Videogame guns can be made up!!!

[AdAstra2009]

Usually I just ignore the video game section of IMFDB like a red headed stepchild, but I am tired of people claiming a gun in a video game as so and so real-life gun. When you go and look at the video game gun in question multiple cases it bares a superficial resemblance to the alleged real life gun if that. It makes a mockery of IMFDB and hurts it's credibility in my opinion.

examples:

This entire page!
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Deus_Ex:_Human_Revolution

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Fallout_3#10mm_SMG

There are some exceptions on this page but for the most part, they are made up.
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark

These aren't the only ones, I could go on and on

It just seems that a lot of people who make these video game IMFDB pages can't get it through their head that the video game designers are able to just make up a gun and draw it on the computer. No, they think that it HAS to be a real gun.
They look at the fake video game gun and instead of realizing it is a make believe gun they look for the real life gun that it looks most like and declare that it is so and so gun.

rant over.

[Mandolin1]

The Deus Ex guns look to be based on real weapons to me

[funkychinaman]

<don't look here>
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Turok

[Excalibur]

Originally Posted by Mandolin1

The Deus Ex guns look to be based on real weapons to me

Yeah and the guns on Halo look real too. The guns from Gears of War look real, but they are not. They do not exist in the real world at all. These fictional guns don't need a page

[Vangelis]

Originally Posted by AdAstra2009

There are some exceptions on this page It just seems that a lot of people who make these video game IMFDB pages can't get it through their head that the video game designers are able to just make up a gun and draw it on the computer. No, they think that it HAS to be a real gun.
They look at the fake video game gun and instead of realizing it is a make believe gun they look for the real life gun that it looks most like and declare that it is so and so gun.

Typically fictional gun designs aren't entirely make believe, though. Graphic designers will generally work from reference images, airsoft guns or real weapons to get a sense of authenticity. Now, in Perfect Dark the guns are so "Elmer Fudd" that it's like arguing over the shape of a cloud, but in more modern games the influences are often obvious enough to call. For example, that shotgun in Human Revolution is either based heavily on the SRM Arms weapon or a designer managed to make up a gun that looked exactly like it. The others, the resemblance is worth pointing out as long as you say it's a "fictional weapon with features of weapon X" rather than "this is weapon X." FEAR 2 is typically used as the standard for such things.

I'd differentiate between that and really made-up guns (eg the laser and plasma cannon which are *not* on the Human Revolution page). Also, Human Revolution has some actual, real guns in it which could be screencapped (mostly on magazine covers in the game world).

[Excalibur]

Originally Posted by Vangelis

Typically fictional gun designs aren't entirely make believe, though. Graphic designers will generally work from reference images, airsoft guns or real weapons to get a sense of authenticity. Now, in Perfect Dark the guns are so "Elmer Fudd" that it's like arguing over the shape of a cloud, but in more modern games the influences are often obvious enough to call. For example, that shotgun in Human Revolution is either based heavily on the SRM Arms weapon or a designer managed to make up a gun that looked exactly like it. The others, the resemblance is worth pointing out as long as you say it's a "fictional weapon with features of weapon X" rather than "this is weapon X." FEAR 2 is typically used as the standard for such things.

I'd differentiate between that and really made-up guns (eg the laser and plasma cannon which are *not* on the Human Revolution page). Also, Human Revolution has some actual, real guns in it which could be screencapped (mostly on magazine covers in the game world).

Which is why I only deleted the SMG and the handgun because they don't look close enough to the real thing. Oh yeah, they look KINDA like the real thing with bits of other things, but they don't look enough like the real thing. The handgun looks nothing like any 1911 variant to me and saying it has P99 characteristics already ends the discussion for me.

[Vangelis]

Yeah, with the handgun it was already there as something it looked even less like (I forget what) and I just changed the description to say it was a fake weapon which looked rather like the idea was "futuristic M1911." Hence just using an picture of an original M1911 rather than any specific version. If that read as "this is an M1911" then mea culpa, that certainly wasn't the idea.

[Evil Tim]

Just to get back to this now I'm not posting on my lunchbreak;

Originally Posted by AdAstra2009

Usually I just ignore the video game section of IMFDB like a red headed stepchild, but I am tired of people claiming a gun in a video game as so and so real-life gun. When you go and look at the video game gun in question multiple cases it bares a superficial resemblance to the alleged real life gun if that.

This does rather depend on how the description goes. If it's just saying that the gun bears a superficial resemblance to a particular gun (but does not say it is that gun) then I don't really see a problem with doing that, any more than there's a problem with saying, say, that a muzzle flash in a movie appears to be CGI. Now, saying it is that weapon based only on superficial resemblance, that I'd agree with you about.

Originally Posted by AdAstra2009

This entire page!
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Deus_Ex:_Human_Revolution

Been over this already, but now I've had a little time to think I'll re-comment. Yes, the assault rifle and pistol only resemble the stated weapons, but then that's all that was being said. Personally I'd have said the rifle looked more like they were thinking Magpul PDR, but both were rather borderline for inclusion. The SMG, I never really understood how that was supposed to look like a TMP, to be honest, it looked more like they were going for an HK receiver look.

The main reason I partially rewrote that article* was it fell into a trap that really bugs me, that of talking about fictional weapons like they're real and including mostly in-fiction information about them.

*I'm planning a second rewrite anyway if I every get around to screencapping it.

Originally Posted by AdAstra2009

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Fallout_3#10mm_SMG

I'd agree with that to a point as well; while the shape of the underside is definately informed by the MP5, there's not enough distinct detail to say it's any specific version. "Fictional weapon the lower part of which resembles the same area of an MP5" would cover that pretty well. Same for the 10mm pistol with the chunky Deagle slide thrown on it at random.

Originally Posted by AdAstra2009

It just seems that a lot of people who make these video game IMFDB pages can't get it through their head that the video game designers are able to just make up a gun and draw it on the computer. No, they think that it HAS to be a real gun.

Oh, I think we realise that. Otherwise you'd see games full of genuinely made-up weaponry like Red Faction: Guerilla showing up and we'd turn into IGCD (because you always wondered if there were real cars in Mario Kart, right?). Bear in mind that the Deus Ex: Human Revolution page includes less than half of the game's weapons because a lot of them are obviously either completely made up or at very least based on things that aren't guns (other sci-fi props, random pieces of machinery, etc; the revolver is kinda interesting since I wouldn't have thought anyone even remembered Dardick Trounds anymore, but that's about it). On the other hand, as I said, most of the graphic artists who actually design the weapons do not have the kind of knowledge of weaponry that would be needed to make up a firearm that looks like it would work, so they "cheat" and use real-life weapons as a guide (which they are familiar with, since most of these guys have drawn two real-life guns for every fake one they're asked to design). That, and a lot of them just throw in sections of guns they think look cool.

Originally Posted by AdAstra2009

They look at the fake video game gun and instead of realizing it is a make believe gun they look for the real life gun that it looks most like and declare that it is so and so gun.

Oh, we had a guy who was actually doing that, ask Mr. Wolf or predator20 about "Terror Scoped Rifle" sometime. And yes, I know I did it too back in the day over that Superdragon / G36 thing, before you point it out. I'll freely admit when I joined I was an idiot.

As above, I agree with you that saying a fake gun is the real gun it most closely resembles is off-limits. On the other hand, identifying that it shares elements with a real design I'd say is ok if it looks believable enough to fool a layman and it is said in no uncertain terms that it is not a real weapon. Just to give an example I like using:



If this appeared in something, the overall design is believable enough that a layman would conceivably ask what kind of gun it is. Obviously, the answer is not "it's a Winchester Model 1895" because it's not, and it's not "it's a Lee-Enfield No.4" because it's also not. It is, however, both of those. So, you cover it under the weapon's fictional name, and explain that it's actually a hybrid design made up of two real-life weapons.

Obviously, drawing the line between "made of recognisable real-life weapons" and "heap of random gun parts" is never going to be easy, and I think we should encourage people to bring these things to the forums so they can be discussed before they go up on pages if they're not sure about them. Trying to create a rule that covers all situations will either leave us with a system open to but-the-rules-say-so abuse or one so restrictive it removes authentic-looking but fictional designs that we should be telling people aren't real, such as Leon's "Silver Ghost" handgun in Resident Evil 4 (though the designer helped us out there by outright saying what he based it on).

Remember, we're here to field "what kind of gun is that?" Part of that is to tell people when something isn't real if they could reasonably be fooled by it.

[AdAstra2009]

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

Remember, we're here to field "what kind of gun is that?" Part of that is to tell people when something isn't real if they could reasonably be fooled by it.

True, but in my opinion the assumption should be made that said firearm; because it is an animation, and the supposed gun is not tangible should be assumed by the user to be fictional.

Yes I know sentence structure is not my strong suit.

[Evil Tim]

Originally Posted by AdAstra2009

True, but in my opinion the assumption should be made that said firearm; because it is an animation, and the supposed gun is not tangible should be assumed by the user to be fictional.

Well sure, but you know MPM's told us before that he's been asked if that absurd railgun from Eraser was real, so you have to set the bar pretty low for what people may or may not assume. I don't really see much problem with "looks like" descriptions if we're only identifying possible influences, as long as we're not bending over backwards to make excuses for an obviously fictional gun to be on the page just because it looks cool, rather than because it's important, looks convincing or is interesting for trivia purposes.