Gabe Newell: fun is NOT realism, but reinforcement
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- čas přidán 18. 11. 2023
- Gabe is referring to psychologist B.F. Skinner's ideas on behaviorism in this clip. Specifically operant conditioning-- behavior is strengthened or weakened based on its Reinforcers or Punishments consequences.
x.com/PlayerIGN/status/172646...
Gabe Newel, CEO at Valve re: what is "fun."
It's not realism, but behavior reinforcement.
“I never thought to myself that realism is fun. I go play games to have fun.
[Fun is] the degrees to which the game recognizes and responded to the players' choices and actions.”
source: • Half-Life: 25th Annive... - Hry
![Unraveling a COMPELLING Story Shrouded in Fog in Neptunia Game Maker R: Evolution! Part 4 [English]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HwoS9STYbUc/mqdefault.jpg)
"We added bullet holes in the game not because it's realistic but because it reinforces the idea that you, the player, have impact on the environment you're playing in and that is where fun is drawn from."
The fun: _"SHIT, I've missed so many times..."_
My new litmus test for a fun game:
If I can't draw a penis in-game in every level (so Duke Nukem Forever doesn't get points), the game isn't fun.
But what about LOOT BOXES?!?!?!
@@adriannalockhart9639 2017 was almost 7 years ago
Underrated comment. There was a time when this consideration flew under devs' radar as unnecessary coding/effort.
I've never heard anyone explain what "fun" is in a videogame so well as Gabe has here. When I first heard him say it in the documentary, my jaws dropped. I was like "YES! EXACTLY!", I want to feel like I'm part of the world itself, I want to feel like what I do matters. I want the world to acknowledge my existence.
I know Fireaxis (makes of Civilization and the new XCOM games) uses a similar definition, they actually have this math formula, basically they measure how many meaningful decision a player makes per minute, as a way to measure how engaging a game is
Well, everyone wants acknowledgement in real world. That alone makes a video game both fun and realistic.
That's the difference between immersion and realism which I'm ngl I like realism in my games but I don't expect every game to be realistic, however I admire games like squad, hell let loose, tarkov, and Arma for their "realism" cause it immersing for me, that being said games like doom, new vegas, balders gate, and spec ops the line immerse me with music, story being effected by choices, actually trying something and it works, and voice acting (specifically the voice lines changing in spec ops the worse his mental state gets). Ngl though seeing a gun work improperly as someone who knows alot about firearms is very immersion breaking but realism should only be flavoring to fun for games that use realistic features for immersion.
Sounds depressing
Jeez you need to go outside
Remember: One of the most successful videogames in history is about an italian plumber who has to eat mushrooms and stars to defeat a giant turtle who spits fire
Don’t forget about a blue critter saving animals from a fat scientist
@@Polychi1998sonic doesn't come as near as successful as Mario is, and i prefer sonic for the most part (as in, anything sonic before 2009)
An italian that was made by a Japanese fella should also be included
Some games look pretty bizarre once you start thinking about them for long enough
@@AlyphRat Zuma: "You're a frog spitting marbles to defeat Mesoamerican deities."
0:04 "Okay… WHAT DOES THAT HAVE…Like…" We were this close to Gabe Newell's gamer rage. This close!
I felt that, too. Don't accuse the white wizard of selfishness, he doesn't want to harm you.
Just check how he introduced the 2023 international
Man, anyone else notice how thin Gabe looks now? Dude really worked on his health.
watch how hes gonna get super ripped in like two more years
or he old and dying
@@yoursleepparalysisdemon1828 lmfao
the ancient magic is getting to him
it's his stand-in, Nate Gewell
Nothing pisses me off more than someone saying "but it's not realistic" as an argument for why a mechanic sucks. Thank you Gaben for giving us a clip we can send to these idiots. You truly are the gift that keeps on giving.
Do people really complain in that way though?
@@redakdalstarfield isn’t fun anyways lol
@@PHeMoX Alot, many fps and strategy game always being complained as 'not realistic"
or they'll say why a mechanic isn't in a game because it "wouldn't be realistic otherwise".
one of the dumbest excuses
He is the santa claus of gaming
“I get a narcissistic injury when the wall ignores me” the depth to this statement is relevant not only in video games 😅
Gabe's speechless stuttering after he says "but it's not realistic" because he still cant shake how dumb of a response that is is such a mood
The game industry really needs this wake up call
Too bad, they don't give a sh*t, all they care is our money and that's it, only a few good company now but it not enough to change anything , and yet I don't wish for another 83s crisis, back then Nintendo save us, but now if it happens again, no one can save gaming anymore
@@Vietnam_Gigachad It's pretty bad aside from a few indie devs carrying the scene. The only big names I can respect these days are fromsoft and Valve, everything else is just a product.
@@trickshot727 isn’t fromsoft that company that releases the games famous for being unnecessarily difficult in attempt to feel “realistic”? I don’t think that’s a good example to put in for realism not being good.
@@PotaraP ??? The games are far from unnecessarily hard and the only realistic part about any of the souls games is that you're absolutely gonna die, and the guy said nothing about fromsoft making games that weren't realistic, just that they're one of the few companies that don't farm people for money. I apologize if this comes off a little strong but you're statement was just so wrong it hurt me not to say anything
Yeah enough with this cinematic crap and focus on grounded realism from Hollywood dropout writers who want to make games into movies. God of War reboot is such a big offender, it killed so much because it wanted to take the "grounded in realism" approach
this is the most emotion he's ever shown
honestly yeah, the first time i watched this I was like whoa gabe let's chill a little here, but that's what happens when you speak from the heart - you can't keep your emotions from spilling over
Gabe unleashed his anger only one time, scientists call that day the big bang
@@sapphire4310The Big Gabe
@@sapphire4310 *the resonance cascade
No? If you watched his interview on ps3 development he also shows emotion.
When people defend Starfield's planet exploration being empty and boring with "It's space, space is supposed to be empty"
To be fair, following the philosophy of the developer of the fps Black for the ps2
"I think that if you have a gun you still should be able to have fun even in an empty room."
As in Starfields criticisms are not warranted after all?
My problem isn't the empty planets, but that they all look the damn same. That's just an inherent flaw with procedural generation
@@no-replies no that's just bad generation
them being boring isn't because procedural generation as a concept is bad it's because Bethesda made a bad procedural generation system
@@segismundosaulalex3065 That's right and going into space as an example for "Starfield's planet exploration" is already fighting against the concept of realism in the sense that it's already science fiction, virtually anything can occur in space as we ourselves did not explore enough of it, so what is stopping developers from building random encounters in space whether it be like an abandoned asteroid mine for you to go explore and loot or fight creepy enemies or a frigate asking for help from space pirates, jumping from warp space straight into a battle as a random encounter, you get stopped half way through your destination so you don't collide with ships and they get destroyed or anything like that, there is so much that can be done as it's still a concept that's not fully explored and so much that can be created just out of our own minds.
I hate people that say that games I play are bad because it is not realistic and ppl that judge games only by graphics too
just tell them your capable of finding games that are timeless. (if good game lol)
I like that he sounds genuinely frustrated when explaining the concept, he isn't just some business man, he was someone who GENUINELY wanted to make fun games, not money, or a safe formula he could pump out every year to safely print money from fans, no he wanted to push what video games could be forward in a meaningful impactful way, i mean even just the concept of steam is birthed from wanting to make distribution of video games easy and manageable so you can get to play with the least amount of hassle possible, and just look at how successful it is, these money hungry corps are frothing at the mouth just dreaming of how something could be so successful
I agree except for the fact that he did want to make money, he just wanted to make money by providing the best products and services possible. that's honorable
The point of Steam was, at launch, a way of adding DRM to HL2. You needed Steam to play HL2, even though all the game content was on disc. At the time this got a lot of flak and even some boycotting, but it is clear that regardless of what it was in 1998, Valve is now 'the company that made Steam' far more than 'the company that made HL1', beyond a doubt.
Gabe wanted to make a great game, sure, but to be clear Valve is exceptionally money-hungry and has been since around 2005 or 2006. They have one of the best profit-per-employee ratios in not just games, but in the world, when it comes to privately owned corporations.
It would be a mistake to think Valve invented Steam to make it easier for the consumer. It received about a proportional amount of backlash as the Epic Games Store did when it launched.
@@disseminate4 still a far more respectable version then what came after, at least there was a want to make something good
Inserting some real facts: Valve Corporation generated $10B in revenue from the Steam Store in 2022, and Gaben is a billionaire. Their last game apart from the tiny VR half-life episode was Dota 2 in 2013, coinciding with the year Gaben got the BAFTA award. 😢
Valve just has a higher internal standard of a quality product. Of course that doesn't always translate to reality (e.g. Artifact lol) but its why they have such strong brand loyalty. The focus on quality over quantity is why their games have done so well (but is also why we have never gotten Half Life 3)
Also they have Steam printing them free money so they aren't in need of releasing a new game every 2 years to keep that cash flow.
This reminds of when I heard some people had a problem with "On a rail" because they didn't know you could spin the signs by shooting them to change the train's direction. I remember when I played it as a kid, it seemed obvious to me: that sign looks like it spins, so try to spin it with the only tool you have - a gun.
I wonder if so many people had a problem with it because they are used to games that did not react to your presence in the world to the level that games like half-like did. Perhaps they were conditioned by game worlds that ignore them. Half-life was one of my very first FPS games, so I didn't yet know what was usually "not possible" in the game world, so I'd try things that looked like they might work.
Duke Nukem 3D came out the year before, so that wasn't the case.
You talked to people who played modern games, not old ones, old games had super reactive levels.
Doom and Quake had levels that would change at random and pieces you had to shoot.
@@trabuco9 i think its more about people that try to play it nowadays
@@stroyosh4670 Exactly what I meant. It's even more obvious when you watch people try to play HL2 for the first time today, because they will always struggle with the first few physics puzzles. But when it came out in 2004, when everyone knew the excellent physics engine was one of the game's main selling points, it was much more intuitive. Buoyant barrels under an item will push them up, cinder blocks stacked on top will weigh them down - obvious when you know it's possible in the game world, inconceivable if you're conditioned to think it's not.
Nowadays games have to basically beat into you that is a mechanic since nobody expects it to be one
I’ve noticed that many people literally don’t try anything beyond what’s immediately obvious when playing games, consequently getting frustrated and bored. It frankly boggles my mind.
A great description of what 'suspension of disbelief' is.
Role-playing games with impactful choices can be really fun in this way too because they give you a sense of agency in the game world.
Now that you mention it, now I see one more reason why Undertale exploded in popularity.
@@klerobatoforcaI wouldn't consider Undertale to be an RPG. It's more of a JRPG. It has linear story paths akin to Shin Megami Tensei's alignments, which tracks with Undertale's other influence being SMT.
stalker (call of pripyat, i forgot how quests go in other games)
@@CJojo_13_ Yes it is an RPG, the genre with the loosest definition out of them all. It can't be a JRPG because the game isn't Japanese, it's a WRPG with heavy influence from JRPGs sure.
@@CJojo_13_ Strange comment... JRPGs are a subset of RPGs. Every JRPG is an RPG!
My favourite bit about this entire bit right, is that you can hear it in his voice just how much this innately pisses him off that it's taken the games industry almost thirty years to understand what fun is
He's holding it back just enough to not cause offense and it's clear it's something that has bothered him for DECADES.
I wonder if he's seen so many great ideas and Nobody is getting where it could have gone, how it could have been. What a man.
it hasnt taken the industry thirty years to figure out fun, games were already fun but we got to a period where developers got obsessed with making every game too realistic and too cinematic when there needs to be a balance
I can hear the British in your comment "My favorite bit about this entire bit roight"
I doubt Gabe's that passionate about games. He's passionate about tech and industry innovation; most every Valve game title was just a platform to push out new tech.
If he cared about games themselves he wouldn't have let all Valve's gold IPs just slough into atrophy.
Gaben raises some great points, but I would like to say that realism still is important to a certain degree in games where the setting is based on history. If you screw up your realism there, you could really throw off the immersion and world-building. Outside of this specific context, realism is not that important.
@@TaRAAASHBAGS you doubt the founder of Valve is that passionate about games when he's basically giving you his thesis statement on what fun in gaming is? to each his own.
This is something that a lot of modern games lack. They look shiny and beautiful but lack any details that sold you on the world feeling real and like you are a part of it as you play it.
Basically people who are late to the gaming party are the ones who seem to think every game has to be photorealistic, this was never the case and it will never be
AAA studios taking notes :
_Reinforcement... ok, so we will reinforce the graphics and how games reward you for battlepasses, right?_
The worst part is, you're probably right. This might just be what they're taking away from this.
@@Mike14264 I mean they don't even need to.
Economy encourages making games in multiple ways.
Gabe is definitely towards "make games that I'd enjoy myself", which is arguably the best way to know people are gonna buy.
But there's also "make games from statistics". Stick to what's mainstream. FPS, open world, ultra hd _because ppl investing into GPUs feel lame running ps2 graphics on it_ , a sick trailer to rise the hype, bonus points for nostalgic license.
Sadly or not, people just buy these. Marketting department "knows" we're gonna love it, and when we see it, we recognize this stuff, remember it's once been fun, and that pushes the purchase.
I think in the current gaming industry, they don't need this "reinforcement theory bs". Understanding stats is enough to trick people into purchasing.
Kinda sounds evil, but I wish AI takes over the gaming industry : Compiling and interpreting stats is what it's best at, so it would make it so easy to create the "best" game possible that it would discourage studios from spamming the same stuff over and over.
Meanwhile, could AI recreate games as unique as Undertale, Omori and all that stuff? Yes, but it would also generate an infinite amount of games alongside these so that no one would have enough of its life to even find them, so I think that would still leave room to game devs.
Or everything I said could just be all wrong lol
@@eglaiosdeminecraft9259 I actually not once ever thought about buying an FPS game back then and even now, ironically.
Hmm, interesting plan you have over there, but I'm not sure just how willing would be they be to stop mass-producing games by stats. Plus, well, misuse of AI, obvs
Graphics are the easiest thing you can brag about in ads and to clueless 65-year-old investors, that's why they're so important to them.
"ai" cannot "create" anything that hasn't been there before. It can only rearrange
"List of stuff I have to go to grocery store to buy" - that's EXACTLY what every Ubisoft-ish game feels like (Horzion, Assasin's Creed, Hogwarts Legacy, etc.) - doing CHORES. You open open world map and see thousands of "points of interest"
Aka points of disinterest
The only ubisoft game that has eschewed this is r6 siege.
Damn that's so true. At that point you're just doing countless meaningless task after meaningless task.
Hey hey hey! I'm really against meaningless chores but Horizon didn't have stuff like that. 115 hours and I did every single thing and explored every bit, unlocked achievements and it all felt like it was meant to be there and everything had meaning. It was hard sometimes but it was always worth it.
Not like Rise of the Tomb Raider for example, where they throw a bunch of stuff without any thoughts before, to make a shitty day even shittier.
This sentiment is exactly why I avoid using fast travel in games unless the travel is tedious and/or ridiculous. If I don't get to experience every interesting thing in-between, then why bother with an open world?
By delaying episode 3 indefinitely, he’s reinforcing our choice to wait! Now we’re all having fun for decades!
People get "realism" mixed up with "believability" a lot. It's a surprisingly substantial semantic difference.
Finally someone understands how video games work
He understood it way back in 1998.
@@conyo985 and the fact he still stands by it is more impressive
Go watch Miyamoto talking about how they made Mario. He got it when there were no games.
@@Neimonster thank you
@@Neimonster Many games came out before Mario lol
WHAT, you supposed to play games for fun and not just for escapism ? what an amazing ancient thought that people seem to forgotten. i remember a time that i will launch a game not because my day was bad but because i felt excited to play that game after waking up
Fun can be escapism in itself. Bro.
@@tearex8688 agree.
blame open world games for that, chase after immersion gave rise to realism ,you just gotta immerse yourself as the loser you are in real life as the protag, over time this skews mentalities.
@@MGrey-qb5xz I remember a time where we were excited for the idea of open world games. like, imagine having the same quality of linear single player game but ten time bigger and ten time the content. (few games did it sadly) this why i hate movie games (mostly Sony games) it's all look but lackluster gameplay. and they get treated better over more deserving games because of their looks. the "my graphics" guys are the worst.
I'm glad that's the feeling I have when I play Pokemon and Monster Hunter. I can have gripes and I certainly don't grind it for hours to get that perfect thing, but I know that I wake up, pick up my Switch, and the first thing I did was play the games that I had fun with, even if I don't play them now as often.
The beauty of game design and creating engaging mechanics is exactly to understand the fun parts of reality and cutting off the crap. That’s why games are many times so much more interesting than reality.
A good design puts the right level of challenge and choices in your hands so you are on the FLOW - neither bored for the challenge being too easy, nor anxious for it being too hard.
Game design is beautiful because it’s about understanding what reality means at its core, and what we really want from it.
A game that reacts to your choices and actions will always be peak design. It’s why games like Dishonored, Deus Ex, and Witcher 3 are among my favorites
Gaben is absolutely based for this take, and single-handedly destroys all those idiots who always argue "but muh REALIZM".
so glad there's finally a sign we can tap on, whenever some numbskull goes "but dis annoying mechanic is good because its realistic!!" or "dis mechanic is bad because it's not realistic!!" with no other reasoning
I tell those people this: "You want realism so much then why don't you touch grass?
The most fun and realistic thing ever."
Can you use other word? Because based for gamers means bigot
@@mathinho1237 Bigot? Bigot on what
@@mathinho1237 Based: "A strong, potentially controversial statement based in fact, made with disregard to naysayers". Also means "someone being themselves, i.e. courageous and unique or not caring what others think". That's the meaning I meant to imply here.
What I'm getting is that: Fun, not to be restricted by realism while keeping it grounded enough to be universally understandable.
And keeping player with feedback all the time, which means the enviroment responds to the player actions in a way you'll expect that could make sense.
Max Payne 1 pfp, respect
a good way of putting it imo is internal consistency. I can accept any set of rules a game puts in front of me as long as it abides by its own rules, and as long as I'm having fun while doing it.
take Spyro as an example, it doesn't matter one iota that talking purple dragons aren't realistic, the game has a set of rules (collect-a-thon, 3D platformer, time attack, etc) that it never deviates from. There's never a point where the game penalizes you for going for an objective and that's more important than 🤓 well akshually magic gems aren't real and it's highly unlikely for there to be a fire breathing lizard that talks like Tom Kenny 🤓
suspension of disbelief
This is something I thought about for a long time but never tried to consciously word...fiction in general, not just games needs to make just enough sense, after that, go wild. It doesn't need to be 1000% real life accurate logic, just enough to be believable / understandable / immersive and so on and after that introduce all the Gmans and Borealises you want.
Believability is more relevant than realistic, like how in star wars you can hear sounds in space.
It's not realistic, but it's believable.
Gabe Newell looks like a saint, a wise old sage
May he live long
and to this day not another game has replicated the reactivity seen and experienced in half life 2. its why it has remained my favorite game of all time. never played it the same way twice.
Back in the day we had crash bandicoot, team buddies, ssx, freaky fliers, Zool, Gex, pandemonium, burnout, quake, Mr. Mosquito, toy commander! Light guns, eye toy, the dreamcast memorycard.
The craziest concepts all designed for fun. Now we have yearly re-release of call of duty, and if we're lucky a AAA title worth buying.
And if any studios try anything unique or interesting or new they get shit on for being unrealistic or otherwise. The gaming industry is very toxic.
I’m now adverse to anything labeled as “AAA” outside of Nintendo and Valve. It’s nearly the same as “blockbuster” movies. Top heavy over bloated budget media that exists only to make its investment back in the blandest way possible.
we also had ghost recon, rainbow six, swat, delta force, commandos and a lot of all sorts of flight sims. they were also very fun and quite challanging. they knew perfectly well how to mix realism with fun.
DID SOMEBODY SAY GEX?
@@quarterburnt Rockstar is still goated as well Grand theft auto and Red dead redemption are always instant classics
Watching this will only make me sadder when thinking about the days when Gabe is gone, the gaming industry and Valve, in general, will evolve into an even worse beast than they're today. All of the nice things will never last, and sadly, it is
Hopefully these messages can leave an impact strong enough for the message to live on in practice too, in AAA games made by other companies that aren't Nintendo.
I trust Gabe to choose the right exec as his successor. I don't think he'll let valve crumble that easily.
Go back to playing those games. They have not left.
@@TylerMcNamer They are already in my game library. You don't need to tell me about that
That's not true at all. There will always be money men who try to leech any industry and suck all the profits out of it. But, over time, these guys fail. This cycle has already happened in the computer hardware industry. The marketing types showed up in companies like HP, IBM, AMD, even Intel. They thought they could come up with creative ways to generate more profits without having to spend so much on research and development. All those companies lost tons of market share in the process. HP is now a shell of what it once was. IBM had to significantly restructure to still have a place in the industry. Everyone knows the Apple story. AMD went through several terrible CEOs before hiring Lisa Su who completely turned the company around. This will happen with gaming too. Shitty CEOs will come and go. Many many years from now Gabe Newell will pass away. But other passionate and creative people will come along and create entertainment the likes of which we cannot even imagine now reaching new heights in creativity.
This is like that one clip of stan lee saying that power scaling is complete bunk and that the author chooses who wins.
The energy these kinds of clips have is so perfect. Highly respected, legendary creator weighs in on commonly contentious topic to essentially say "it's bullshit" in the clearest and most well put together way possible while subtly calling anyone who disagrees a dumbass.
@@jameshibberd5134 There are reasons they actually created the great works of fiction that they did, and a grounded attitude like that is a huge one. The guy who wastes time obsessing over pointless details will be lucky to finish a project at all.
Gabe is Visionary and a great leader. If only all video game CEO’s were as great
Yeah, but Valve DID pretty much popularise lootboxes and microtransactions in videogames.
@@TabbuEme Yeah I wonder if Gabe is feeling like Oppenheimer on what he just done to the gaming industry lol.
Only Nintendo is better.
@@philharrison2991 Nintendo? Why?
"If I go up to a wall and shot it, to me it feels like the wall is ignoring me"
Yeah Gabe, walls tend to do that
What is this comment supposed to mean?
i like the idea like those walls in wolfenstein in doom where they look like a normal wall but is actually a secret door
except there's one "wall" where you shoot it, it smashes you at 300mph after a few seconds
@@thewiseowl8804 walls are largely indifferent to you in any context. there’s an expression “talking to a wall”, meaning you are being ignored. gabe was talking about how bullet holes reinforce immersion because that’s a response, that makes it feel less like you’re being ignored by the world, especially when it’s coming from something that’s not inherently very responsive.
you should take the “wise” out of your handle if you didn’t get that.
Walls do that, yes... until it's something like Red Faction: Guerilla. Then their existence is more a suggestion than an obstruction.
@@logandunlap9156 If you're going to speak for someone else, could you at least _try_ to answer what I _actually_ want answered? Very embarrassing power trip and misunderstanding.
"We don't use the word 'fun'" - Neil Drunkmann
"Never have I thought to myself that realism is fun. I go play games to have fun" - Gabe Newel
"If it's not fun, why bother?" - Reggie Fils-aime"
Sums up modern gaming quite well.
My favourite part of TLOU2 is when Hydrogen by M.O.O.N. plays because it reminds me of Hotline Miami (a game that’s actually good)
And to think that Cuckman, the master of the 7 "REAL" awards wants to make a Hotline Miami game....
@@CosmeaYT it’ll probably be movie cutscenes with some gameplay and generic third person shooter gameplay sprinkle in, and pull a lame Undertale message about “we’re the real monsters” and lots of expedition.
@@CosmeaYT Didn’t the devs say that HM3 was never happening though? Also the ending of HM2 literally shows everyone being wiped out.
Someone once tried to argue that red dead redemption 2 was the best game of all time because of its realism.
To which i quickly responded I kept Arthur alive on cigarettes and hard liquor for the majority of the game.
I saw a few clips of the realistic animations for skinning animals etc, and realised I wanted no part in it!
Meanwhile at Sony: "Make it cinematic! People love quicktime events!"
Thank you Gaben for finally explaining what fun in a game is.
Most people try and argue boring games are good because of realism. Or because they simply don't understand how it works or what to describe it as. Now here we have it.
"Most people try and argue boring games are good because of realism."
Literally everyone who defends The Calisto Protocol because of "muh facial animation" or something. Like, I don't give a rat's ass about how good the character's face looks (especially when I'm staring at the back of their head 90% of the time), I care about the combat and level design. Both of which are terrible, btw. I'd describe TCP as "A somehow even more basic Mike Tyson's Punch-Out gameplay loop against generic zombies in linear levels that consist of random concrete corridors that make absolutely no logical sense as a real place. Oh, and it's not even scary."
The sheer graphical "realism" even goes so far as to directly impact gameplay negatively. Dead Space lets you just instantly absorb a medpak from your inventory without any animation. This lets you play more risky, and get more aggressive (which is more fun than methodically chipping down every enemy in the most optimized way to avoid damage) since you can top-off at any moment. In TCP, because of "muh realizm", it'd break "immersion" to just insta-use a medkit like that, so instead he has to pull it out of his inventory, slowly kneel down, carefully drive the syringe into his neck, slowly push the plunger to inject the fluid, wince, look at the syringe to make sure it's empty, and then stand back up while rubbing his neck. It makes it so it is utter suicide to use a medkit in combat, punishing risky playstyles that might've tried to make TCP's boring gameplay loop at least marginally enjoyable.
Sorry for rant :)
There is a “boring” game called voices of the void, but it makes you more paranoid the more monotonous it gets(it’s a horror game btw) which builds tension upon tension upon tension, the games genuinely horrifying after a few hours.
These "most people" are a figment of your imagination. They are not real.
Nobody would argue a boring game is good because of realism.
This is it. I've been playing this ubisoft game, Division 2 with my friend. Just in the first hour we slaughtered thousands of soldiers, killed a high ranking officer and helped some people that were living on the rooftops, but after all that you go to get your next quest, and the guy just still treats you like newbie trash that can't get things done.
I just think to myself "if every soldier killed as much guys as I have we wouldn't be fighting a war. What the hell are these dialogues, why does nobody acknowledge what I've done?"
I quit that game after another hour and a half of dissatisfied questing where nothing changed and NPCs kept their mundane day to day dialogue.
In half life I'd kill like 25 marines at "we've got hostiles" level and suddenly the whole military would be radio announcing my name, soldiers would scream "WE'VE GOT FREEMAN!" and the enemy would start using underhanded tactics to just capture me.
That felt like I was a genuine threat and my enemy recognized my efforts of resistance, hell even Nihilant tries to talk you out of it as you fight your way through Xen.
Gabe is 100% right here about the Narcissistic ego, if I can't see my actions mold the story in a good or bad way I just lose interest so rapidly, the game becomes unplayable.
This
Lol, this sounds like why I dropped The Division 1 after 7 hours of playtime. Game was pretty but I hated how it felt like I was making no regional progress and was just moving from set piece to set piece.
gordon would be way scarier than the division 2 guy, bro can run headfirst into a combine hyper scary base or something and he walks out the front door 10 minutes later with the combine facility falling out of reality or some crazy shit kliener cooked up
Bad take. Division 2 is a good game and you're not meant to "win" the "war" on your own. You're a single agent out of many trying to contain the goddamn apocalypse. It's a team effort. You're not a newbie, you're one man out of thousands. You piece NY & Washington DC back together. Half life 1 simply doesn't have that same immersion, and frankly Half life 2 doesn't either. I felt actual progress in The Division and I was immersed in a broken NY. I felt no such progress in Half life, no immersion.
@@ThunderTheBlackShadowKitty Yeah I felt soooooo much immersion hearing same shit from npc over and over again.
It remind me of something
One thing that always bothered me with Uncharted 4 compared to the previous games was the lack of surnatural elements, many people liked that because it was more "realistic" but i think it was a downgrade and the surnatural elements were just more fun/interesting and mysterious and were actually an important part of the series
This is one of the most well said ,well thought out and simple way of explaining video game gameplay design
Just finished Half-Life and it was my first HL experience ever.
They say the whole gaming industry have looked up to that game back in the day.
And you know what?
They should've never stopped doing that.
I haven't really forgiven steam for not finishing the series; if Gabe really cares about gaming, I don't see why he can't afford the resources for a finale for a game going on 2 decades unfinished.
@@nyarlat2609They're saving it for when they're doing badly financially or whenever they need to sell hardware.
@@nyarlat2609 valve owns steam
They didn't. CoD is a mainstream game because it's mostly a movie.
Other than that, tons of games picked up Half-Life's elements and built on it. Play the following FPS to completion and talk after that: Bioshock, FEAR, Painkiller, DOOM3,2016,Eternal, Titanfall 2, No One Lives Forever, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein:The New Order, Prey, Serious Sam, Far Cry, Dishonored, Crysis etc.
Plenty more out there which are hybrids and whatnot but those come off the top of my head. Nevermind all the DOOM clones that do an excellent job as well as the retro modern shooters like Dusk or Ultrakill
I've always been saying that realism is good only as a tool of immersion for the sake of being cool. It's not realistic that my Skyrim character doesn't have to eat so I can boost my immersion with a survival mod.
It's not realistic my Skyrim character doesn't have to stop 3-4 times a day to take a shit or have a piss but I think I can live without that, it wouldn't be fun even though it's 'realistic'
I don't know, pissing in red dead 2 is entertaining
next elder scrolls game you defo won't be allowed to swim naked in glaciers cause "mah immersion" , i already modded it out but i so so hate how bethesda forces you to use a chair to wait like wtf. WHat you can't sit on the ground
@@MGrey-qb5xz that becomes unrealistic when they restrict you through stuff you can do in real life like sit on the ground
@@circleinforthecube5170 Like a game having a hunger mechanic but I can't get literal days' worth of meat from killing a cow. Just look at Fallout 4 and how little meat you get off of Brahmin. Like if it was actually realistic, I'd be having to spend the whole day cooking and drying the meat to get the most use of it all.
Though F4's realism difficulty still makes enemies more damage spongey than Normal, so it's kind of breaking in a lot of ways...
A much better concept than realism is believability. I guess it can be confused for realism, but its more about being immersed in the game world rather than every action being tedious and true to life
Edit: U might as well just call it immersion.
I would say the term grounded works too.
Things should still be believable, even in fantasy!
Verisimilitude
Exactly. I don't ask, "is this realistic?" I ask "is this immersive, can I suspend my disbelief?" And Half-Life does very well with the latter, it's one of the most immersive shooters I've played.
it's suspension of disbelief
Sometimes realism is part of the fun. There is a reason why simulators exist.
That being said, not every game has to be realistic, and when a game has to, even then fun comes first. Even simmers don’t play boring sims.
I think the issue is games who don't go far enough either way.
Grounded enough to feel like a slog but not deep enough in their mechanics to make you care or keep engaged.
The newest Need for Speeds come to mind.
@@trabuco9 When I worked on _Need For Speed_ (PS1) I learnt the distinction between arcade, simcade, and simulation racing. It helped explain why NFS settled for simcade.
Arcade racers like _Mario Kart_ and simcades like _Gran Turismo_ toss out realism when they allow rubberbanding because it makes multiplayer much more interesting when drivers are neck and neck. It allows those with less skill to catch up to those with more skill. *Fun is the focus at the expense of realism.*
Simracers _don’t_ allow rubberbanding because the focus is on raw skill not artificial crutches or cheating.
Which one is right? Depends on what people want for “house rules”! Some find arcade racing to be trivial toys; others find simracers to be complicated.
*What is fun for one person may not be fun for another.*
Consistency and the world _feeling_ alive by reacting to players is mandatory if players want to experience fun.
you now, this short 81sec bit should be mandatory to watch for anyone who downloads any game engine
It's the same reason something like pseudo-science exists for sci-fi and such. Something just has to be believable, not realistic.
I've always thought of unrealistic stories as superior to realistic ones, because they're just the optimal way to convey pure emotions and ideas. We see reality every day and our brain makes many associations. If I show you an ordinary scene, you will probably naturally recall an experience or yours, which can even be of profound meaning to you, but isn't something I originally planned in my narration. I didn't mean to make you recall that.
Of course this is very less frequent in less familiar unrealistic subjects, so you're more likely to understand what the original meaning was.
Reality is flawed to an extent.
@@samueleproiettimicozzi8134 During the past few years I find much more fun when studying about actual history than reading fictions. For example, the plot of Game of Thrones just sucks. Its political intrigues are very flat and expectable. Maybe this is a 'curse of believablity', causing the story to be plagued by overused cliches, while the actual history is seasoned with unbelievable miracles, coincidences and ambiguities (uncoverable mysteries because the records are gone or even deliberatly erased).
0:00 we got this close to him ending our reality. Good thing lord Gabe is a merciful one.
I'm currently playing Borderland 2 (for the first time) and I have had many moment where I just went "that doesn't make any sence. But it is wacky, nice."
I have a magacine fed, triple barrel, pump action shotgun, with a sniper scope.
Does it make logical sense? No.
Is it a good gun? Yes.
And that is all I need to have some *FUN.*
Sometimes it is good to turn off your brain and just enjoy the show.
Realism =\= Good
Realism = Grounded
As a Borderlands player
This is why I play the games.
Are the Guns realistic? Hell no
The setting is pure sci fi with mega corporations straight out of cyberpunk bandits that talk insane gibberish, claptrap won't shut up. And magie women with space magic ( Sirens)
But the series is pure fun personified
@@michaelknox3715 *Yes!*
110% I agree!
In less than 90 seconds, Gabe explained the truth behind fun generation. But he also explained something much more important - he showed us the real reason Half Life was fun.
It drew you into Freeman's mind and forced you out of it for your life.
No better explanation of immersion could be so concise without the irritation Gabe is feeling here.
The virgin Neil “We don’t use the word fun” Druckmann vs chad Gabe “I go play games to have fun” Newell.
tlou 2 fits gabe's definition of fun
@@Handonforehead No it doesn't lmao
To be fair, a game doesn't have to be "fun" to be enjoyable. I don't watch a depressing WW2 film to have "fun", but it's still an experience I get something from
@@Ben-Rogue you can use "fun" in the sense that you enjoyed it or had a good time with it.
@@Ben-RogueGood movies are fun, war movies are fun, combat is fun
Seeing soldiers stand around doing nothing all day without a good narrative or fun characters isn't fun.
Also videogames aren't movies.
I think Realism is being used wrong in many instance. The guys who complain something isn't realistic doesn't want realism, they want more capability, variability, and control over the game as a player.
Leaning from cover in FPS games today is one example. It's a mechanic that gives people more control, but some just see it as being "realistic" and think that's what makes it good.
Some people are just bad critics incapable to explain their criticisms in details and coherent manners such as those complaining about "realism" and some of them can't explain it further other than expecting you to agree without question. Hence, the confusion on what "realism" really means in video game.
Yes, it really is a case where the vocabulary we use to describe games have become outdated. I think that when something gives you agency in a game and it feels ”natural” we use the words ”realistic” as a definition. We have used that word in the gaming world for decades, but it is many times just interpreted as ”good graphics”, to the detriment of gaming development as a whole.
I rather like very realistic games, like Kingdom Come and Way of the Hunter. A good designer knows, however, when to fudge realism for fun. So if you want a challenge, you can just crank up difficulty without much extra grind.
It's the same as being a GM for a tabletop game. You know when to fudge rolls for your players when the result can make the game more exciting or dynamic, while keeping things fair. But if you completely sacrifice the illusion of every roll being legit, then players question every roll. And if you fudge nothing, then players can become frustrated by a run of horrible luck, or give up the chance for a player's daring gambit to pay off, encouraging further risk taking. If you want it to be dynamic and exciting, you have to take liberties with reality, while keeping it realistic in context.
Plus, Escape from Tarkov is a very good realistic extraction FPS game. The risk and reward system is pretty good and challenging.
@@emperorfaiz parroting a quote from a gamedev i heard once, "people are good at figuring out when something is wrong, but not what is wrong"
basically, when a gamer is having a bad time with a mechanic in a videogame, they know they aren't having fun and they're getting frustrated, but they come up with answers (such as the classic realism argument) to try and figure out why they're having such a bad time.
I still remember arguing with people about the first gameplay reveal for the last of us. I just looked at it and thought "this looks entirely standard, nothing special or interesting is happening."
"BUT IT'S SO REALISTIC!!!"
I was told by someone that realism is the literal only thing that matters in games. Like seriously? Then stop playing video games then you already have real life ffs
I love that real pause of "Okay, like"
I was a 100% sure some else would love this particular part so much that they'll just post it.
LOL I've played through Half-Life like 100 times and I never knew you could deactivate that first turret. I thought you just had to go past it or blow it up...
If Valve started making games again, the whole industry would be shaken to its core
Not really, pretty much everything has been tried and done
they're still probably making games, they just haven't made one that is worth releasing yet
That's some wise point of view
People have forgotten what games are sposed to be
Gabe Newell and Valve's design philosophies are incredible and resulted in some of the industry's most ground-breaking IPs
It would just be nice if they actually still did things with those IPs
How can somebody say that after they managed to release one of THE GREATEST video game "celebration" updates of all time?
No. Just leave things as they are before we get portal 3....4.... etc.
We did get CS2 recently
tf2 fans are suffering
ip.
This is why TF2 is still played to this day, gaben had this mentality that made tf2 and MOST valve really fun to play and go back to it.
He is HIM, he is the GOAT of videogames industry.
"If it's not fun, why bother?" - Reggie
I couldn't express exactly why some games were so good. Thanks GabeN
It’s GayBen :)
Realism can enhance the fun factor of a game, but it’s important that the people developing and/or making the choices on a game ask themselves “to what extent would realism continue to add more to the player’s experience than it takes in development time and resources” And the beautiful thing about that question is that it’s not a one-size fits all thing. Certain types of games might be better off with extreme amounts of realism and some games might be better off with very little realism, and everything in between. Granted answering that is easier said than done, it can be hard to anticipate what players will enjoy but it’ll at least have you thinking about realism from a perspective of a cost vs reward mentality, something that can help you avoid some of the pitfalls both of hyper-realism but also with no care for any realism whatsoever as well.
I think in certain survival games realism can be fun. Maybe the player shouldn't need to shit that's obvious, but seeing the seasons slowly change and the length of the days changing with it is surreal and unexpected from a survival game. Bonus points if the game acts like there's an equator and changes the length of the seasons relative to your distance from it. I want the world to feel alive and it feeling alive will depend in part on my ability to interact with the world and the world's ability to change.
@@dright928 Absolutely, the point of my comment was I both wanted to make the point everyone else is making about realism being unnecessary in some instances, but I also wanted to make it point that realism isn’t exclusively taking away from the fun, it can be part of the fun and survival games are an example of this. I want the idea to be that developers need to think about realism in a way of it being able to add something to a game, but it also taking time and resources from other parts of the game, and finding their own middle ground between including the right amount of realism, whilst being able to allocate enough resources to other parts of their game that may need it.
The obsession with realism has been around since we first got glimpses of great 3d graphics. Somewhere around the ps3 era people became obsessed with "but thats not realistic" attitude towards everything. Its why clowns are no longer seen as funny but creepy. Why Pee Wee is often seen as a crazy weirdo instead of an innocent man child. Hopefully this trend is on the downfall because I wish people could just have fun again with media instead of everything being so serious and "realistic".
@@BoyoLoco-rd2fi Seriousness and realism have a place within media but I do agree that perhaps some more lightheartedness and wackiness could be present in media.
@@dright928 another thing is that when electronics in games are interactable, like in gta 5
i'd like to be able to use a tv than can access the vlc media player in my pc and play videos or use a computer in-game to get more worldbuilding info
A game can be deeply unrealistic while still being fun, as long as the feedback the player is receiving for their actions is sensible and rewarding.
I've been saying this for years! The more realistic a game tries to be, the less fun it is. Sure, for games that are supposed to be "immersive" it works fine, but that is only a small fraction of gaming genres. Everything else needs to focus less on realism and more on character, charm, gameplay, etc...
the king of gaming, long live Gaben
I want to hug Gaben for articulating this point of reciprocity and intractability in gaming. When did modern gaming lose these ideals? In favor of better graphics? Even compare something like Starfield to Skyrim (or Skyrim to older titles like Morrowind or New Vegas) and it becomes so obvious there is a degradation to thoughtfulness to players spending time there and how they want to play in the sandbox and be recognized for it. It feels like players can only play games in a specific, monetizable way.
(Though to be fair, Valve’s own gaming porfolio between Portal 2 and Half Life Alyx seem to embrace the Microtransction, Games-As-A-Service model that very much abandons the philosophy of thoughfulness in favor of cyclical motenized matchmaking…But I guess this is a ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ argument that does not differentiate between narrative and competitive design.)
What do microtransactions have to do with games acknowledging the way you play? In csgo if you shoot at a wall, it shows a decal. It seems it does everything Newell said, except soldiers running away because now they're real people.
@@Linkale_ Good question. I already did differentiate above that I think Gabe Newell’s argument in context applied to narrative, single player game design and not competitive multiplayer design. But even going beyond that, I think the key word that entails what we’re talking about is thoughtfulness, “consideration for the needs of other people”. I specifically think if Gabe’s complaint of “the wall is ignoring my existing as a narcissistic injury” as not a pejorative for wall decals and destructible environments, but a mandate on the player’s behalf to iterate in ways to reward the player their time and investment in the world. The issue with microtransaction, games-as-a-service should then be obvious…the value isn’t meant to be provided, but taken from the player for their time. The confusion seems to be the cause and effect in the point. One thing like wall decals and physics in combat and AI are effects stemming from a cause that is not the same as what Gaben mentions. Rainbow Six Siege has a lot of the same destructible, interactive features as something like Valve’s Counterstrike but it is clearly not from a philosophy of iteration, but a need to be able to sell more (increasingly) empowered player-characters who can exert their agency on other players…Case in point, the iteration in the game’s development beyond the sellable player characters has ceased. Same goes for TF2 and CS:GO with their only remaining focus being principally on cosmetics, at least until Source 2 was finishing development, and now we will see what follows. But don’t take my word on it, how would you interpret Valve’s actions towards gamers with their failure to either make new single player games at all or have debacles like with Artifact? Does (or does not) the difference in actions as a Company reflects a change in philosophy of what Gaben speaks here for HL1?
@@Linkale_ If the above reply is too long-whinded, consider this. In a lot of 2000s “classic” hits, especially Valve productions, the game itself is the product made for us, “by gamers for gamers”, you could say. In the 2010’s onwards, we as gamers are the products for the games. And it has been a lot more exploitative of a dynamic, right? The devs themselves are crunched by budgets and forced into spending their time and efforts into, for example, designing gambling/loot boxes, player markets that require real money for cosmetics, microtransactions, incessant data collection, season passes, endless dlcs, esport promotion, cyclical multiplayer focus that intentionally plays off dopamine cycles, and general timed game design made to take more of player’s time to keep them engaged ad infinitum, rather than taking less out of consideration and to reach an end goal.)
@fictionalfan7306
Portal 2 and half life alyx show all of their design philosophies just as much as their old games did. And them taking a long time to make new games isn't a change to their philosophy at all, they've always been about perfectionism. They don't care how long it takes to make something as long as it ends up the way they want it to
@@sapphire4310 This response seems very accusatory. No one disputes that Portal 2 and Half Life: Alyx were great games, the accusation against Valve is that they abandoned their original mandate (that Gabe Newell discusses ad naseum in this documentary) to continue making more games like them. The gap between Portal 2 (2011) and Half Life Alyx (2020) speaks for itself.
Really good way to look at it. The way I always saw it was that realism isnt the goal, believability is.
I felt like that for a very long time about games. The closest I got to describing it was "interactivity", but Newell condenses it perfectly.
Usually players want to be able to predict what impact their actions will have beforehand, or understand how the impact comes from their actions. Realism can be useful for that, with realty acting as the base assumptions about how things interact with one another. You don't have to stick with it, but it's a good starting point for what players will be able to implicitly understand, without being told. If there's a ladder, you can climb it. If you shoot a wall, the bullet will make a crater in it.
As I said in an earlier comment, It's like how sound effects are always extreme over the top versions of the real life sound they represent
Feedback from your actions also helps you learn the game, hollow knight never tells you that you can hit spikes with a downward swing to get knocked upward, but when you hit spikes from the side you get knocked backward.
in a world where triple A companies struggle with making a game that accomplishes what it should be, valve did it 20 years ago and still do to this day.. is to make games that are fun and engaging.
The industry had far better games and the AAA budget scene wasn't even a thing back then. The problem was and always will be the investors behind a company. The developers should make the games they want to make not the investors and corporations.
Im playing through Half Life for the first time, as a 20 year old I have to say I love how it's designed, exploration and vent crawling in this environment is so immersive it makes me forget this game was released in 1998, the graphics are the only giveaway
God bless Gabe, Valve and everything they do.
It's about balance, realism can be good, but only insofar as it contibutes to the player having fun.
I think about this every time somebody looks at footage for a space game and says "Umm actually there shouldn't be any sound in space 🤓"
I don't want my space games like Homeworld, Eve, or Starfield to be silent bro.
that concept could be kinda cool, your in danger but its dead silent and you can only use your eyes
I've never heard anyone say that and I've played a lot of space games
@@circleinforthecube5170 Look at the game Duskers. It makes great use of silence.
Bullet holes in the wall is such an unbelievable small detail that is so important
Lore of Gabe Newell: fun is NOT realism, but reinforcement momentum 100
Hideous destructor grappled with this problem for a while for a lot of people. Its gotten a lot better at that balance nowadays. I feel.
precisely the reason score is a good idea. Getting score for each action you make is reinforcement
Until it breaks immersion or becomes a chore like goal to grind past a high score.
@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive It's not a chore. It's reinforcement. Competition in a fully reinforced activity feels amazing. Its power play
@@sakesaurus1706 Competition in a singleplayer game?
@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive yes.
@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive ever heard of speedrunning?
Internal game feedback to your actions is a very important part of a game.
Your action is given a reaction.
"if you shoot at a wal, there have to be decals"
flashback to little me drawing on the walls in hl1
0:41 After playing half life for god knows how long I didn’t know you could just switch that off, I would always run and pray I was at a high enough health to survive 😭
That's why it's important to distinguish realism from being realistic. Realism is simply taking ideas from the real world and implementing them to make a game more fun/interesting. Adding detailed reload animations to FPS games is a form of realism. Being realistic focuses on trying to mimic the real world one to one without considering gameplay. This would be like forcing the player to sit on a toilet for ten minutes and have the frequency vary by diet.
Someone needs to send this to all the people who complained that frogs cant eat fireflies irl in minecraft
I love how he stops mid sentence and just goes “explain to me why that’s interesting”
This is why I freaking hate how games are going for "REALISM". NO WE DO NOT NEED REALISTIC VIDEOGAMES.
What we need is games that work and gameplay is fun and interesting to play.
You do not need all these power to look real when with a simple style it can work as well and without spending millions.
This also should apply to how "realistic"character designs this days
Companies design the ugliest characters I've ever seen like starfield and hide behind the shield of "realistic face designs"
This defeat the point of escapism in games we want to have fun and escape the shitty real world not going to another shitty world
What if someone want that kind of escapism?
I've understood that there was something cohesive that brought a great product together that countless lesser games missed, but I've never known exactly what it was and could never put it in such a concise and simple statement before. It's no wonder Valve succeeds in all of their games.
half life starts with a 10 minute unskippable train ride to work
Balance fantasy and realism in video games
A good story, a mysterious figure and a lot of fun = the Half-life series's
Also plenty of mod's to give it some realism in any scenario that you can imagine or totally the opposite.
Gabe is looking much healthier now, good for him.
When Half-Life 2 first came out, and I could go _cling! clang! bang! ping! clong!_ on a barrel with the crowbar and it looked like the texture was denting, it blew my fucking mind.
this is the reason why alyx's way to switch weapon in VR is the best. its super fun and the haptic feedback make it so practical to switch without looking.
The point is, you shouldn't restrict potential fun and interesting design with the excuse of realism.
honestly this clip made me realize how amazingly articulate gabe is
Not a mind-blowing revelation, but definitely something people should take to heart. Video games, similar to animation, is a distortion of reality. Even in more grounded animation, principles like squash and stretch still apply. Good game feel is the same thing, when you hit an enemy you should exaggerate the hit animation, sound effects, hitstun, hitboxes, etc. Punching someone in real life will most likely just hurt your hand, plus it's impossible to create the same tactile response through a video screen so you need to exaggerate things.
It's about creating the feeling of "feeling".
As to what I think "fun" is, I think it's a combination of game feel, risk/reward and purpose. It's not enough to make the punch feel satisfying, but you should also earn that punch by timing it at the right time and gain a positional and time advantage from it. Mowing down enemies is going to get boring if the enemies aren't much of a threat and it doesn't help push you forward towards your goal (i.e. most open-world enemies).