indicators, hazards, engine brakes, {ableist slur}ers, lift axles, air horns... The last time I remember being able to use the indicators in a racing game is Porsche Unleashed. I feel like I'm really in the vehicle in ETS2 far more than Forza.

(I'm also picking on Forza specifically here, and not trying to pit ETS2 against proper sim racers contra Forza: Forza sells the fantasy of being able to experience the cars, whereas the latter are about the racing experience. I'm also not turning on Forza: it's still awesome, but those absences are features I've always wished the series had.)

And that's just MMOs!

That one got me. Best zinger.

AnyLameName wrote:

So I think the next logical step is that we need to get a real bus driver, a real farmer, a real mudder, and a real... Russian tank commander? and start a new review series.

We've got some truck drivers in the GWJ community don't we? Round 'em up!

Is there some sort of reason why we can't also want Euro Truck Simulator 3: Walking Dead Edition?

RolandofGilead wrote:

What movie is it that has the giant alien spiders plural?

Spoiler:

Is it Ice Spiders? I can't remember if those were alien. All the ones I know about are usually genetic experiments, and in the case of Spiders (2000), I don't recall the ballistic properties of firearms being relevant, very sadly for the case of the characters in the movie.

I figured they were scarab beetles from hell.
Good article.
I care about realism as well, which is why I don't like *redacted* in my *redacted*.

It was Starship Troopers, the movie. They send ground troops armed with what appear to be standard 5.56 NATO rounds against giant alien Arachnids that don't feel pain and can only be stopped with headshots.

With no air support or heavy cavalry.

What kind of military sends troops up against that with a varminter round!?

Oddly, Roughnecks (the animated show based on Starship troopers) did a better job of it. They had proper armor, tanks and air support, even if the pilots were the worst pilots ever put behind a stick. Seriously! Every time she straps in it costs the military a cool billion to replace her plane! Stop sending her!

Dakuna wrote:

Is there some sort of reason why we can't also want Euro Truck Simulator 3: Walking Dead Edition? :)

(X) Add 1 point to Ulrike's Long Distance.
(B) Add 1 point to Ulrike's Eco Driving.

*B*

Ulrike will remember this.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

It was Starship Troopers, the movie. They send ground troops armed with what appear to be standard 5.56 NATO rounds against giant alien Arachnids that don't feel pain and can only be stopped with headshots.

With no air support or heavy cavalry.

What kind of military sends troops up against that with a varminter round!?

Oddly, Roughnecks (the animated show based on Starship troopers) did a better job of it. They had proper armor, tanks and air support, even if the pilots were the worst pilots ever put behind a stick.[/i]

Ah thanks!
I, too, enjoyed the animated show.