Realism vs. Believability

In a previous post - What is Story? I tried to provide a clear and useful definition of the terms “story” and the main pillars it’s made up of: “setting”, “characters” and “plot”/”narrative”, in order to avoid certain recurring misunderstandings that often happen during such discussions.

In this post, I’m trying to do something similar for discussions about “realism”. As usual for this blog I am mainly looking through the lens of video games - but for the most part this similarly applies to movies, literature and other media as well.

Realism is invoked quite regularly in video game discussion and often it’s used quite wrongly, or at least in a potentially misleading or confusing way. We need to fix that.

The Distinction

When discussing a work of fiction, there is an important difference between “realism” and “believability”. That difference lies within how closely aligned something is to actual reality - vs. being internally consistent and logical.

In formal literary criticism and scholarly debate it is well-established and generally considered best practice, to keep to this distinction in mind. Realism is always called that - but what I call “believability” here, might be called “versimilitude”, “internal consistency” or “plausibility” instead. There is no debate though, that making the distinction is crucial. This is also generally taught as part of any creative writing education.

Realism

• The story closely resembles real life.
• It being “realistic” means that it could actually happen in the real world.
• It adheres to the often mundane constraints of real-life probability, complexity and nuance.
• Character act like real people, events unfold like they might in everyday real life, and outcomes reflect the unpredictability and messiness of reality.

A fictional story can be “realistic” in that it depicts the real world, and real life and real people authentically and undistortedly - but still be completely “unbelievable”, if for example characters do something that feels contrived or forced or completely unmotivated on their part - just to drive along the story.

To determine if something is realistic or not - ask the question: “Could this actually happen in real life?”.

Believability

• The story makes sense within it’s own premise.
• Everything that happens is internally consistent and logical, the world follows it’s own rules - and doesn’t break them.
• The world-building, motivations, cause-effect chains, characters (re-)actions are solid.
• Readers can easily suspend disbelief, because the story earns their trust, and doesn’t break immersion.

A fictional story can be completely unrealistic in that it contains magic and dragons and maybe even severely bends the laws of physics - but still be highly believable since it is consistent and contradiction-free in how those things work within the world.

To determine if something is believable or not - ask the question: “Does this make sense within the story?”

Two Separate Axes

All four combinations are possible and do exist:

• Realistic and believable: obviously fine, but maybe a bit boring
• Realistic and unbelievable: being realistic doesn’t help at all when the story makes no sense because of internal inconsistency or contradictions.
• Unrealistic and believable: the existence of magic and dragons does not matter, as long the story makes sense because always follows it’s own rules
• Unrealistic and unbelievable: makes no sense, and the issues is caused by being unebelievable, not by being unrealistic.

But when people just say “it’s not realistic” and use that synonymously to mean both/either being unrealistic or unbelievable, then this important distinction is lost.

Suspension of Disbelief

Games are mostly unrealistic. Even WWII games that are very careful to depict uniforms and landscapes and weapons in a detailed, authentic and period-correct way - often like to go quite unrealistic when it comes to the physical and mental resilience of the protagonist, the likelihood of them being involved in every important mission and skirmish, their ability to carry weapons and ammunition, and especially their independence from the chain of command and their kill-numbers.

And there is nothing wrong with that - as players (and the same is true for book readers and movie goers, etc.) are willing to suspend disbelief - and accept the premise of a world where things are more or less different from the real world. And as long as the game does not break that suspension of disbelief by doing anything that’s internally inconsistent, contradictory, unmotivated, immersion-breaking or otherwise not believable - that’s perfectly fine.

It’s fine for cars in action movies to explode, and for martial artists in Wuxia movies to have superhuman speed and bend the laws of physics. It’s a genre trope or rule of the fictional world - unrealistic, but as long as it’s not broken, it works and remains logically sound within the story.

Generally speaking, believability is very important, and realism mostly doesn’t matter much at all.

When Realism Hurts Believability

In fact, it is possible that you have a world, like for example a fantasy world with magic and dragons, and flying creatures, and monsters everywhere… where certain realistic medieval things, make no sense at all.

For example, city walls might be completely useless, since there’s many ways to very easily overcome them. Or maintaining a large army of soldiers might be pointless, as training up a small but highly experienced strike force of magicians instead might be a lot more efficient - and easily able wipe out even a huge army.

Or more commonly, in a world where methods of revival and magical healing do exist - you would expect that to have some socio-political consequences. A fictional world can be a lot more believable if it does address these things, and depict a society where magic is completely integrated, rather than depicting a realistic medieval society that relies on premises that make absolutely no sense in a world where magic exists.

Sometimes you do have to choose between either realism or believability - because they contradict each other. And in such a situation, you should always pick believability. Realism ultimately doesn’t matter, unless you’re really trying to do an authentic period piece. But then you shouldn’t run into such a conflict in the first place.

But the important point to note here is, that in some situations actual realism can be damaging to believability. Keep that in mind.

Why This Distinction Matters

Now you might think, that when having a discussion about a fictional world that does include magic, it should be pretty obvious, that we are suspending disbelief and operating within that premise that magic exists.

We don’t want to remove magic because that’s unrealistic - but that we might want to remove city walls, if those turn out to be “unrealistic” within the premise of that magic-infused world. You might even look up the dictionary and find, that the word “unrealistic” can be used in that meaning, and that it’s totally correct and valid to do so.

And while that is fully correct - there is a real reason to not do it regardless and to actively avoid blurring the concepts of realism and believability. Generally speaking, whenever you are having a serious discussion, you want to avoid ambiguity and prefer clearly defined terms that are used in only one single meaning. Just to avoid misunderstandings.

The Typical Issue

I’ve seen it happen again and again and again.

• One person criticizes a story for being “unrealistic” because it’s not making sense within it’s own premise and rules. Because of internal inconsistency or contradictions. The counter-argument is, that what happens is totally realistic, because there exist examples of something very similar happening in the real world. And it just can’t be unrealistic, if it happened for real.

• One person lauds a story for being “realistic” - because what happens in the story is practically the only thing that can happen within the world and after everything that precedes it. It’s the only logical conclusion, perfectly motivated, perfect chain of cause-and-effect, it feels completely inevitable at that point. The counterargument then is, that it’s not realistic at all, because it would make absolutely no sense for anything like that to ever happen in the real world.

In both cases the discussion ends up being unproductive, because both sides talk past each other, and don’t argue based on the same standard. This might devolve into discussing semantics, but is not likely to make anyone understand and address the actual problem - which always is related to believability - not realism.

This Is A Category Error

If someone argues that for example an axe breaking in a game after felling just 10 trees is not believable because in the real world, axes are capable of lasting a lot longer - then what is happening there is called a “category error”.

A category mistake (or category error, categorical mistake, or mistake of category) is a semantic or ontological error in which things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category.
(Wikipedia)

What’s happening is, that “what’s realistic in the real world” and “what’s realistic within the fictional world” end up diverging and thus becoming two distinct categories - and in those topics where they do diverge, these categories are incompatible. (In other topics there is overlap, and then the distinction doesn’t matter - which only adds to the confusion.)

Within the fictional world, people might have superhuman strength and thus be able to fell a tree in just three blows - putting very unusual stress onto the axe. Or wood might just be weaker, again allowing people to fell trees in just three strokes, but also making wooden axe handles a lot weaker and quicker to break. It might be internally consistent and even logical for an axe to break that fast - and how long an axe lasts in the real world has no bearing on that. If you actually want to make things realistic, you not only have to address the how quickly the axe breaks - but also how long it takes to fell a tree. It’s more important for those two things to match up - rather than having one of the two be close to the real world.

Now, it’s perfectly fair and valid to argue that an axe breaking after just 10 trees is inconsistent even within the fictional world. Yes it should break quicker compared to the real world - maybe last months only, rather than years - but 10 trees is just excessive. It’s also perfectly fine to argue that axes breaking that quickly just isn’t fun, and thus bad for the game. But bringing up that in the real world an axe might last you (who never even fells a single tree ever) longer than a lifetime - that is a category mistake and not a valid argument.

But that category mistake is super easy to make, if both categories are called “realism” and it’s not pointed out that there is an important difference between “real realism” and “relative realism within the fictional world”. Would be easier, if those two categories carried separate names, wouldn’t it? If we just stopped calling it “realism” - and spoke only of “believability” instead.

In Conclusion

Video game discussions can and do relatively often suffer from participants mixing up what’s realistic in the real world, with what’s realistic within the fictional world of the game. Those are two different categories and in many cases not compatible.

In most cases, people who are calling for “realism”, actually want “believability”. Video games mostly are intentionally not realistic - showing events and settings that could not happen or exist like that in the real world. But we still want them to be believable - i.e. internally consistent and logically sound - to not break immersion and suspension of disbelief.

In some cases, actual realism can hurt and diminish believability, as what would happen in the real world, might make no sense to happen within the fictional world and it’s specific premise. It’s realistic, but not believable.

But when discussing realism in video games, people often bring up comparisons or analogies to the real world as an argument. But since that is the other kind of “realistic”, that’s typically a category error, and thus not valid as an argument.

These category errors are exceedingly easy to make and very common - and typically lead to unproductive discussions where both sides are simply talking past each other. You then end up discussing semantics, rather than addressing the actual issue - which typically is believability - not realism.

In my opinion, the best way to avoid that, is to just not ever call it “realism” in the first place - but to rather always stick with “believability” - thus underscoring that this is not the same thing as “realism” (the “like the real world” kind).

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.
(Oscar Wilde)