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Why Have FPSs Always Fascinated Us?

Ben-Dutka 26 Comments

For the record, this is not a rhetorical question. It's quite legitimate, so comment away.

The biggest video game in the world right now is a first-person shooter. That's not news. And although I am not on the bandwagon that says shooters dominate this generation (as one developer said, this isn't true in the slightest unless your name is "Call of Duty"), I think it's plain as day that one genre has always fascinated gamers from the dawn of the industry.

Those who are old enough might remember first seeing Wolfenstein 3D . They will likely recall that it was a revelation almost to the level of Super Mario Bros. . And although one can make the claim that shooters are bigger now than ever before, simply because of CoD and maybe Battlefield , the veteran gamers are going, "…uh, no, we were around when Doom , Duke Nukem , and Heretic totally kicked ass." They didn't just kick ass, they were technological tour de forces and as far as I could tell everyone loved them.

In fact, I dare say it was more of a lovefest in those days than it is now. I really didn't know anyone who didn't at least admit that Doom was something special. Now, is that because we were still breaking down walls in video games, and exploring unknown frontiers? Well, that may have been the case with Wolfenstein , but weren't Doom and Duke Nukem just more of the same…only fancier? And what about the ensuing generations, when games like Half-Life and Halo once again owned the gaming world's attention? The love really never dies.

So what is it exactly that makes these first-person shooters so damn enduring and appealing for such a large number of gamers? Is the love simply passed down from the olden days? That's a fine answer for those over a certain age, but what about the young'uns that don't really play anything but shooters these days? Is it just the constant gratification that caters to our ever-dwindling attention spans? That's undoubtedly part of it, but was it true in the late 80s and early 90s? Not everyone on the planet worshiped at the alter of digital deification in those days. Heck, people still went outside and did stuff.

Maybe it's just the viewpoint. First-person RPGs like The Elder Scrolls seem to be immensely popular as well. Then again, Mirror's Edge didn't exactly leap off the sales charts, and these days, third -person shooters ( Uncharted , Gears of War , and to a lesser extent, Grand Theft Auto ) seem to earn the highest praise (if not necessarily the highest sales). It's quite the complicated question, isn't it?

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Itagaki On Shooters Taking Over: “Do I Look Worried?”

Ben-Dutka 15 Comments

Tomonobu Itagaki is a personality. He says what he wants to say, when he wants to say it. Period.

And during a recent Gamasutra interview , the Ninja Gaiden guru spoke about his interest in the military (and what military shooters have to do to become more realistic), and how the changing landscape affects our reaction to top-heavy babes.

But he was also asked about the continuing Western/Japanese culture clash, the ensuing gap, and whether or not he's worried about this perceived tendency for shooters. The industry loves those FPSs but we still say there's plenty of variety out there. On the other hand, Itagaki has a slightly different take:

"Well, games are all kind of the same anyway. It's just a matter of enjoying them. I don't know, it was the same deal when I was making fighters, and when I was making hack 'n-slash games. So it doesn't really matter to me.

My philosophy, or my passion, is to get to the top three in whatever I'm trying to tackle, and really, having a successful, high-selling game is a great thing to me. That's my personal preference. From an industry standpoint, of course, more variety would always be a good thing. Not everyone likes violence, after all."

But the best part of the interview is when he is asked if he's worried that shooters seem to be taking over:

"I'm not worried, no. [Itagaki removes his sunglasses and leans forward.] Do I look worried?"

Classic.

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Please Don’t Whine About An Over-Emphasis On Shooters

Ben-Dutka 72 Comments

I see this a lot: the veteran hardcore gamer complaining bitterly about the industry's focus on shooters.

Look, I'm the first one to say that Call of Duty and Battlefield don't deserve to dominate all the holiday headlines. I also agree that the media paid an absurd amount of attention to the two games in question. But you know, I don't think the media focused too heavily on other shooters; maybe Killzone 3 qualified as being a big-time "in-the-spotlight" title, but other 2011 shooters, like Resistance 3 and even RAGE didn't necessarily incite thousands of discussions and arguments around the Internet.

Furthermore, and most importantly, let's not forget that in looking at the holiday lineup – which is nuts as always – we see a lot of different games. It's not loaded down with FPSs; we just happen to hear a ton about MW3 and BF3 (and MW3 vs. BF3). But last I checked, there were a few headlines for Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception floating around, and the same goes for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim , Batman: Arkham City and Assassin's Creed: Revelations . People are talking about other games, and I'm not sure I'm seeing an unfair emphasis on shooters in the development world.

Lastly, let's not forget that shooters don't pull down the highest scores in the world. There's a darn good chance that Uncharted 3 , Revelations , Arkham City , and Skyrim will all end up with higher average review scores than both BF3 and MW3. And in this industry, thankfully, higher scores tend to translate to higher sales. Developers and publishers understand this, and while shooters may be the most popular overall (especially from a mainstream standpoint), there's still great variety and diversity out there. Besides, look at the best games of the generation:

There's Grand Theft Auto IV , Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots , Heavy Rain , Uncharted , Gears of War (no, I don't put third-person shooters in the same category as first-person shooters), The Elder Scrolls , Gran Turismo , Alan Wake , God of War , Final Fantasy , Assassin's Creed , Batman , Portal 2 , Mass Effect , LittleBigPlanet , Red Dead Redemption , etc, etc, etc. And that's not even counting the unique productions in the digital realm. There's a ton of great games that aren't shooters.

So please, stop whining about "too many shooters."

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Uncharted Owes A Debt To Titles Like Gears Of War

John-Shepard 65 Comments

We consider the Uncharted franchise to be the very best of the generation. But it wouldn't be the series we know today without an outside influence.

According to what former Naughty Dog environment modeler Don Poole told Play , Uncharted was originally supposed to be a "fantasy game." Then, Sony forced them to make the debut effort "more realistic."

It seems the team had something "much more far out" planned, and that included a forest world where people lived underground. Poole said it definitely had "elements of Tolkien" but with gritty shooters like Gears of War getting so much attention, Sony wanted Naughty Dog to adapt. Said Poole:

" Sony kept pushing for a more realistic game in all respects. The market had changed a lot by then. The demographic was older and gritty shooters were really dominating. Sony wanted very much to get into that market share, it pushed all of its developers in this direction.

So the big push from Sony, not just at Naughty Dog but at all of Sony's development companies at the time, was to craft games for PlayStation 3 that were much more realistic. The pressure from Xbox's success with gritty shooters was a very real force on our direction at that time."

Poole went on to say there was a lot of "internal grumbling" about the whole realism thing, because so many of the guys were from the Crash Bandicoot and Jak era, and they complained about the new style. "But alas, it was a losing battle." Ah, but what a way to "lose."

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FPS Fans: Obviously, Graphics Are The Most Important

Ben-Dutka 61 Comments

Making blanket statements about groups of fans is never a good idea. And if any offended shooter fans want to even the score, feel free to toss out some generalizations of your own. I'm a fan of old-school JRPGs, so accuse me of living in the past, liking male heroes that look like females, and heading off to cosplay conventions. Go right ahead.

Because I'm about to make an observation that is bound to annoy a great many: I look at various major sources and sites like N4G every day, and when it comes to shooters, many of the most popular headlines involve the graphical display of any given FPS title. For example, the #1 story currently on N4G is, "Battlefield 3 Native Resolutions on Consoles Confirmed." And this is very common. People dissecting videos for the slightest visual imperfection and using it as ammunition against the "other" fans (i.e., BF3 vs. MW3), the continual push by publishers to promote the graphics (EA pushing Frostbite 2), etc.

Unless a game features a blend of gameplay that disqualifies it as a first-person shooter (examples would be Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dead Island ), it really seems that graphics are the primary concern. And that's probably because shooters really haven't done anything too different in the past few years, right? Or is it just because fans of the genre are self-admitted graphic whores? Resistance 3 has gotten a ton of flak for not being as refined or polished as upcoming blockbusters, but it's a great shooter. I'm not sure why that fact is being overlooked.

Beyond the EA vs. Activision mud-slinging, it really seems as if any new FPS immediately falls under the graphical microscope, and that's all the fans really care about. Now, I could be wrong. And I'm not insulting the shooter fans for being shallow or something; I'm just wondering if the visual presentation really is most important in their minds. It's a mild, cheerful, unassuming question, so don't freak out…I just wanna know.

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Will FPS Devs Just Admit They Only Care About Multiplayer?

Ben-Dutka 84 Comments

I do love a good shooter. I'm gonna play Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 , and I'm a big fan of the last two Killzone titles.

And while Guerrilla's games have fantastic single-player campaigns and I'm hoping that won't change for the fourth entry, I wish developers would just come out and admit that the multiplayer boom is all they care about.

I don't blame them a bit; it's all they care about because it's all the majority of gamers care about. When it comes to shooters, if it doesn't excel in the multiplayer category, it may as well not exist. If it doesn't deliver on the single-player front, who cares? Even if it's the greatest campaign ever, it'll only come in at 7 hours max, and the multiplayer is endless.

And now the big news from DICE is this from Battlefield 3 multiplayer designer Lars Gustavsson-

"In multiplayer, we do an additional pass for animation. In singleplayer, you don’t mind if a guard up on a balcony does a Hollywood death – stumbling around a bit before falling over. In multiplayer it needs to be a one-to-one correlation between action and result."

Okay, so the animations in multiplayer will be better? Or at the very least, more realistic? And then we hear about how MW3 will somehow have a "multiplayer feel" to the campaign, although we don't have exact details just yet. Look, nobody buys these games for the campaign anymore; a few might actually play that campaign, but they'll quickly move past it for the multiplayer action. We all know it, and the developers know it.

One of these days, I keep hoping they'll release multiplayer-only shooters and separate titles with no multiplayer. You know, games that feature 20-hour bad-ass campaigns that great studios could produce if they could dedicate all their resources to single-player. And the multiplayer fans would benefit as well, with 100% of all resources going towards that one endeavor. But that probably won't happen. And in the meantime, I'd just like one game maker to admit what we already know.

Related Game(s): Battlefield 3

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