Remember those days when third-person shooters ruled the world? What happened to those days? Did the industry forget them? Did the industry left it behind because of money? This article is written for you to get an understanding of this new phenomenon.

Everywhere you see now are first-person shooters, we have Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Halo 4, Far Cry 3, Heck, we also have games that are not supposed to be a first-person shooter crunching and squeezing into the first-person shooter genre, like Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.

Back then every game you play has its own feel. The unique traits that makes every game, a game of its own. The reason why we all love videogaming.

 

Back then we had great platformers like Crash Bandicoot…

and

great action games like Zone of the Enders,

and great RPG and Beat’em up games like Xeno Saga,

 

The 128 bit consoles offered an array of excellent games from many different genres, despite it’s lack in graphic quality.

That’s right, DESPITE it’s lack of graphic quality. The in-game jaggies actually brought you guys more fun than the 20x anti-aliasing they have nowadays

So, what happened to those games?

Ubisoft’s managing director for Ubisoft Toronto, Jade Raymond said recently at the Game Developer’s Conference 2012, that the game industry is going towards an unhealthy commercialization of first-person shooters. The producer of the Assassin’s Creed series lunge over the industry’s favoritism over the first-person shooter genre and criticizes the abundance of the narrowed genre in the game market.

“I don’t know when we decided as an industry that in order to sell five million copies of a game you have to make a Michael Bay film. There are other options.”

She further explains,

“More and more people come to me at Ubisoft and say, ‘I love games. I came into this industry with so many ideas. But I can’t continue to make shooters over and over again. I’m not even in line with the messages.’ I have that meeting a lot these days. Yeah, it’s time to give our teenage medium a kick in the balls.” – Jade Raymond

We need to get her voice heard!

To inform you guys on how this all happened,

It all started with Resident Evil: Survivor

That’s right, that damn game that started all this crap.

Resident Evil: Survivor (1999) was one of Capcom’s conversion from a popular third-person game title to first-person one, it’s their beta-test. Capcom saw the potential of the first-person shooters market due to the global hit of first-person shooters back in the late 90s with games like Half-Life and Counter-Strike hitting homes like crazy. And because Resident Evil at that time lacks in mobility and flexibility towards the controls of the characters in the Resident Evil environment, they realized that some gamers might tend to avoid the Resident Evil series because they don’t know how to control it. So they started the test-run on the Resident Evil games to see how the response would be like if Resident Evil was made into a first person shooter. Is it more scarier? Is it more daunting? Ooo, those were the questions of the guys back in 2000. The new millennia.

Capcom Guy 1: Hey, it’s the new millennia guys! We’ve gotta start something new!

Capcom Guy 2: Like what?

Capcom Guy 1: Like Resident Evil in first person view!

Capcom Staffs: WHOAaaaaaaaa

 

Another game that was not so crappy, but lead the scene for the innovation of many crappy craps is Splinter Cell…

 

Splinter Cell’s over-the-shoulder camera, which is a mix of third person plus first-person view, was a revolutionary invention in the game industry at that time. And it was Splinter Cell’s unique trait of being a game of its own, marking a new revolution in game-making in 2002. However, many game producers later started mass-producing and mass marketing their games using the same formula for almost every game that they released later in the industry!

And now it’s like every game company is telling their developers and designers, which are most probably filled with university graduates by now that are famous for their ‘do as told’  traits , to “Do over-the-shoulder camera for our games! Like Splinter Cell! A.S.A.P.!.”  And these robotic non-genuine product of university just nod their heads “Yes, Sir!” and started munching their way through the development of these games like how they revise for their exams that’s filled with recycled information.

Talk about “Made in University”!

Back in the 90s and early 2000s, every game has its own feel. Even the first-person shooters.

Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield

Counter-Strike

Now try to match that with the first-person these nowadays

Crysis

 

 

Far Cry

 

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Can somebody tell me if these three are actually the same game just with a different storyline?

 

Mostly first-person shooters?? This is Crazy!! They make first-person shooters more than what people even demand for. It just shows that the industry is only looking to make money out of something. And what’s with the easy one-straight road gameplay for the first-person shooters nowadays? Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was a disappointment, they made the game terribly easy so that they could get more audience in the game (mainly super young audiences and older adults) to play the game. It’s just like how a radio station would give out TERRIBLY easy questions like, “How much is 1 + 1 ? ” Just to get a lot of listeners to call in, so that they will SOUND more hype. And sometimes when you listen to these radio stations, How the heck did everyone win a prize? That’s like cheating their way.

Here’s a good word from our guy from youtube:

 

“I feel like we’re in the era of video games where everyone’s continuously producing remakes of the same game. I’m hoping that we can get more companies out there that are willing to break that mold and bring something revolutionary because all we’re getting nowadays is just another Mario, or Zelda, or Call of duty, Halo or Uncharted 🙁 ” – Crystalshine777

 

Let the users be heard!!!

So what happened here?

What happened is that….every game company is using the same algorithm to develop new games. Come on, be original !

The videogame industry’s creativity have somehow came onto a halt because of this move by the game industry.

What we need is passionate game industry experts, not people with degrees, not moneyheads, but people with the creativity and the extraordinary talent to create and innovate great videogames for the future.

 

Footnotes

http://www.shacknews.com/article/72808/ubisofts-jade-raymond-on-making-blockbusters-with-more-meaning

http://gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=177179

 

If you have any critiques please email the author at

johan@gametrader.sg