
Why I'll never work on First-Person Shooters again - MilkoFTW
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/CharlesCox/20130419/190893/Why_Ill_Never_Work_on_FirstPerson_Shooters_Again.php
======
unclebucknasty
Can't help but think that perhaps this post is timed in response to the events
of the week.

And it reminds me of a thought I had in the midst of the madness: that is, we
invade countries for apparently no reason, maiming thousands of our own troops
and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. We celebrate violence
in movies, music, TV, and games. We have been in a pressure-cooker since 9/11,
with a constant, ever-present anxiety about terrorism. We have had a tanked
economy for nearly 5 years with massive unemployment and near-constant
financial stress for many.

On top of all of this, we have a media that lives for opportunities to incite
fear and endlessly highlight the actions of the worst human beings on the
planet.

Then, when someone loses it, everyone looks around and asks "what's the matter
with _that_ guy?"

It can certainly be argued that FPSes are a drop in the bucket, reflection of
society, etc. as some comments on this thread have stated. But, I don't blame
the OP for not wanting to risk being a contributor to the problem.

It starts with one.

~~~
nikster
I think the actual violence committed for whatever reason - invading
countries, blowing up weddings and children with remote drone strikes, keeping
prisoners without legal framework in gitmo - these things are several orders
of magnitude worse than violent games and movies

Games and movies are merely ways of processing these real world events - all
violence begets violence. Those kids we blow up today with drones, one of
their brothers, sisters, or even just friends will eventually come back to us.
For example, to senselessly kill innocent people at a marathon.

Boston bombings are a good example - the chechen war / rebellion was a
bloodbath, fought ruthlessly and largely off the cameras. It just came back to
us.

Violence begets violence, throughout the history of humanity. Its up to us to
stop the cycle. We cant do much about conflicts in faraway countries - except
maybe to stay out of them. But we can do things we are directly responsible
for - CIA operations come to mind, and of course the drone war.

~~~
nikster
I forgot to say - the violence we commit on others affects us just as much as
them, the perpetrator is as much a victim as the victim.

I recently read the story of the most efficient sniper in the US military, a
man who killed well over 200 people in various US wars around the world. Who
shot and killed two armed would be carjackers in Texas in a way that would be
fit for a dirty harry movie (shot them with his back turned to them). The
cycle was complete when he was himself shot and killed while taking friends
shooting. Could it ever have ended another way?

But most of these cycles are much longer, spanning generations.

------
millstone
The FPS mechanic seems like it could be much bigger than Call of Duty style.
You can have the gritty style without the violence: Brave Firefighters is an
old coin-op game FPS in which you put out fires with your water cannon gun,
rescuing people in the process. Or you can keep the violence, but make it
silly, like Mario games. Team Fortress 2 sort of points in that direction, and
could be taken a lot further.

Instead of abandoning FPS games, why not try to disrupt them by working on
non-traditional FPSes? The genre is in a rut, and could use a big dose of
innovation.

~~~
endgame
On that note, I though Kreedz Climbing[1] and Grappling Hook[2] were
interesting takes.

[1]: <http://kzmod.com/news.php> [2]: <http://ghook.speedrungames.com/>

------
ak217
Notwithstanding the idea that working on something inappropriate for a 6 year
old is somehow a moral issue, the FPS genre is much bigger than just
"realistic" titles like CS/CoD, and it is regrettable that they are being
mixed up in the public's imagination. While the CoD:MW series has artistic
merit despite being in the "realistic" category, there are legendary titles
with deep artistic value like Half-Life, Unreal, and Crysis where (to me
anyway) violence is not really the point of the game.

~~~
tekacs
This reminds me rather of a Google+ post I read recently:

[https://plus.google.com/105363132599081141035/posts/W3ys5fKn...](https://plus.google.com/105363132599081141035/posts/W3ys5fKnz5t)

------
TheSilentMan
If he was in the movie industry would he refuse to work on anything that
wasn't G rated(and even a good number of those) because it would be
inappropriate to show to 4 year olds?

Most of the movies on the AFI 100 Years 100 Movies list would be tough for an
editor to explain to his kid if they were sitting there while he was cutting,
splicing, and reviewing. Does that somehow make them unethical?

------
Groxx
I think I've tl;dr'd this correctly: "I won't work on FPSes because they're
[excessively?] violent and I'm ashamed of contributing to it".

Which is a great reason, I wish them luck! I'd say it's slightly mis-aimed -
it's not just FPSes - but it's a start. I'd love to have a whole variety of
blockbusters that aren't the standard fare we have now, and more people
working on other things makes it more likely to happen.

~~~
TillE
> it's not just FPSes

Quite right. Violence is the simplest form of human conflict, the one we can
most easily adapt to games. Even chess is an abstraction of war strategy.

But personally, I'm much more OK with fairly abstract strategy games than I am
with games that shove a gun in your hands and shower you with blood. It's
exhausting. I have no problem with those games existing on the market, I'm
just so very tired of the fact that nearly every big-budget game centers on
shooting people in the face. Or stabbing them.

If nothing else, I've been doing that in videogames for the past 20 years now
(since Wolf3d and Doom), and it's getting boring.

~~~
anigbrowl
_If nothing else, I've been doing that in videogames for the past 20 years now
(since Wolf3d and Doom), and it's getting boring._

I've had this problem too for the last several years. I like 3d, and I like
hyper-realistic game environments, and I like science fiction. But I am sick
to the back teeth of gore, and of being confronted by hideous mutants/
zombies/ creatures that I'm supposed to splatter all over the walls. I play
games far less than I used to because I'm tired of this horror element.

What gets me is that even within these genre conventions, there seem to be
very few new ideas. How come I don't see survival-horror games based around
super-powered alien insects that can walk on the ceiling? Why isn't there a
Terminator game that involves fighting giant robots in Shadow-of-the-colossus
style as well as FPS? Why not a game set in an abandoned but heavily trapped
environment where destructibility is a key game mechanic?

~~~
TeMPOraL
There was Portal. And then Portal 2. And also Mirror's Edge. And... that's
about it? _sigh_

------
doktrin
>> _He had no choice, really -- this industry works people overlong and
threatens them with excommunication if they complain, knowing full well that
enthusiastic young talent will gladly come fill in at a lower wage._

Having never worked in the gaming industry, just about every 1st hand account
I read tends to emphasize its fairly brutal nature. Frankly it sounds like a
shit-terrible environment. Is game dev really fun enough to justify this kind
of treatment?

>> _And this drama -- this tightrope walk between building virtual violence
while fashioning a safe space for the next generation -- was forced to live in
the same building that received countless letters, forum posts, YouTube
videos, and more from angry gamers that threatened us -- and our families --
if we didn’t deliver them the bloodthirsty experience they wanted, the one
they demanded._

Speaking of terrible environments, enter the gaming _community_. There's
something about competitive online multi-player games in that they inevitably
seem to breed awful. Years ago I gamed competitively at what would be
considered "elite" levels, and all too often many of my fellow top-tier gamers
were beyond the pale. Rampant racism & misogyny are only the tip of the
iceberg, at times.

I suppose I think there's something pretty "off" with both the gaming industry
and the community it serves. Wish I had a constructive solution in mind, but
for the time being I simply avoid both.

~~~
pms
I follow Starcraft 2 pro scene and it is not so bad, although, many players
are young, so immature behaviors happens sometimes. I guess that competitive
strategy games are different from competitive FPS.

~~~
doktrin
Yeah, I agree. The SC2 community is on average far more civil than those in
shooters and even (PvP) MMOs.

------
incision
I was hoping this would be a commentary on the genre being - with the rarest
exceptions - a mess of utterly derivative, barely distinguishable dreck.

------
scottlilly
I have a similar feeling regarding PvP games. Not so much for any simulated
violence, but rather for reinforcing the zero-sum philosophy of, "For me to
win, another human being has to lose." However, I don't feel the same about
many non-RPG, zero-sum games, like chess or poker.

Maybe because it's easier to be detached from cards and plastic pieces, than
from a character in an RPG - who has a name, 'friends', a pet, a history of
achievements, etc.

You can call me a "care bear", but I personally don't feel that reinforcing
such a limited world-view is how I want to use my time and energy. And it's
not something I describe as fun.

~~~
michaelochurch
Chess and Go and Bridge and Ambition (self-plug, why the fuck not:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S7lsZKzHuuhoTb2Wj_L3zrhH...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S7lsZKzHuuhoTb2Wj_L3zrhHZh5IEKBDf56ExgErv4o/edit)
) aren't truly zero-sum because the hedonic payoff is based on the quality of
the game ("the game" meaning the immutable artifact as well as "the game"
meaning the specific contest among players) not winning or losing. You still
enjoy a truly great game if you lose, just slightly less than if you win.
There's an emergent art to the game that is appealing and interesting
regardless of the outcome.

Poker is in the middle. I feel like it's more of a zero-sum game because it
just sucks to lose. At real stakes, I find losing humiliating. At low stakes
or for free, I don't care. The game itself I am not that into.

I see what you mean about PvP. The culture of them (at least, as usually
played) makes it hard to enjoy the game for its own sake.

~~~
__david__
> You still enjoy a truly great game if you lose, just slightly less than if
> you win. There's an emergent art to the game that is appealing and
> interesting regardless of the outcome.

Sigh, and that of course applies to PvP games as well. Back when I played a
lot of FPS deathmatch I quite enjoyed a good match, even if I didn't come out
on top.

------
Deregibus
It's a career limiting move in the same sense that my career as a doctor is
limited by the fact that I didn't choose to go to medical school. There's no
evidence that any of his opportunities outside of making violent shooters have
been limited. If he wants to turn down those opportunities then props to him
for standing up for something in a way that actually impacts his bottom line.
Whether you agree or disagree with his reasons for doing it, this should be
applauded. We just shouldn't pretend that he's being persecuted for his
choice. He's not a whistle blower that's exposing a conspiracy. People like
violent FPS games, they buy them, studios make more of them. That's all there
is to it.

Now if you want a conspiracy, you should be looking at gaming addiction and
how studios are explicitly engineering games to keep people coming back and
spending money. That's where you'll find the real shady stuff.

------
od2m
Violence, sex, and spectacle have always been used as a crutch for bad
storytelling and simply being out of ideas.

~~~
obviouslygreen
All of those things can also be totally valid parts of a well-told story. Not
only that, any historically significant factual account of human beings is
likely to contain at least one and probably more of those things.

Yes, _only_ using those things, or using them to prop up otherwise poor
writing, is most certainly a crutch. But generalizing that too far takes very
significant parts of our nature and behavior -- for better or worse -- and
casts them in an artificially negative light as invalid literary mechanics.

~~~
pfg
Totally agree. This is what I keep telling people whenever they moan about
Game Of Thrones/A Song Of Ice And Fire being porn and/or too violent.

~~~
michaelochurch
Excellent point. Those books also get into a lot of detail about medieval food
and clothing. He's just very detailed and realistic. (I almost think of IaF as
magical realism, not fantasy.)

------
kmfrk
I think we need to come up with another term than first-person shooter. There
may have been a time where all games in first person were games like Duke
Nukem, Quake, Doom, and so on, but I think it cheapens and trivializes what
can be accomplished in the medium - not genre - of first-person-based
videogames.

Games like "Call of Duty", "Battlefield", "Halo", and so on definitely rot the
soul of a lot of developers, but I personally think the first-person medium is
one of the best way to do something immersive and interactive.

I don't think Elisabeth in Bioshock Infinite - or a game like Portal - would
have been possible under any other circumstances, and to use the term "first-
person shooter" for a game like B:I is to misrepresent it to people inside and
outside the videogame community.

------
DigitalSea
A rather conveniently timed blog post...

My point-of-view is: if people are worried about kids growing up with violent
games that allow you to shoot people "in the face" or wherever you should be
more concerned your kid is growing up in a politically and economically
unstable world instead where a Government is cheered for killing a wanted
terrorist (Osama Bin Laden or cheers for the death of the Boston Bombing
suspects). What kind of world are we living in where it's considered okay to
cheer because a criminal died, but it's a moral dilemma making first person
shooters because they might make some people think it's okay to shoot people
in real life? Regardless of what someone did or who they hurt, cheering any
death is sick in my opinion.

Sure computer games send mixed messages to some, but having grown up in the
90's when first person shooters were in full swing (Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem) I
never once had the urge to go and do it in real life, neither did my friends
and trust me I remember spending a large chunk of my youth playing Golden Eye
64 when it came out with friends on the Nintendo 64. I wonder if studies have
been performed on people likely to commit violent crimes and whether or not
games actually help take the urge away to do it in real life?

If people don't get their violent entertainment from games, they'll just get
it from; movies, highly publicised sporting events (MMA, Boxing, BJJ), the
news or in real life. The art of violent entertainment was well in full-swing
before the home gaming revolution took place. Since anyone can remember,
people have been using weapons as a means to cause harm to one another. We can
blame games and we can blame easy targets like Eminem or Marilyn Manson, we
should be blaming ourselves. We are responsible for our own actions and when
we're not, it's because we convince ourselves it's because of someone or
something else.

It sounds to me like this guy is in the wrong industry. If he doesn't want to
make violent games and violent games sell as Battlefield and Grand Theft Auto
have proven, then what does he want to do? Sounds like he should be working
for a smaller struggling developer who specialise in family friendly games
instead or even considering a career move entirely. This is not an insult,
it's an observation. If you have a problem with the kind of work you're doing,
find a new job and someone who can and wants to do your job, will.

Developers don't make FPS games because they love to praise and glorify
violence, it's because FPS' sell. As a keen player of Battlefield 3, I can see
why they sell. They're a good escape from the busy day or week you had.
Mindless entertainment you can mash the buttons on your controller and relieve
some stress, not to mention have fun.

I think anyone who can go out and commit an act of violence and blame it on a
game is a mental health issue, not an issue attributed to playing games.
Violent games activate and induce violent behaviour in real life no more than
drugs or alcohol have been doing for centuries. I know there have been stories
over the years, but the number of crimes committed supposedly because of games
is rather small compared to deaths via firearms, dangerous driving, drugs or
alcohol.

Thought for the day: A drug addict kills someone with a gun for money to get
their next hit, what aspect of the story does the media focus on? The fact he
was a drug addict who needed help, the fact he had nobody to turn to for help,
the fact he obtained access to an illegal firearm or the fact that he played a
lot of Grand Theft Auto?

~~~
potatolicious
> _"but it's a moral dilemma making first person shooters because they might
> make some people think it's okay to shoot people in real life?"_

I don't think any non-crackpot really believes that video games cause people
to pick up guns and shoot people. No one has ever played a video game and gone
"hey you know what'd be cool, if I went and shot up a mall".

The moral dilemma is not about directly causing someone to become violent, but
rather about creating a culture where violence is _celebrated_ rather than
abhorred, and the consequences of _all_ of this violence in aggregate. No
single video game would drive someone to violence, but the aggregation of
thousands of video games, tens of thousands of movies, and a government that
glorifies war, certainly doesn't help anything.

I think the moral dilemma isn't about any real, measurable harm, but rather
about whether you're creating a pop culture that reflects the world you want
to live in, or you're contributing to a pop culture that is the antithesis of
your own principles.

> _"Thought for the day: A drug addict kills someone with a gun for money to
> get their next hit, what aspect of the story does the media focus on?"_

The fact that they're an addict. Seriously, I have _not_ seen any major case
pinned of video games for _years_. Jack Thompson and Columbine was a _long_
time ago, before the mass-marketization of shooters. With games like COD and
Halo being so mainstream your grandma has played it, the "video game causes
deadly shootout!" angle is no longer tenable.

And we as gamers need to stop pretending the world is still like the bad old
days of the 90s when every evil was pinned on us. Only the most extreme, the
least credible news sources are still hanging onto this angle, and it's
disingenuous to pretend that this is still a mainstay of modern news reporting
today.

~~~
dchichkov
I fail to see how FPS games contribute to _"creating a culture where violence
is celebrated rather than abhorred"_. Do you have any references to research
that supports that claim?

I can see that good action movies can contribute to the culture where good
action movies are _celebrated_. But that doesn't have anything to do with
celebrating violence.

~~~
Snoptic
Do moviegoers feel bad when people die in movies? I do, and it makes me not
like the movie, unless it is a drama and the death gets appropriate attention
and consideration.

------
Tichy
I worry a lot about what my kid will learn, but exposure to violent video
games is really low on the list. Much more worried that he will be lied to and
exploited by "the system", for example schools only teaching how to be a
docile wage slave.

I am not keen on violence in games, but sometimes I think there also is some
honesty in those games. The world can be a cruel place.

------
Poyeyo
Why I don't think parents know how to parent anymore.

For those parents, the problem is videogames, or Marilyn Manson's music, or
bicycles, or movies, or obscene writing but never, never, it is something
remotely related with their parenting skills.

However, when years later their kids now grown to adulthood have to go to a
psychologist, what's what they talk about? Videogames? Music? Obscene books?

No. They talk with the psychologist about their parents and their awful lack
of parenting skills.

------
tsotha
There are so many virtually identical FPS out there these days I have to
believe the genre is due for a slump in sales. These days as soon as I
discover a title is an FPS I pass over it in search of something novel.

------
gnu8
You stole this idea from Mad Men. I hope it gets you a job.

~~~
Snoptic
Mad Men stole it from Jerry Maquire.

"It's not a manifesto. It's a mission statement."

------
michaelochurch
What struck me was the fact that this guy seems to be actually worried about
his career. How fucked up is an industry where saying "I don't want to work on
[X]" makes you unemployable? I hope the AAA studios (and Zynga + clones)
collapse under the weight of their mediocrity. Let's get to making some real
fucking games.

~~~
tptacek
This comment makes it sound like you think the problem with the games sector
is that it's dominated by companies like EA. That's a problem, but it's
dwarfed by the real problem, which is supply and demand.

If you want to see a really "fucked up" industry, try being a tool and die
engineer.

~~~
rollo_tommasi
At the risk of derailing this subthread, I'd be interested in knowing what's
fucked up about the tool-and-die industry.

------
Dewie
This article makes a big fanfare and all, but until I see some data that
violent video games actually leads to antisocial behaviour (on average), then
I'm not inclined to believe that it is necessarily destructive. For all we
know, it could be mostly about letting off steam.

Just because something seems to be destructive, intuitively, doesn't mean that
it actually is so. Human nature is far too complicated to assume that
something that seems destructive intuitively really is so (since most people
seem to get by just fine).

------
WayneDB
Good for you! Good for me too...I've always liked third person shooters and
side-scrollers better anyway.

------
cool-RR
Fabulously written.

