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Gaming in the real world
Author: Fred HuntPublished: 16th January 2008
Armour and vehicles
So, you’ve flown a helicopter in Battlefield 2 – it was pretty easy right? The question is though: do you think you could fly a real helicopter based on your BF2 experience?A Helicopter PPL (Private Pilot’s Licence) takes at least 45 hours (and lots of money) to get in the UK, and that is probably on a Robinson R22 which, compared to a Blackhawk you can mount and fly in BF2, is quite simply a toy.
As for the Fast Jets you get to pilot, have you noticed the groundspeed? An aircraft with such small wingspan would literally drop out of the sky crawling along at that pace.
There’s also the Hummers that never break down, the tanks that are easier to drive than supermarket trolleys and there’s the fact you can jump in and out of all vehicles as they move.
A lot of this in games is down to role flexibility, if we all chose to be helicopter pilots there would be no ground troops. If none of the ground troops on one side could fly they would be decimated by a single helicopter on the other side. So once again, the game designer has to account for all of this – designing a game is not all about graphic design and coding you know…
The Blackhawk from BF2
Personal Equipment:
Choosing equipment is probably the most important action a field soldier will carry out, as what could save your life in one situation could very well cause you to lose it in another. An extra 20 pounds in your personal kit could make the difference between leaping a ditch to safety and leaping with the risk of smashing your ankle.To be fair, most games equip the soldiers with kit automatically, but even if you were given the option, would you know what to chose in any given environment and mission?
Using the equipment is a little rose-tinted in games too, running the full length of a map to then set a claymore safely can’t be done with ease, trust me on that… but expecting a player to catch his breath, steadily place the charge and set it is a lot to expect in such fast paced gaming.
Where are the liquids a soldier should be drinking? A soldier should be re-hydrating himself as often as possible to keep performance to their highest possible levels. Also, accuracy, good decision making and speed of healing are some of the first qualities to suffer of you’re a malnourished, cold or dehydrated soldier.
Health:
This is probably the most important and least accurate of the real to life experiences on a virtual battlefield. Health levels are not measurable, wounds are not generic and healing cannot be accelerated at the push of a button. There's no sleep deprivation or even disease – I mean, how many times have you caught a cold, malaria or even got diarrhoea in a game? Yeah, it sounds unpleasant I know, but these are things that are regular occurrences on the battlefield.I have to admit though that if true to life health rules were applied, a grenade burn to the face or shrapnel to the leg would pretty much disable the soldier for the rest of the battle. And, as a result, the gaming experience would be as crippled as the in game persona – it wouldn’t be particularly exciting, as they say.
This is where the delicate balance the software designers have to deal with becomes even trickier – do they let a single shot to the arm disable a player permanently like it would in real life, or do they allow them to miraculously get better with a med-kit? And there’s another quandary for them, if it is an arm wound should he still be able to hold his weapon to continue firing it?
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