id Software’s Design Paradigm and A Brief History of First Person Shooters
September 12th, 2010
Throughout the 90’s, id software’s Wolfenstien 3D, Doom and Quake series set the design paradigms and mentality behind the first person shooter genre. The first person shooter would drive forward new technology while at the same time use this technology to iterate and reinvent the dynamics of first person shooting. From Wolfenstien 3D to Doom, to Doom II, to Quake and Quake II each jump in processing power characterised these games through the improvement in playability from a primitive, pseudo 3D shooter, to the ultimate online deathmatch, truely 3D in both graphics and control.
By the time Quake III had rolled around, id had already established and refined the core properties that would define the first person genre (fully 3D movement, strafing, online multiplayer, etc.). At the same time, by the year 2000, the wheel of technology was beginning to slow, which meant that the genre has had to search for new paradigms or effectively scrape the bottom of the technology barrel for scraps. New paradigms have come in several forms: the shift to more narrative-based FPS (Half-life series), roller-coaster styled experiences (Call of Duty 4) and the hybridisation of the first person shooter and RPGs (Borderlands). As for technological advancements, open world gameplay (Fallout 3) and increased online functionality (Team Fortress 2), such as online co-operative or team play (the latter, MAG) have added new wrinkles into the FPS fabric.
While none of these examples should be written off, since in culmination they’ve seen the genre expand and splinter out like never before, very few titles have actually tinkered with the groundwork of the genre like id Software. The FPS framework has been moulded, given narrative context and added features, but over the past decade Portal has been perhaps the only game to change the shooting, by, in fact removing the bullets from the gun. The portal-shooting mechanic is a genius one as it re-purposes the gun to instead become a tool.
Maybe this is where first person shooters need to go, unexplored territory, abandoning the id Software paradigm of iteration through technology. id defined the shooter, just as Carmack’s technical wizardry defined the technology behind it. Yet with technology in games increasing at a relatively marginal rate compared to 20 years ago, such a paradigm is no longer sustainable, leaving new ideas built into the fabric of the genre as the future of the first person shooter genre.
User-generated Content as Sustainability
July 24th, 2010
From Adventure Construction Set to WADs, mods, community tools and those RPG maker games, user-generated content has been a long-running staple of video game continuity. Nowadays, with the infrastructure of the internet and possible global networking, games like LittleBigPlanet, Wario Ware DIY, Flipnote and Mod Nation Racers are overtly orientating their systems around a model of community tools and user-generated content. In a sense, games of this nature have formed a pseudo genre of networked user-generated-orientated games.
Currently in the games industry, when a game developer creates a worthwhile gameplay system which proves to be successful (Guitar Hero, Madden, for instance), publishers often capitalize on the success and sequalize the gameplay out of existence. User-generated content, I think, offers a fantastic opportunity for developers of these tried and true gameplay systems to establish a self-sustaining environment for content and community, effectively consolidating a franchise in the one place as opposed to killing interest by burning out sequels to an annual business model.
To prove my case, I’ll use the Tony Hawk series as an example. We’re all pretty down on Mr Hawk after each yearly iteration of the Pro Skater series added new mechanics to the point where the franchise became unrecognizable to the mainstream and alienated everyone else. Let’s not even begin on Tony Hawk Ride.
Despite the disdain we may carry for Activision and the Hawkster, Tony Hawk’s Proskater 2 is still awesome, is it not? That game and the systems contained within it will always remain good, regardless of how Activision drive the later games into the ground. Theoretically speaking, if Neversoft reclaimed the mantle, streamlined all of the needless complexity of the later releases, packed in a meaty ‘best of’ selection of levels from THPS-THP8 and centered the experience around accessible construction tools and a networked community of level creators, I figure that the Tony Hawk games of yesteryear would have a respectful place to roost and the brand would gain some credibility back. I enjoyed playing and making levels for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, as did millions of other players, and there’s no reason why we wouldn’t want to revisit this franchise if it were given the proper treatment and allowed to grow. Appeasing fans by recognizing the significance of prior titles is a good idea at this point for Activision. Reworking these games in a HD format and creating an environment which will keep this type of game alive, is a step beyond that.
As we’ve discovered through downloadable services like Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network and Steam, old gameplay systems don’t have to fade into obscurity, particularly when they’re still fun. This generation has taught us that well designed games like Mega Man can live forever while those which are a little archaic, like Bionic Commando Rearmed, can adopt modern design sensibilities and start anew. Self-sustaining systems of content like user-generated content – if viable – are an even better means of not only preserving the past, but keeping it fresh and relevant for a contemporary audience.
Grant Morrison on Game Narrative as Environment
July 24th, 2010
I was very impressed to read a recent interview with acclaimed comic book writer Grant Morrison who, with brilliant articulation, identified the medium-specific advantages of video game narrative (environment as character) and then elaborates on how he’d like to introduce these elements into the comic book medium. This makes me terribly excited because Morrison is fantastically talented, really understands whatever subject matter he chooses to become invested in and is testing out this new approach on nothing less than Batman, w00t! In anycase, I’ve pasted the particular excerpt below, please click here to read the full interview.
IGN Comics: We also know you often draw much inspiration from the world around you – music, film, research, etc. Is anything in particular informing your development of Batman Inc?
Morrison: So many comics are still inspired by Hollywood movies, (many of which are now inspired, in turn, by comics in that pop-will- eat-itself way), and by extension a kind of approach to narrative which dates back to Aristotle’s Poetics and the fundamentals of Greek Drama, almost two and a half thousand years ago, in the name of our dear lords Hermes and Zeus Almighty!
It occurred to me, immersed in my 50th hour of Just Cause 2, how far beyond that silent audience, proscenium arch, here’s some well-paid ‘actor’ pretending to be someone else experience we’d gone and how very timidly other forms of storytelling entertainment had reacted to the challenge of the beast in their midst, this ultimate choose your own adventure playground that in some cases simulates ‘life’ and terrain so effectively it’s like actually like going on vacation (how many gamers know the geography of Silent Hill as well as their own town? Do streets and locations from Liberty City, Panau, or Saints Row, turn up in the dreams of other gamers like they do in mine? I’ll lay odds they do. These amazing virtual environments appear in my memories as real as Chicago or London. Paris, Venice, New Delhi, Jogjakarta or any of the non-CGI cities I’ve been to.
Although many current video games are constructed on a narrative spine which follows the basic action movie hero-beats-baddie script, it’s never that aspect of the player’s interaction with the virtual environment that’s important. I know I tend to skip the cut scenes in games without losing any awareness of the arrow of narrative progression. Batman Inc. is an attempt to do a comic influenced by the storytelling structures, images, senses of scale, movement and perspective and so on that I’ve absorbed from games. The experience of actually being Batman in the Arkham Asylum game was profoundly eerie and I’d love to find a way to capture that depth of involvement and identification with the character and environment. I’m not sure how much of this I’ll be able to realise but this is where I’m beginning my thinking on what might make Batman Inc. different from other books.
Batman Inc. is Brave and the Bold meets Just Cause or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare! That’s my pitch! Throw in a dash of Mission Impossible and a pinch of The Magic Christian and it’s nearly there.
As research for my book Supergods, I re-read a lot of my old comics and got really excited by that old ‘musical’ approach to writing superhero comics I saw especially in the work of Roy Thomas (the Kree/Skrull War is an amazing orchestration of plot, characters and ideas into a multi-levelled narrative that uses several interwoven voices – including blended 1st, 2nd and 3rd person captions – to practically conjure sound onto the paper. Almost every scene has some reference to sound, in fact, from the opening, apocalyptic door slam, through Black Bolt’s whisper and the continually pointed out lack of sound in space), Steve Engelhart, Doug Moench, Don McGregor and the others of Marvel’s ’70s auteur generation.
The popular ‘cinematic’ approach to comics has largely done away with those poetic narrative captions but an even greater loss is that free flowing multi-perspectival viewpoint – when was the last time you read a comic that addressed the character directly ‘You are the Batman!!’ before sliding into an omniscient 3rd person narrative voice, ‘He is the Batman!!’ then shifting to a 1st Person ‘I am the Batman.’ voice, all in the same story! That kind of writing has a metamorphic, psychedelic and very refreshing quality that seemed to tap more directly into the way comics can work together as words and pictures. The dance between writer and artist seems more fluid and the comic book artist is set free from the constraints of being a mere storyboardist, the writer gets a chance to express his or her own voice rather than just the voices of the characters etc. So with this book, I’m trying to find a road into that kind of multi-narrative approach that feels modern rather than retro.
We’ll see how it works out and how far it seems appropriate to push in that direction but these are the influences I’ve been absorbing and the thoughts I’ve been having at the beginning of the process. For me, it’s about seeing the familiar from a slightly different perspective.
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