Friday, May 03, 2013

Are we running out of good ideas?

I've been gaming for a while, so I've seen the industry develop. While I'm not an expert, just a fan of games, I like to think that we have
Dis gat go blat blat blat
 And recently there's been a startling trend in one of my favorite genres, first person shooters. If you've paid attention to Bungie, who guys who brought us the beloved Halo series, they're working on a new title: Destiny. Destiny is a futuristic first person shooter... Like Halo... Like the last Call of Duty... Like a lot of other games, think Crysis and Aliens: Colonial Marines. We are being confronted with a pattern, we've already made plenty of war games from history, the original Call of Duty's, the Battlefield's, the Red Orchestra's, and before the turn of the century isn't prime real estate for video games. Remember the god awful attempt by the history channel to make a Civil War FPS? Spending a realistic amount of time reloading a musket doesn't sound like an enthralling game play mechanic. And it wasn't.

Unless it's a survival horror game where the lack of action adds to the suspense and overall atmosphere, FPS games tend to require more action packed, fast pace, ball breaking, combat. Players enjoy being immersed into a warzone, where their alertness and relaxes are on call for survival. It's the thrill of being integrated into a living situation, where your participation impacts the outcome of the battle. Think about Planetside 2. MMOFPS's aren't common, but since I started playing Planetside, I completely see the advantage and disadvantage. The advantage is that you are literally part of an alive battle field. Armored convoys, air support, infantry movements, all unscripted and genuine results of individuals, give the player the sense that they are really in a war. I also feel completely useless. With over a hundred people in a battle, your kill or two wont change much in the grand sceme of things. Especially when their spawn point is right behind them, just as far away as yours is. Even Planetside shows us the imitations of our "strip mining" of settings. It's set in the future, where you can deploy anywhere on a planet by clicking a button called "instant action". It drops you into combat (which is necessary for MMOFPS's cause who wants to walk all that way?) but what happens in a game where you don't have that technology in the setting? How would you make a WWII game? Parachutes? Maybe. But I think this is evidence of a more systemic problem.

Game mechanics can't be divorced from their setting. Otherwise people will complain that the game doesn't make sense. But with the expectations of excitement players have from their gaming experience, are game developers being limited to futuristic settings to satisfy those expectations?

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