Have video games hurt the reputation of shotguns?

Video games.

Movies.

Gun shop bubbas.

But nobody really complains about the firearm fantasmagoria titled “John Wick.”

On the flipside, they get more publicity just being featured in them

I've sent hundreds of pounds of shot down range and I have no idea where people come up with their ideas about shotguns and their effective range. Like a lot of things these days the internet and movies has spawned misconceptions about a lot of things and people just go by what they read or see on a screen and not what they have experience with. I don't have any experience with slugs but precision shot placement isn't something normally associated with shotguns. Instead we talk about patterns at certain ranges. Patterns at excessive range are ineffective. Maybe that's what they're thinking, they just don't know what those ranges are.

Idk. The old westerns i grew up watching a shotgun had infinite range and infinite knockdown. Didn't even need to aim. Just fire you double barrel 3 times right off the stage coach and kill 6 people in a 2 mile radius.

They also tend to lift people off the ground and blast them 20 yards backward.

I've played a lot of video games. In some games, a shotgun won't work beyond a few feet away. I can easily see how someone with no actual trigger time would get the impression they are ineffective. It takes real range time to teach the truth beyond misconceptions.

In one of the last big releases (modern warfare i think) the double barrel 725 had pretty infinite range and power. They nerfed it several times actually.

In the old LAN days we had rainbow six which had the SPAS 12 that had sniper rifle range too. Lol

The funniest thing to me is that typically a double barrel or lever action shotgun deals considerably more damage than an AA-12 or 1100 or some other semi auto. Pumps falling in between

Not being a shotgunner, what is the range of say a 12 gauge, slug or 00 buckshot??
I know people hunt with them so say shooting a deer or hog, how far??

Some of the purpose built slug guns group well at 250. But its the same as a rifle at that point, No scatter at all with a slug. I dont think 300-400 would be unrealistic though. Given a magazine full. Buckshot gives you a little spread but the accuracy range is a fraction of a slug.

As far as how far will it kill if you happen to hit it? A good ways id think. Nearly 400 grains of lead hits hard even thrown by a person.

With a rifled slug, out of a normal gun, 75 yards is about max hunting distance. 125 would be bad guy hitting distance. Buckshot, 40-50 yards on bad guys from a cylinder bore gun.

Bazoo said:

With a rifled slug, out of a normal gun, 75 yards is about max hunting distance. 125 would be bad guy hitting distance. Buckshot, 40-50 yards on bad guys from a cylinder bore gun.

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Yeah, if talking about smooth bores, I never seen a lot of accuracy either with slugs. And long barrels never helped with it.

Decent video on shotgun lethality distance...

crestoncowboy said:

Yeah, if talking about smooth bores, I never seen a lot of accuracy either with slugs. And long barrels never helped with it.

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That's what a shotgun is, smooth bore. Rifled slug barrels or guns, is a specialty thing, not the norm.

Bazoo said:

That's what a shotgun is, smooth bore. Rifled slug barrels or guns, is a specialty thing, not the norm.

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In my state you can't use a Rifle in deer season in most of the state. Slug guns are most certainly not specialty down there. You see 10 slug guns to one smooth bore.

First shotgun I ever bought was an 835 ultimag from Walmart. Came with both barrels. Ive never mounted the slug barrel

I’m too old to worry about video games and nonsense such as that.

JCooperfan1911 said:

I’m too old to worry about video games and nonsense such as that.

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Video games predate gun forums by a good bit. I had my Atari 2600 well before any PC. Lol

There were misconceptions about guns in general long before Hollywood or video games. We tend to think that everyone from older generations were exposed to guns and understood them. Most of the draftee's during WW-2 had never held a rifle before basic training, and most were not very good. That is why they were assigned to non-combat roles.

In the European theater only about 10% of the soldiers over there were ever near combat. The other 90% were in support roles. In the Pacific, with much longer supply lines, only 5% were in combat roles. A large percentage never left the USA and worked in support roles here.

When I was in high school the supervisor on my 1st job had been in the Navy during WW-2. He went through basic and fired a rifle there. But he could never understand what those spiral grooves in the barrel were for. As a teenager I tried my best to get him to understand, but it was useless. He did serve in Hawaii, as a clerk in an office.

It depends mostly on the age of the game, and the desired style of gameplay.

For example, Escape From Tarkov is a modern game, has a lot of mechanics such as different types of jamming, ammunition, effective ranges based on a combination of factors. They got shotguns right. However, this game has CBQ to 500+ meter combat. This game is a modern realistic tactical shooter.

BioShock mostly focuses on close to mid-range combat, and the shotgun actually acts appropriately ( not so much the Phosphorus shells, or the 6-round double barrel shotgun). This game is sort of a survival horror game, I suppose. Below is a picture of the shotgun.

These games are aimed at teens and up.

Fortnite gets it mostly wrong. This game is mostly aimed at children, and follows the firearm stereotypes. But they're kids, what are they gonna know right? Shotguns are only good at close range. Outside of that, they're useless.

It mostly depends on the nature of the game. Some game devs simply didn't have gun people as consultants, and we're also limited by the technology of their time. Render distance to reduce data usage, very limited physics,etc.

The game that actually showed me that shotguns aren't only for short range was Fallout New Vegas. A game close to my heart, but that's not the point. Picked up a Hunting Shotgun (modeled after the Rem. 870 I think ) and noticed I could pick them off at a distance. Then got the tube extension ( from 5 rounds to 8) and a choke to help reduce pellet spread. This game actually is the reason I started learning about guns.

Games are not 100% realistic, but there are many gems that actually take the time and effort to consult people on their use.

We also have to remember that videogames, like movies, aren't always realistic tacticular stimulations. They are art, and are subject to whatever rules their artists choose. They are made to match what the artist wants.

EDIT: bad grammar and spelling. I'm still an unthawed caveman at times.

gobsauce said:

This game actually is the reason I started learning about guns.

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Excellent game, glitchy bastard though. Lol. Also guns jam and break waaayy too fast.

And the 10mm is absolute trash on it

Maybe my favorite game. I was into guns long before it though.

Fallout is to guns what nfs is to racing. Far from a simulation. Modern warfare or battlefield would be more of the gran turismo/Forza simulation IMO

Video games have done a poor job over the years in terms of practical range and accuracy of guns. I've been playing GTA again and with a pistol you literally cannot hit anything past a certain distance that IRL you could with careful aim. I figure the reduced travel distance of bullets has something to do with the game engine not being able to compute that the bullet you fired in Brooklyn landed somewhere in Manhattan, or even 100 yards away, at some distance the bullet just doesn't exist anymore in the game.

Shotguns are a complex gun for games because there are few games that involve chokes, the only one I ever played that had the option of modifying the choke was called Gun, a Western game from the mid 00s. I didn't notice much difference with the chokes, but it's an old game.

I have seen some games that differentiate between slug and shot ammo for shotguns, Red Dead 2 being one of them, the slugs do have better range, however the shots still seems limited to 10 yards.

Back in the day the shotgun or scattershot was the most OP gun you could get in a game, but that was back in the sidescrolling era of Contra or Sunset Riders. In the modern 3D games, the shotgun is pretty much a liability. About the only modern game it really kicked butt in was Halo Combat Evolved and that was largely due to the capacity it had. Still limited range, but when you're mostly shooting alien zombies it was fine.

As far as using video games as some sort of reliable indicator of a real world gun's potential and effectiveness... I gave up on that a long time ago. There was a time as a teen I knew a guy who had a single shot HR .223 and I couldn't understand what good that gun could possibly do.

Then as I grew older I realized not all guns are meant to fight off an alien invasion, zomebies, world war 3, or to rob a bank and now as something that resembles a man I own an H&R single shot of my own.

I find your question weird. Don't you know the difference between fantasy and reality?

The Happy Kaboomer said:

I find your question weird. Don't you know the difference between fantasy and reality?

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These days it's hard to tell what people understand and don't.
I can see where @KarateHottie93 s question comes from.
Ive met plenty of people who ASSUME videogames and movies portray firearms accurately....many "gun" people turn their noses up at these folks and don't even try to to be helpful, or worse say something rude and condescending.

Something alot of gun folks who ARE into video games also sometimes forget, is that the "insert gun here" is just a TOOL for the players to use , what they call them is usually just for name recognition.
I don't expect any gun to be realistic because games need to be fair(ish) and challenging, they often balance the effectiveness against game play.
Usually the shotguns offer brutal power with a very limited range to off set such....it's simply a short range heavy damage weapon, they did the same thing to the magnum revolver that's in some games. It caters to the in-fighters style of play, just as other weapons cater to other play styles.

LoonWulf said:

These days it's hard to tell what people understand and don't.
I can see where @KarateHottie93 s question comes from.
Ive met plenty of people who ASSUME videogames and movies portray firearms accurately....many "gun" people turn their noses up at these folks and don't even try to to be helpful, or worse say something rude and condescending.

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Yep. I think a lot of people who play the games just have no way to know how realistic the portrayal is. For example, some of them may play the racing games (Forza, Grand Turismo, etc.), and a lot of those games are pretty realistic in some ways, to the point that some pro race drivers use the games to familiarize themselves with tracks in advance of actually being able to run on the tracks in question. And the game-makers go to great lengths to make the various cars act a lot like the real-world vehicle. So, it stands to reason that a lot of people who haven't had the opportunity to actually do much (or any) real-world shooting wouldn't have a perspective by which to judge how realistic the game depicts certain weapons.

Come think of it, people believing that shotguns are only effective to about 5 yards is no dumber than people believing that the "government" can continue to pay huge and growing percentages of the population to do nothing, and produce nothing, and that path not lead to national disaster. A LOT of people are off in the weeds on a lot of topics these days.

Enjoyed this thread - if only because most don't realize that from the day the first firearm came along - myths and exaggerations were always part of the deal.... I'm sure that the first time a blunderbuss was employed against a real target - folks who saw or heard or think they heard.... about it began the process. If it stopped or killed the target it was a fantastic weapon... if the bad guy laughed at the results - the shotgun ( remember we're talking hundreds of years with weapons around that could send multiple projectiles downrange...) was a poor weapon - and all of it depended on the circumstances and the skill of the user. That was just the beginning of all the mis-information about shotguns, long before those world war one trench guns came along...

An extreme example is the volley gun or boarding gun (if my terminology is inaccurate someone please correct me...) used by various naval forces (both regular and pirate...) designed for killing as many as possible at very close quarters back in the days of single shot pistols, muskets, and rifles where your primary weapon was likely to be a sword or cutlass once you fired that flintlock or cap lock.. Those few guns rarely came into use and were rarely used by someone big or strong enough to hang on to it after it was discharged...

The truth is that shotgunning is a very particular skill and anyone needing to know how - should make a point of learning. At least that's my take on it... In police work, years ago, the primary reason that most departments moved away from the shotgun as a standard close quarters weapon was not that it wasn't effective. It was the rise of females coming into police work.. some not only were able to use them properly - but were quite proficient. Many, though, struggled with their smaller stature and if they qualified with the weapon would never be comfortable with it - or use it as a primary weapon in serious circumstances...

Still, in my experience a basic riot gun with 00buck rounds is a close quarters (15 meters and closer)... one shot fight ender...