Originally Posted by Tarenth

Granted that the enjoyment you derive from a game is related to the people you play with. Playing quasi-realistic shooters with a TG group of mature and goal orientated players will be a vastly superior experience then your average public or clan server with half hearted regulations and enforcement.

That said: Just how many TGish groups are there and how much of the gaming population do that comprise?

If you take THAT into account you can see why a realistic shooter is definately a nitch market that won't take off in terms of wide spread popularity. If it wasn't a nitch field then we wouldn't complain and differentiate between "Playing the TG Way" and "Stupid pubbies".

Also there is another thing to consider. If you develop a game with hyper-realism then you really leave no room for player control in terms of development. You're effectively running yourself into a box with no exit. However if you go for a more arcade feel (like BF2, CoD2, and CoD4) then players can choose to either play arcade style or hype up the realism. If BF2 was released in the same condition PR is now (realism enchanced and all) then how many people would play BF2 or even stick with it after playing due to unsatisfactory experience with pubbie play style?

I think thats one of the things that practically killed Red Orchestra. It's still alive, but is more like an undead zombie. Super-realism (not quite on the ArmA feel, but a lot more than PR) and closed development after they were able to sell the game kind of killed the community. It was booming for the first couple of months after release, then the game basically flatlined after people left it after not liking the realism content, the fact only certain people could use tanks and they were limited, the fact tank-tank combat was *not* a point and shoot affair (one thing i still hate about PR) etc.