Why I'll never work on First-Person Shooters again
gamasutra.com
gamasutra.com
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.
Violence is also a constant presence in world history. No society has ever fully eradicated violent crime, and no era has ever fully eradicated warfare.
The news media is popular entertainment. Yellow journalism has also been a constant. It's far more cost-effective than honest journalism.
As I've gotten older I've found it's nice from time to time to disengage from the darker parts of reality and enjoy innocent things. But the appeal of violence is an essential part of the human condition.
Actually, it's not constant. It's decreasing.
Check for Steven Pinker on violence. The further into the past you look, the more violence you find —of any kind. Go back to the period where we lived as hunter-gatherers, in Harmony with Nature, and suddenly nearly 2 men in 3 die at the hand of fellow humans.
So, while History does show an everlasting presence of violence, it also shows that this is not hopeless: slowly, steadily, we are making progress. I'd keep an eye out, though: we're not there yet, and each death still is one death too much.
Humans are never going to be so perfect that 0 men out of 1,000,000 dies at the hands of another. Hell, humans are never going to be so perfect that 0 out of 1,000,000 doesn't deserve it, either. And I don't even want to live in a world where people are above enjoying a good boxing match or a bloody movie.
I'm not sure the second paragraph is hopeless. Sure we probably don't want a world where we're so perfect, but we also may not need one to prevent violent death. We could for instance imagine something like mechanical guardians that simply prevent any fatal move to ever occur (like, nano-machines in the walls that just spring up to save your life whenever needed).
That does suppose a level of technology that is extremely risky by itself, but provided we solve a few problems, such as Nanotechnology and Friendly AI, it could happen. Heck, we could even reinstate blood sports, only without the "death" part. (Okay, those problems are faar from solved. But I haven given up hope yet.)
Shame. You can almost pick a motivating tragedy.
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.
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.
than columbine-style depressed.
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.
[1]: http://kzmod.com/news.php [2]: http://ghook.speedrungames.com/
https://plus.google.com/105363132599081141035/posts/W3ys5fKn...
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?
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.
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.
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?
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81JSMr%2BIR6L._SL1500_...
But seriously, there's almost an absurd variety of games out there. No one has to play violent games. One problem is that multiplayer doesn't work well in most other genres.
If you read it closely you'll see that he talks about someone who shielded his children from violent computer games, then he says that he'll never work a FPS again citing "ethical reasons", but never produces any kind of argument connecting these two points, or stating what those ethical reasons actually are.
I know it's just a blog post and all but I saw the length of the text and was therefore hoping for a more reasoned discussion rather than anonymous anecdote and soul-searching.
He seems rather hung up on "protecting children" from something, although what outcome he is afraid of is entirely unstated. I was not shielded from the horrors of the world as a child so it is unclear to me what has changed in the last twenty years, or what makes, specifically, the first-person-shooter genre such a travesty in his eyes.
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.
By the same first hand accounts, it seems like it's not. The turn over rate is very high, with very few working in the industry more than 5 years.
Young, naive people are attracted by the glamour, then exploited. As they mature, they realize, it is not the life they want, and leave.
I have much the same conclusion drawn from essentially the same experience.
Though, I think some of the reasons are fairly evident it's just they're all but impossible to discuss productively in or around the community echo chamber.
Basically the working environment depends on the particular place of work much more than on the particular industry.
If you read only people working for Yahoo, you could conclude that web-advertising is a horrible industry. People working for Myspace would give you an impression that working for Facebook is just as bad etc etc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I far prefer movies with an interesting plot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_(Aristotle)
That's not to say that writers with poor plots don't resort to amplified spectacle when trying to conceal their failings. But it's a mistake to think that spectacle, in and of itself, has no place in well constructed drama. In many ways, good drama is what justifies a major spectacle, which is the show in show business.
Sometimes, spectacle is worthwhile, such as in Ben Hur, but BH didn't omit the plot.
But I look for movies like Memento, Primer and The Man From Earth, which are entirely plot driven.
I just have no interest anymore in jump scares and explosions.
Great art design is what makes for spectacle in a modern movie.
Ever read the drama Aristotle referred to though? "Spectacle" there had nothing do with boring pre-calculated show-some-tits, car chases and explosions.
Of course, very few of these "innovations" stand up to any real scrutiny. Close readings of the Odyssey and the Iliad will reveal that, more often than not, Homer did it first.
You can play FPS against bots or campaign style, but many people find the real fun to be the social experience with friends.
In this situation, storytelling is almost completely irrelevant, given that all the game needs is an interesting board or map, and good gameplay and graphics.
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.
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?
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.
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.
(for reference's sake, 0.07 per 100,000 intentional gun homicides 2011)
Similarly, when I see the people out and about that actually seem like they could be dangerous... they don't appear to be particularly interested in video games. It makes me wonder where the connection arose from and whether it's the case that the furore is just that or if it is motivated by any particular group's personal distaste for FPSs.
(Caveat: I'm quite aware that I haven't quite covered the implication both ways around, but... tired. stalks away)
[1]: I really, really want to avoid writing 'crimes of passion'... but shrug
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.
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.
"It's not a manifesto. It's a mission statement."
What kind of games do you like playing?
These days, I prefer playing games for the social experience so I'm more into German-style board games.
I also wrote a card game called Ambition (which I linked in this thread) and that's pretty fun.
I can't stand most of the derivative stuff that comes out of the major studios. It's so formulaic.
The social experience from playing games is pretty broad too. Pretty much every game has an active community behind it. I like playing fighting games; online play for most is pretty solid, and at least in the US there's always a local group of players to play, hang out, and host or go to tournaments with. The same goes for RTSs and action RTSs, even though I don't play those.
If you want to try playing RPGs for the story again, recent games like Nier and Xenoblade Chronicles are lauded for their story and characters. I've also heard good things about Ni no Kuni, which famed anime studio Studio Ghibli also worked on.
Beyond that, there's a near endless stream of quality AAA and indie games on Steam to browse or try.
I might be assuming too much, but whenever I hear someone say new games are bland and formulaic, it seems like they've only heard of Call of Duty, and really aren't taking any time to look for what else exists. Most games made now are bland; most games in the 90s were bland too, but since there's a ton more people making games, there's a ton more variety to choice from. The marketing for the CoD types may be strong, but that doesn't make it impossible to look past that to see the constant stream of excellent games being made right now.
After an hour or two of playing this game, I couldn't help but think that this was carefully balanced, and little more than a clever attempt to stretch the length of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if I the creators of the game (Microsoft and Remedy) had some psychologist conduct studies on how long it takes for people to lose interest. I completed the game, but I felt like in some kind of stupor: never completely engaged, but never so bored that I wanted to quit. Something quite similar happens in MMORPGs where the "drop rates" of items are carefully balanced to maximize the time you invest. From a relevant article [0]:
"How to make players play hard.
Translated into the language we've been using, how do we make players maintain a high, consistent rate of activity? Looking at our four basic schedules, the answer is a variable ratio schedule, one where each response has a chance of producing a reward. Activity level is a function of how soon the participant expects a reward to occur. The more certain they are that something good or interesting will happen soon, the harder they'll play. When the player knows the reward is a long way off, such as when the player has just leveled and needs thousands of points before they can do it again, motivation is low and so is player activity.
How to make players play forever.
The short answer is to make sure that there is always, always a reason for the player to be playing. The variable schedules I discussed produce a constant probability of reward, and thus the player always has a reason to do the next thing. What a game designer also wants from players is a lot of "behavioral momentum," a tendency to keep doing what they're doing even during the parts where there isn't an immediate reward. One schedule that produces a lot of momentum is the avoidance schedule, where the players work to prevent bad things from happening. Even when there's nothing going on, the player can achieve something positive by postponing a negative consequence."
That article makes for some chilling reading.
To get back to the point Michael was making: I do think that games nowadays are in general much more unappealing than they used to be. I know, I know, in the early 90s we had one platformer after another, but they often had quite distinct graphical styles and the mechanics didn't transfer 1:1 either --- just compare Mario to Sonic --- but today you've got one FPS after another, and almost all of them strive for realism and instant gratification a la Call of Duty. Many FPS games have absolutely identical mechanics, down to the button mapping. Storywise, FPS games are an absolute disaster. Very few games try to be different, like Spec Ops: The Line which provided a rather unusual emotional experience. Sadly, it sold very poorly.
[0] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131494/behavioral_game...
While I don't agree with the mentality, having your work dictated to some degree by your industry isn't terribly unusual.
How far would a sysadmin who says "I don't want to work on Linux" get in the world of web startups?
If you want to see a really "fucked up" industry, try being a tool and die engineer.
Maybe there's a losing part of the industry somewhere?
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).