I had thought after the first few Making the Game columns that I would get into the swing of writing them and they would become easier to do. That turns out not to be the case at all. This one seems to be more difficult to write than my PhD thesis. Part of the problem is that, as the series becomes more popular and I get more ideas emailed to me, that I?m having trouble integrating them all into some sort of coherent order. The bigger problem is that, in the case of this particular column, I?m approaching the 2001 monolith of game genres, and I feel at serious risk of getting brained by some Neanderthal with a giant animal thighbone. I?m a little like the guy on the Animal Channel. ?Oym going ?ta stick my ?and inside the mouth of this incredibly dangourous 1st person shooter fan.? No genre inspires rabid fandom like FPS games, and some of what I write here could piss someone off. Might get me email bombed. Might get me real bombed. Who knows? In LA, the Quakes and the Unreals are rapidly overrunning the Crips and the Bloods. It?s a violent genre. I?m going to take a chance and write this baby anyway, because I?ve gotten some great ideas sent to me. As always, you want to add in your two cents, you can email me, but a recent alternative is to drop your ideas at our new forum. There is already a Making the Game topic cooking in the Features forum, and I think that?s picking up steam nicely. I?m apparently going with cooking metaphors today.
Right off the bat I?d like to throw in an idea I got way back when I started this whole column series. It?s such a great idea for a game that I haven?t been able to stop thinking about it since I first heard it. It?s also such a radical idea that, if it ever was made, parents groups would instantly hold it up as a symbol of absolutely everything that is wrong in our society. Give it a read:
"OK, here it is. I have told a few of my friends about this idea and they think it is sick. Basically it is a FPS based on a Serial Killer motif. The player gets a file folder at the start of each level, and must take the person in the folder "out". At the start of the game, the player selects the MO of the type of serial killer they would like to be (i.e. stabber,
shooter, strangler...). While they are trying to reach the "target" person, they are attempting to stay away from the cops. The ultimate goal is to assassinate like the president or something. Game play would be similar to Thief and Thief II."
That?s really more an idea for a complete game than improvements for FPS games, but I like the idea enough to mention it. The whole concept of a MO, a means by which you become more skilled at killing, I think would make an intriguing slant on FPS games.
A big chunk of the letters that I got were yearning (and yearning is the right word) for sort of intangible things. They wrote about the flow of the game, the atmosphere of the game, all the stuff that goes towards making a game fun or chilling or exciting or whatever. One guy wrote in that:
?FPS games should be like ballet with an uzi.?
That writer wrote about how he likes when a game presents him with scenarios that feel real. That he?s already pivoting to shoot a guy in the corner of a room he just walked into even though he hasn?t seen the guy because a guy should be there. It makes sense in the layout of the area for a guard to be there. If he were guarding the place, that?s where he would be. It would probably be better if I could directly quote his letter, and I?m probably butchering his ideas, but his was one of the letters that got blitzed when some glitch in the AOL software recently wiped out two months worth of my mailbox. The ballet with an uzi quote really stuck with me, though.
Among the more tangible desires, increased interactivity with the environment is high on many lists. It wasn?t all that long ago (Wolfenstein, Doom) that interactivity was limited to pushing buttons and flipping levers. Move forward to Half-Life, and you could move boxes around and use computer consoles (though often you were just flipping a couple of switches on the console). I think in some ways this lead to greater frustration in terms of interactivity. For example, you could interact (i.e. break) some windows, but not others. What was the rational between what windows you could break and what windows you couldn?t? Simply, those that were included in the plot line as breakable were breakable. And as we?re playing with grenade launchers and antitank weapons - I can?t take a door off its hinges? I can?t just blow a hole in the freaking wall and make my own door? That level of interactivity doesn?t exist. Got an interesting quote from one of our own people in our very own forum:
"For starters, I think the surrounding environment is never interactive enough, particularly in games like No One Lives Forever or Thief, as opposed to say Quake III: Arena or Unreal Tournament. I'm talking about games that actually use 'realistic' environments. The problem I have in games like that is that you can't actually interact with the environment. The weapons are pre-set, you can only use what the developers deem as 'useful' weapons. If a candlestick is present in the room, I should be able to pick up the candlestick and use it as a blunt weapon. I should be able to pick up chairs and throw them at enemies. If Jackie Chan can use almost anything as a weapon, so should I. Unfortunately, everything seems to be nailed to the ground, and in the few instances where you can pick up an object, you can rarely actually use it as a weapon."
To be fair, I suspect game companies are well aware of the fact that we would like increased interactivity, and it is simply the programming, and maybe the computer horsepower, that aren?t there. From what little I know about graphics engines, the problem of allowing the gamer to blow holes in the walls where ever he damn well pleases would lead to massive tearing of the textures. That problem might be reduced somewhat by making all the holes that are blown in walls look the same, or at least conform to a couple of standard shapes. Still, I can understand that it might lead to instability in the game arena, and maybe the plot as well. Likewise using any old thing as a weapon presents the problems of ?How much damage does it do?? and ?How would it be used in an attack?? The game programmers would end up doing a lot more writing on the off chance that someone is going to pick up a chair to bash someone. I could probably speak to this with greater knowledge if I had played either Deus Ex or No One Lives Forever, which I haven?t; two of the most interactive FPS games of the year from what I?ve heard. I have both games on my desk, but I?ve been so busy playing and writing about the games that I?ve reviewed, that I haven?t had much chance to play games that I haven?t reviewed. Also on my desk is a copy of Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon, which is a game I?ve been trying to get around to playing for about 6 years now. Clearly not everything on my desk makes it onto my hard drive. As Under a Killing Moon ran natively in DOS, I?m not even sure I could make it run anymore in my current operating system. There?s a column - ?Antiquated DOS favorites and what can be done to run them on today?s systems.? Any takers?
No One Lives Forever (c) Fox Interactive
Deux Ex (c) Eidos Interactive
A direction that FPS games are going in, that people would definitely like to see more of, is the more strategic FPS. Games where walking into a room and killing everyone and everything standing is not the best alternative. Games that call for stealth, kills of opportunity, and hiding in shadows offer a refreshing alternative to Unreal Tournament and the like. The excellent Thief series pioneered this sub-genre.
"The noise meter (Thief) should be used in more games. It's so cool to use stealth. There's not enough good Sniper games out there."
This series was so popular, that Looking Glass went bankrupt selling it. Go figure. Another mystery for the ages.
Thief II: The Metal Age (c) Eidos Interactive
I?ve gotten a lot of letters, and there has been discussion in the forum, about the gore level of FPS games. Parents would probably have no problem if you spent your days blasting Smurfs into so much blue goo (or maybe some would), but put a human face on it and have it go up in a gout of red mist - suddenly you?re hearing about the violence level in videogames spiraling out of control on CNN soundbites. Some games recently (Carmageddon TDR2000) went with using green blood instead of red, the theory being that you?re killing human zombies and not humans. Do you think any parents groups are satisfied by this?
"I don't like abusive gore as in Quake 3, but I think Soldier Of Fortune violence level was alright. It was great to see that your enemy was really injured when you shot him. More realism concerning violence in FPS is something developers should really try to work on. I don't know if it would be possible, bit it would be cool if you could be injured too. I mean, if someone shoot you in the arm or in a leg, you should suffer from that. I don't how they could do this...maybe by making the screen shake (simulating the fear of your character and the pain) slower movement (especially when climbing ladders) or anything like that."
I just thought about whether or not I wanted to discuss the whole violence in videogames thing, but that?s been done to death. I am going to say that I grew up in the era when you could see Elmer Fudd actually shoot Daffy Duck in the head with the shotgun, as opposed to now when you see Elmer point the gun followed by Daffy picking his bill up off the ground (editing out the actual shooting). Kids aren?t stupid - they know the shot?s been fired whether or not they get to see it. I?m of parenting age, but have no kids. Any parents reading this care to chime in on this topic? I think if a kid goes out and commits an actual murder based on what he?s seen on TV or in a game, then, and trust me on this one, it wasn?t the game that caused it. If the game didn?t exist, it would have been the mayonnaise in the fridge telling them to kill. These are seriously sick kids with seriously sick problems, and that?s all I?m going to say about it, but it does make a nice lead in to the next topic I?d like to pitch around, which is health and healing.
Soldier of Fortune (c) Activision
Games, going back to Wolfenstein and Doom now, threw hundreds of stupid enemies at you. Still, with the spray of machine gun fire, it was inevitable that you take a few hits. How to work out healing? They went with medkits (and sometimes food) to patch you up. Pretty unsatisfying, but, like wondering where James Bond goes to the bathroom, it just wasn?t something that people spent too much time thinking about. Oddly, with all the other facets of FPS games that have changed, the same basic health system still continues today. Half-Life took the approach that you were wearing some sort of powered armor, and that it was the armor (or rather its power) that was taking the damage instead of you. Better, or at least more creative, but still ultimately an oversimplification. Along with the point damage system the quote above discusses, I?d like to see some wounds easier to heal up than others are. Flesh wounds, no big deal, wrap some bandage around it and be a little stiff in that appendage for a time. Shot in the chest and collapse a lung, and maybe you could re-inflate the lung yourself, but you?re going to need some serious down time. How about a field surgery skill that would determine how well you could fix this stuff? Did Deus Ex have something like that? I probably should have played that game before I wrote all this.
I?m looking at the list of topics that I have left to discuss on FPS games, and the overall word count in this column, and I?ve decided I?m going to quit here. There?s going to be another one of these, you can count on it. But the next one, I swear with my right hand on my CPU, will be about 4x games. Fourth in the column series - still making gaming history.
Note: Be sure to check out the rest of the columns in this incredible ongoing feature if you
haven't done so already. There's some fantastic stuff in here. What do you think would make for a great game? Would you
like to see more in-depth storylines? How about a more sophisticated artificial intelligence? Tired of the same old
real-time strategy formula? Which genre would you like to see improved? We want to hear what you have to say, so let your
voice be heard and we'll continue to showcase your thoughts and ideas. All you have to do is e-mail Rorschach
or comment in our forums
as we make gaming history in this developers' goldmine of a column, Making The Game!
