Essence of the First Person Shooter
Team Warfare has a post where one of their news staff wrote up this big long article about how all FPS games are the same.
I read through it and my only thoughts were “Well yeah.” Basically he claims that when you boil it down, all games in the FPS genre follow the basic motions and have become trivial. You’ve got a projectile based weapon and your goal is to kill your enemies. Does this make all FPS games obsolete or worthless?
No.
While the core elements will almost always be the same, it’s what people do with those elements that make the games non-trivial or unique. This is how we get genres. RTS, FPS, MMORPG; developers take these game fundamentals that work and have proven true and re-use them to add their own twists and ideas. Games like Tribes, UT2004, and Counter-Strike are born because of this. While yes, the gameplay at it’s very core may be the same(guy with a gun), you can’t tell me these are the same games.
For example(maybe not the best), take a Hamburger. At the core it’s a beef patty. Hunk of cooked meat within a bun. Does this mean all hamburgers are the same? What about cheese, bacon, a different kind of bun, even (God forbid) vegetables on the hamburger. And let’s not forget condiments. Don’t all of these make the meal something different?
So while all FPS games(and hamburgers) may be the same at the bottom level, each one can be made unique, different, and give a refreshing change that makes them non-trivial and worth playing.
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