[Pared]

Quote: Originally Posted by inkcil

Unfortuantely, even though the developers work hard, glaring gameplay glitches are becoming more and more evident as of late. Sliders can be used to fix a problem (as in MLB2k5) or make a game more enjoyable for an individual without impacting the difficulty (speed setting in NBA Live). From another perspective, for technical junkies, tweaking sliders has become a game within a game. For them it is like taking the baton that the developers are passing off to them and running with it...and in any direction they want to go. Furthermore, if developers say in an interview, "We wanted to make as much of a realistic experience as possible" the slider person has every right, IMO, to come up with some post called "Slider Man's Realism Sliders." There are technically minded people who just love tweaking the sliders for the enjoyment of others, either finding ways to enhance the experience (whether realism or arcade) as promised by the gaming company, or to serve a select group of gamers that want an alternate gaming experience. To say that games aren't real is like saying that movies aren't real - its just not a solid argument for people wanting to see real life mimicked in a video game or on the big screen. We all know it's not real already. It's not like we expect the players to come out of the TV like in the recent Fat Albert movie. As for watching CPU vs. CPU games, a very similar argument can be made against watching Human games on TV...you can also say that baseball was a game meant to be played (compared to watched). So we should all go out and grab a mit instead of watching the next Dodger-Giants matchup. The main thing for me watching CPU vs. CPU has nothing to do with realism (not that the author necessarily said it did). It's all about being fully sucked into a fantasy world, much like watching a movie (Star Wars isn't real but I still love to sit back and watch it). Watching CPU vs. CPU serves somewhat of an RPG-like purpose for me. I am in this fantasy baseball world, where my team is doing A, B, and C. But what they do is also impacted by what 2 other teams (that I am not controlling) are doing. For instance, if the CPU decides that Ichiro will be injured in a matchup with Texas that occurs 2 games before my 3-day stint in Seattle, I am impacted by that matchup. Also, let's say that I am up by 1/2 game over Texas on the last day of the season. If they win their game against the Angels I will not make the playoffs. However, if they lose the game I go to the playoffs and win the division. As an RPG-like element (think of it as a large cut-scene), I would like to watch that game, compared to just pressing a button and finding out what the score of the Texas-Angels game is. Ironically, I still understand people who don't watch CPU vs. CPU games or tweak sliders.

Fantastic post.