How realistic do you really need your games to be? There is a lesson here from this blog post from famous sitcom writer Ken Levine, who posted about some of the less realistic parts of Cheers. An excerpt:

No one came into town and checked into a hotel. They would go from the airport straight to the CHEERS bar, not even bothering to call to check if the person they wanted to see was even there. And who just ASSUMES their friend will be in a bar at noon? It’s a stretch but it’s always better to see a character than just hear him on the phone. And we figured it wasn’t so bizarre that it would take the audience out of the show.

When those out of town visitors showed up at CHEERS they never had their luggage. We used to joke that there were taxi drivers in Boston with million dollar wardrobes.

Did things like this in any way ruin the show? Of course not – the show is a classic that still enjoys frequent play in syndication nearly 15 years after cancellation.

The trick is to not think in terms of realism, but rather in terms of immersion. And while immersion is aided by getting ‘the little things right’, in the television genre, pacing is a much more important part of immersion. Anytime the viewer is sitting there saying to himself “Why am I spending my free time watching a bartender break a twenty?” he is not immersed. And so it is with games as well.