The Future of First Person Shooters?
Many of you enjoy playing FPS’s (First Person Shooters). If you don’t know what Call of Duty or Battlefield are, then please stop reading and go play in the highway. Just kidding don’t do that!
FPS’s have become a huge market not just for video games, but for movies and esports. After awhile you start to see games get recycled and the same old game get releases year after year. To help bring us better product companies like Activision add developers to their games. They now have each team on a 3 year cycle. Which in its own is a short period of time for the next gen games.
In my opinion games like Battlefield 4 are the perfect example when a game gets rushed and we suffer with a crap game. Servers never working, the content isn’t any better than the game before. I have reached out to a few of my friends in the industry to get their input on what they think is going to happen with the FPS’s.
The first question I asked was how they thought the genre of FPS is going to keep gamers excited or interested in playing FPS after playing the same game over and over again?
Both felt that competition holds a huge part of this. People are going to pay for games they can play where there is competition. For example who would buy a game that has no one playing it when they can buy a game that does? Sniper Elite 3 was a great example of this, very good game but online...there was hardly anyone playing it, which forced me to move over to Call of Duty where I could find a game to play. We still buy the same game with minor changes/improvements/etc. as long as the core competition is the same.
Another great point was that until the publishers feel the pressure of loosing sales, why would they worry about putting out a perfect product every time. ‘No Pressure, No Diamonds’
The second question was ‘are we at the point that the game is the same, the only difference is shinier guns, laser guns, transparent knives or the deeper dive into our pockets for map packs/series passes?
One thing we all agreed on was we are not fans of paying for skills! For me it pisses me right off!
The games are essentially the same. BF hasn’t really changed since BF1942, but they added destructible environments, good maps and great graphics and we play it. Because its good competition. People don’t really go out and buy a game just for the gadgets or guns, people buy multiplayer games to compete in, to prove their worth.
Another point was there are 3 factors to this. The publisher, the developer and the consumer. The publisher wants to make money, the publisher tells the developer to make a game, which is usual the case in non new IP’s (BF, CoD, Halo and Tom Clancy) they already have a huge library of games they can base it off of, but its their job to make the game ‘better’ than the last and make the sales. Well we the consumer have a big role in this, but we don’t really exercise it! If we are tired of a game, DON’T BUY IT! Send a message to the publisher and say ‘Fuck you, do your job and make a better game!’
One thing I and my friends want in a new game is give us options, don’t make us pay for things that should be free, don’t let people buy skill and make a solid shooter first and foremost.
We have become a generation that is fine with just sitting back and complaining but don’t do anything about it. I am very glad I waited to type this up because look at what EA is doing with Hardline. I said on this podcast multiple times after seeing the video on it, that I would NOT buy this game, it looked nothing more than a new game mode and some skins slapped on BF4! I didn’t even take time to try the beta. Well the consumer spoke and EA looked at the comments and they are doing the right thing, holding the game back to make it better. It has added my trust into the company and now I would look into the game.
Destiny, holy shit! That beta was amazing! Graphics looked great, and yes you can argue that the PS4 ran better FPS and looked better than the One. Great. I played it on the One and had a blast. For me it is still too much like Halo, and again for me not being a huge fan of Halo the FPS but I still highly respect the game and what the developers have made! Destiny I think is going to be huge for both consoles! And for all FPS fans out there, it will be the game to beat this holiday!
I would like to thank my friends Rich Hunsinger and Dan Herrera for all their thoughts and comments on this subject.
