

This is a Bad Time to be an FPS Fan - tom9729
http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/121/1212393p1.html

======
DarkShikari
This isn't a new trend. Whenever a new formula is successful, that formula is
aped for years, particularly by large-budget projects that want to avoid the
risk of new ideas. It's not even restricted to video games: the same can be
seen in movies and television as well. The larger the budget, the less likely
media is to be innovative, because the harder it is to justify the risk to
those funding it.

Innovation typically seems to come from two sources: the few companies that
_are_ willing to throw large amounts of money at innovative, risky ideas
(often led by a famous "auteur" of sorts, e.g. Suda51 or Peter Molyneux), and
independent developers who aren't risking as large a budget. This has gotten
us FPSs like _Team Fortress 2_ , which completely bucked the trend -- and has
been wildly successful as a result. _Counter-Strike_ , still the third most
popular game on Steam after over a decade, was originally developed as a mod
by fans. But remember that not all new ideas are good, hence the risk: even
incredibly innovative and critically successful games often fail commercially,
as in the case of _Psychonauts_.

A near-identical trend can be seen in anime. Over the past half-decade, there
has been much complaint about a huge number of shows aping the style and
setting of past blockbusters, Kyoto Animation in particular being a
particularly large target due to their extraordinary success with franchises
like _Haruhi_ and _K-ON_. In some seasons there have been half a dozen shows
following nigh-identical formulas, much in the same way that there's so many
identical blockbuster FPSs. Just like with FPSs, to avoid risk, companies
pander extremely heavily to the perceived demands of specific demographics
that they believe will buy the show or game no matter what -- instead of
trying to make something innovative and interesting.

But what was the biggest anime hit this year? Not the _Battlefield 3_ or
_Modern Warfare 3_ s of anime, formulaicly aping past successes. No, it was
actually _Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magicka_ , which not only broke to pieces most
of the stereotypes of its purported genre, but came out of the nowhere to
become the most wildly successful show in _years_.

A genre of media becomes stale over time, with new ideas stemming to a
trickle. People become disillusioned and disinterested, and stop buying new
titles. This makes it more urgent to try new ideas, generating more innovation
and more fresh content. This content is then aped due to its success, and the
cycle repeats.

~~~
cantbecool
As soon as you brought up anime, and it's lack of innovation, I immediately
thought of the Gundam franchise. I mean how many different types of Amuro Ray
and Char Azenable characters can you produce for each new series. Fantastic
comment, DarkShikari.

------
Legion
I am mourning the death of the non-respawn multiplayer shooter.

Counterstrike, as another commenter pointed out, is still the third most
popular game on Steam. And yet, every major FPS franchise has moved further
and further away from that model.

SOCOM and the Gears of War franchises were probably the two biggest non-
respawn online shooters on consoles, and the latest iteration of both has
instead put respawn pandemonium front and center instead.

Nothing beats the tension of a shooter where you don't pop back to life 0-5
seconds later. It makes players more likely to work as teams, and it compels
players to act with self-preservation instead of running around like damn
fools.

I miss those experiences. Hell, I'm playing MW3 because Search & Destroy mode
is the closest I can get these days, outside of hardcore PC games like ARMA
(which I would probably love if it didn't run like garbage).

~~~
larrik
Death of it? There was Counterstrike, and then...?

Call of Duty has a mode similar to Counterstrike (without buying weapons, but
the respawn style is similar enough).

I never got into Counterstrike, so maybe I just missed the whole genre, but
every shooter I've played in the last (almost) 20 years had respawns.

~~~
thomasgerbe
Rainbow Six.

~~~
makmanalp
This. I used to spend hours planning out the team movements through the level.

Dying or being incapacitated was easy (usually 1 shot in most places) so the
only way you could really win was to coordinate very well. You'd be given a
map and plan the movement sequences of each team through the level. When you
gave a specified "gocode", that team would advance to the next checkpoint by
running through a corridor or entering a defended room.

Then, you'd interleave the paths so that in larger rooms you'd have multiple
teams enter simultaneously for maximum effect, because otherwise your team
would usually get bottlenecked at the entry point and die.

Oftentimes, one of the teams would fall behind or die because of bad planning
(or insufficient information while planning). But you'd have to keep going
anyway, often with disastrous results. This taught you about failure modes and
planning with redundancy.

It also taught you about winning the war before it happens. You never ever
ever ran into a room guns ablaze. That's a good way to get your entire team
killed, and probably the hostage that you're trying to save. Instead, you have
one person open the door, another chuck in a flashbang and more to cover you
while you get in through the bottleneck. In any reasonable amount of time it
would take for your enemies to react, they'd be picked off already. And
hopefully the other team did the same on the other side of the room. The whole
thing took under 10 seconds. Not much left to chance or shooting ability.

I miss the old Rainbow Six. Obviously I don't shoot people for a living, but
it was one of those games that actually taught you something.

------
philwelch
I'm not a huge gamer, but there hasn't been a FPS in maybe ten years that
appeals to me. There's far, far too much influence from RPG's or movies or
whatnot to turn FPS games, and most other games for that matter, into some
unholy combination of a Skinner box ("achievements" and other bullshit) and a
participatory movie (cutscenes, voice acting). All of that is bullshit, none
of that is necessary, and I don't care.

Here's all I want from an FPS:

1\. Single-player mode: A succession of well-designed, non-linear levels where
you run through and kill everyone. Have lots of routes through the level. Make
it really wide open. Maybe have the levels all run into each other without
pauses in the middle to load--MDK did it ten years ago, so no excuses.
Soundtrack: thrash metal.

2\. Multi-player mode: Choose from a set of well-designed, non-linear levels
where you can run through and kill all your friends. Soundtrack: thrash metal.

Really, I'm not demanding anything, concept-wise, that wasn't already in Doom
II. I just want it with modern technology and without all of this bullshit
about flashlights and cutscenes.

~~~
thristian
It's interesting that you put thrash metal next to both experiences. As I
recall, iD wanted a pure metal soundtrack for the original Doom, and it wasn't
until Bobby Prince showed them how atmospheric and creepy classical-type music
could be that they went for the hybrid approach that wound up in the shipping
product.

~~~
philwelch
Yes, it worked well in a lot of levels, but the bulk of the soundtrack was
"inspired" by Slayer, Pantera, Metallica, etc. tracks. There are web pages (or
were when I last looked it up) that show a level-by-level comparison of the
Doom soundtrack and a particular metal track that it basically ripped off.

It probably wouldn't work now. There was a certain zeitgeist in the early 90's
where all that stuff went together better than it does now, and you can't turn
back time. I just don't remember many FPS games being as fun as Doom and Doom
II.

~~~
shahidhussain
<http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_music> is a good place to find where the
soundtrack came from.

------
Toddward
Not that I disagree with the message, but I think a bit of perspective is
important. The two games being flaunted as single-player failures here are MW3
and BF3. DICE, BF3's developer, has never been a solid single-player
production house (though the campaigns of Bad Company 1/2 were far better than
BF3's is). Infinity Ward, developer of MW3, was gutted following Activision's
dismissal of the studio's two founders and the subsequent exodus of talent
after MW2 was released.

That's not to say that the overall state of FPS campaigns isn't disappointing.
I'm looking forward to seeing if Respawn (the Infinity Ward founders' new
studio) can do anything to reverse that trend.

~~~
andrewfelix
I think the important point is these are two of the biggest budget/selling FPS
games on the market. True there are other FPS games out there, but BF and COD
seem to be setting trends.

------
CodeMage
_The tech looks tired, they've seen it all before, and yet the review scores
remain high [...]_

Is anyone really surprised by this anymore? Review scores remain high because
it's a wide known fact that if you review the game too badly, you won't get
any more games for reviews from that publisher. It shocked me the first time I
heard of it, but it should be old news by now.

------
andrewfelix
_"But numerous recent FPS blockbusters have largely been remarkable for how
reluctant developers appear to be to stray outside of their (and perhaps the
mass audience's) comfort zone."_ The same thing that happened to the movie
industry is happening to AAA game titles. As the budget increases the
willingness to risk new ideas shrinks. Graphics continue to improve, but we're
essentially playing the same single player games we were 5 years ago.

IMO though multiplayer has been steadily improving, albeit a little slowly.

~~~
icebraining
To me, the multiplayer peak was reach with Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.

~~~
andrewfelix
That was a brilliant MP game. But have you ever had the satisfaction of
strapping a bunch of c4 to the front of a jeep and driving into a group of
enemies and or tank? (BF2... _ahhh memories_ )

~~~
Too
The same thing could be done in bf1942 which is from about the same era as
Wolfenstein:ET.

The difference then was that everything was new, the game was not designed for
sticking c4 to jeeps, it was just possible due to the fact that the jeeps were
modeled with cavities inside and the game physics was realistic enough. You
had to be creative to come up with tactics like this, and then the tactics
really stood out because nobody expects it, in bf2 when you see a jeep you
always expect it to be rigged.

I feel BF2 took many of those elements and removed the joy out of them by
making them into special cases, such as "Press A to jump over the wall"-thing.
Bf2 does not have exactly that but i'm talking about the concept of pre-
scripted mechanics that can be triggered by one button instead of a game
expressive enough for the player to make those mechanics himself by
combinations of other simpler mechanics. And i'm not only BF2 talking about
bf2 but also most other games from the last 5 years.

------
antoncohen
"Nothing is ever left to chance. There's rarely any opportunity to explore, or
approach via another route, and therefore absolutely no means to experiment
with different strategies in the way that you routinely have to in
multiplayer."

That describes nearly every single-player FPS ever made. And it's exactly why
I have always preferred MP to SP. Everything he mentioned is wrong with
single-player today has always been wrong -- boring, repetitive, tedious. Duke
and Quake weren't any better, MP was way more fun than SP back then too.
Multiplayer is like single-player, except the enemies are intelligent, it's
different every time, and you can go any way you want (not just down the
alley, up the correct ladder, through the air vents, to collect the good gun
you need to beat the next guy who will always be waiting in the same spot). I
play America's Army 3 now, it's MP only.

~~~
eru
You should play System Shock 2 some time, or Deus Ex. It does have multiplayer
and singleplayer, but the multiplayer just gives you the story to play through
as a team.

You could argue, of course, that those two games aren't really pure FPS. Since
they do have a story.

~~~
antoncohen
I knew someone would mention Deus Ex. I tried it, granted I probably didn't
give it a fair shot, but what I did play of it I didn't like. Actually it was
probably worse. I don't like RPGs, I find them even more contrived and tedious
than SP FPSs.

I don't want to have to collect things to move on. I don't want to solve
puzzles. I don't want skill points that make me better at shooting a rifle.
What makes me better at shooting a rifle in a game is what makes me better in
real life -- practice. When I started playing AA3 I sucked, I couldn't control
my weapon, but with practice I got better. When I used to play SoF2 I would
load a map locally and practice shooting walls for hours. Learning to shoot a
perfect two shot burst at head level. People would think I was cheating
because I could take their heads off before they even fired a shot. And it
wasn't because of artificial skill points, it was because I practiced.

To me multiplayer FPSs are like competitive sports. They take practice, they
are intense and thrilling, they require team tactics, there is competition
against real people, and there is the thrill of victory from beating a real
person. I don't want to out-smart code a developer wrote, or out-shoot an AI
programmed to be less accurate than a computer should be. I want to out-smart
a person who is trying to out-smart me. I want to out-shoot a person who is
trying their best to out-shoot me.

I hope companies continue to make good SP FPS and RPG games, because I know
people that really like them. They just don't do it for me.

~~~
eru
I see your point, and I even mostly agree.

Deus Ex is probably not as good as an example as System Shock 2. Deus Ex was
way too long ever for me, and can indeed become tedious.

System Shock 2 also has something like a skill point system, but it feels
different: In Deus Ex you can always do almost everything, just with more or
less efficiency. System Shock 2 tends more toward unlocking e.g. the ability
to use a specific gun. The game also has a knack for keeping you low on at
least one supply (health or ammo or weapons or so).

Experience points are limited, you get them for progressing in the story. So
you can't stay around and grind. (That's similar in Deus Ex.) So your level of
abilities is just a convenient way for escalating the stories. Just like
getting new weapons in Half Life or new kinds of tanks in a real-time strategy
game.

On the other hand, you might like games like nethack or Spelunky. They have a
notion of your character growing in abilities, but since each game is short,
you start from zero each time, handling the progression well just becomes
another skill. A bit like picking up weapons and ammo in Quake 3 in the most
efficient manner possible. Or Master of Orion, where getting new technology is
part of the game (and can be compared to getting new skills in an RPG).

------
mambodog
Here's to hoping the indies will drag the industry forward with FPS' that
aren't modern warfare retreads. Upcoming titles such as Hawken[1] give me some
modicum of hope.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udEAEARD-Fo>

~~~
ericd
That looks great. Here's hoping they work on the movement physics a little to
smooth things out, but it looks like a lot of fun regardless.

I'm surprised my favorite indie FPS of the past decade hasn't been mentioned
here: Air Buccaneers. Basically it was was a UT2004 mod, an FPS where you can
man hot air balloons airships with manually loaded/aimed old-style cannons.
Being part of a good team of 2 or 3 on one of those things was a blast.

Seems they're updating it: <http://www.airbuccaneers.com/>

------
ary
The first Modern Warfare came out in 2007... _four years ago_. It's a little
soon to be decrying the entire genre because the publishing companies are
wringing all the money out of a waning trend. Remember when there was an
endless flood of World War 2 shooters?

Once someone hits upon the next big thing every GameStop will be bursting at
the seams with Panda themed RPGs (or whatever). Whining about how one's
beloved genre is stagnant is just, well, whining.

~~~
andrewfelix
Consider the fact there was _four years_ between DOOM and Goldeneye 64.

~~~
ary
Understood, but what I'm trying to say is that four years isn't a long time.
That we got GoldenEye only four years after DOOM is a testament to how fast
the industry moves.

Edit: Sorry to pull the comment, but my recollection of the release dates for
DOOM and GoldenEye made me want to double-check them first.

------
JJMalina
"Assuming you don't care about the poorly acted, nonsensical storylines,
predictable AI, done-to-death use of military scenarios, corridor focused
levels, and complete absence of challenge and ambition that infects the
campaign modes of most of the current crop of blockbusters, then yeah - it's a
great time to be an FPS fan." Over the years you can observe that the Call of
Duty series has evolved into having a larger focus on multiplayer than single
player since the publishers realized that the games were selling more because
of the multiplayer. I definitely agree that the Modern Warfare series is
guilty of milking it's formula. However I think that Battlefield 3, despite
what's been said, pulled off a decent single player campaign. The storyline
wasn't the most well written but the levels were all unique and actually were
fairly difficult at times. IMO Battlefield 3 has the most rewarding
multiplayer of any FPS to date because unlike MW3, team play makes the whole
game experience a lot more enjoyable.

------
CDRdude
From the perspective of a guy who loves multiplayer FPS, I think there's never
been a better time to be an FPS fan. FPS games hardly ever die out entirely,
and they can be played over the internet with anyone else in the world who
happens to like the same FPS game. There's really a game for everyone. There's
project reality and America's Army for the realistic FPS fans. For the arena,
deathmatch-type games, there's Quake Live, Warsow, CPMA, and Unreal Tournament
3. For team-based games, there's Counterstrike, Team Fortress 2, and
Battlefield 3. For people who like old games, you can play Doom 2, Quakeworld,
and Quake 2. There are likely hundreds of FPS games that I haven't heard of,
and yet have a dedicated following.

~~~
suivix
You left out the Call of Duty series.

------
antoncohen
The more I think about it the more I wonder if the people who like single-
player vs. multiplayer are fundamentally different, that they are two very
different genres. And that difference is what has made the latest multiplayer
first person shooters so popular.

In another comment I said I liked multiplayer FPSs because they are like
competitive sports. But the friends I know that like single-player FPSs and
RPGs don't like sports, they didn't play them as kids and they don't like
watching them.

The latest crop of MP FPSs, like MW3 and BF3 have mass appeal. I suspect a lot
of the people playing them would otherwise be outside playing basketball,
watching football, riding skateboards, or hanging out at the mall. The fact
that these games are now on consoles makes it much easier for previous non-
gamers to get into. Consoles are much cheaper than gaming PCs, and they are
socially acceptable as non-geeky.

It occurred to me that all the author's problems with single-player games,
e.g., linear levels, dumb AI, could be solved by playing multiplayer. So I
tried to think of a way to combine the campaigns of SP with the player vs.
player of MP. One thought was to have each MP map be connected to the rest.
Winning an objective, like blowing up or defending a bridge would move the
next round's spawn points to the other side of the bridge, and the game would
continue with a new objective. More campaign-like.

More complex MP gameplay would appeal to me as an MP fan, it would require
more team tactics, and the consequence of losing would be greater. But would
it appeal to an SP fan? I truly don't understand the appeal of single-player
games. Is there a way to make multiplayer FPS games more appealing to single-
player FPS fans? What do people actually like about single-player first person
shooters?

------
HeyImAlex
I think people who say that the FPS industry is bland and uninspired
fundamentally misunderstand the genre. Do you want to know how to kill a
multimillion dollar franchise? Why don't you ask Bungie.

After Halo 2 shipped, Bungie went to the drawing board for its next title and
a company that faniced itself as inspired and innovative did the only thing
that it knew how to do; innovate.

But by the time Halo 3 was released, Halo 2 had grown into a different beast
entirely. While Bungie developers, perhaps naively, thought of their baby in
terms of things like 'awesome' and 'badass', H2 had become the flagship
competitive title for MLG, the now largest pro gaming curcuit in America, and
had fostered the first real breakthrough of competitive console FPS into the
American ultra mainstream. The people playing this game now thought of it in
terms of 'balance' and 'skill gap' and 'teamwork', topics that require
experience on a level of play beyond the grasp of the creators themselves to
truly understand.

And there's a huge difference in the way you would develop for those two
schools of thought. Bungie was caught up in making a game for themselves
still, and they did so at the expense of alienating a fanbase that had become
nothing like them. For a game that lives and dies by its online community,
this was the kiss of death.

After a game becomes competitive you can't change the recipe, you can only add
sugar. No one clamors for drastic changes to be made in baseball or basketball
because the attraction to competitive games isn't innovation, it's
competition. Bungie desperately wanted to improve the franchise with cool
features and new mechanics and powerups and it was all for naught because, at
the end of the day, all Halo 2 players wanted to play was Halo 2.

~~~
beaumartinez
I wasn't aware of the rift Bungie cause with Halo 3—a game which they changed
in quite drastic ways with Halo Reach, causing similar uproar (which now 343
Studios, the company now taking on the Halo mantle, is half-reverting with an
upcoming update to Halo Reach).

The big question is, of course—are people willing to pay _FULL_GAME_PRICE_ for
small updates, like you describe?

MW3 has garnered quite a lot of flack for being entirely derivative and little
more than an iterative annual EA sports title-style update.

~~~
HeyImAlex
You're right in that Halo 3 still managed to achieve mainstream success (it
sold nearly twice as many copies as its predecessor), but sales are a lagging
indicator of support and H3 was released to a very fertile market; the console
wars were in full effect and GOW, a non fps, was the 360's only big hitter.

As for your question, this type of thing is far more suited for incremental
updates a la modern MMOs. Make the game free on psn/marketplace and charge a
cheap annual subscription fee with trials to hook casual users in and you a
have a recipe for success. Place a huge emphasis on community and competition
so that hardcore players become heavily invested (from all ends of the
personality spectrum), be an extremely active presence on your (robust) online
community and listen to fans who understand your game. A fact that I think is
lost on many developers is that, while catering to the casual crowd over the
competitive seems like it should be better business, what casual players put
in their disk tray day after day is largely dictated by what they see when
they check out their friends list, and if a hardcore player spends eight hours
a day online, guess what's going to quickly become every casual player's go to
game?

------
avolcano
A handful of games to consider, if you're waiting out this FPS drought:

\- Raven Software's recent releases, Wolfenstein and Singularity (360, PS3,
and PC). While both have similar core gunplay to most modern FPS's - iron
sights, etc. - they offer unique enemies and a lot of neat gimmicks and
twists. I haven't played Wolfenstein, but I know Singularity has stuff like
weapon upgrades, various powers, etc.

\- Painkiller (PC) is very much a descendant of the original Quake, with a
similarly gritty medieval atmosphere, and a similarly brown color palette.
It's not a pretty game to look at, but it's pretty fun. Personally was a bit
too repetitive for me. Stay away from its sequels and expansions at all costs,
though.

\- Serious Sam HD (PC, 360) is tons of fun and hard as hell, with massive
amounts of enemies in every level and a lot of massive, beautiful, and most of
all colorful arenas. While The First Encounter and The Second Encounter
originally came out on PC and Xbox 1, you should check out the recent HD
remakes (on Steam and on Xbox Live Arcade) instead. And stay away from Serious
Sam 2 (not to be confused with The Second Encounter) at all costs; it's not a
good game. On the other hand, Serious Sam 3 comes out next week and seems
promising.

\- Hard Reset (PC) is a recent indie FPS that has gunplay similar to
Painkiller and Serious Sam, but with an ultra-cool cyberpunk aesthetic. It
also has more depth, with there being two weapons that can be upgraded in a
variety of ways. However, it's somewhat short and has no multiplayer component
(though they recently added a solo survival mode), so even though it's only
$30, you may want to wait for it to be on sale. There's a demo available on
Steam.

------
ansy
As someone who never liked FPS much to begin with, let me say in comparison
it's been a bad decade to be anything but an FPS fan.

------
robgough
What about those of us who don't particularly enjoy single player FPS, and
adore multiplayer?

I'm loving BF3! I'm hesitant to call it the best multiplayer FPS ever, as
that's rather subjective. But certainly it's my favourite so far.

------
MatthewPhillips
Did he call Quake 2's campaign mode something to savour? Quake 2?

~~~
skystorm
Yes, it was lacking any story whatsoever, but from what I remember (it's been
a while) the singleplayer levels were very well designed, fairly nonlinear and
had tons of secrets.

(Still, the real meat was in the multiplayer, of course)

------
twodayslate
I have no complaints with it. I enjoy it. People are paying so why should they
stop. I bought BF3 for the online multiplayer and I think it is worth every
penny I paid.

------
cameldrv
FPS is not hacker news.

~~~
andrewfelix
According to the guidelines hacker news is... _"Anything that good hackers
would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you
had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies
one's intellectual curiosity."_

Funnily the guidelines also mention this: _"Please don't submit comments
complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site."_

~~~
cameldrv
Fair enough. I've been here since before there were guidelines. (a couple of
days after the site started) FPS ain't hacker news.

------
hobb0001
Really? There's still such a thing as an "FPS fan"? That's sort of like being
a fan of black Model-T's, isn't it?

