The ontology of the first person shooter – part 2 (Inertia)

Let’s look at a few more notable examples in more modern history. As with any form of monopoly, it gestates in a state of inertia until it reaches the point of fever that we are at today. We explored in Part 1 of the idea of space, viewpoints and gratification. As such, the elementary ingredients of a first person perspective were established. And so how do designers, and players build upon this edifice?

If first person shooters provided a more cerebral and personal way into the manipulation of space, then what did adding more players do? In retro gaming, we mostly saw competition in the form of fighting games which at the time is all the technology could argue.

Goldeneye (N64)

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At this point, the solitary image of a single gamer in front of a screen in the dark had penetrated the reality and the minds of all those who played. Yet a “game” in the most basic senses of the word, always implied other people. Most sports and “games” included other people in order create a solid sense of cause and effect, and of interaction.

The effect of split screen multiplayer is penetrating the solitary and confined space of the player with other voices. Kids got together and competed on the same screen to see who was best, there was a sense of community that was being established. In the mind of the player, he had to not only include his own viewpoint, but to use information that was not being fed to him by the computer. It was often that players would exploit split screen by looking at where other players were on the map then heading off to kill them.

This created an important sense of chaos, of improvisation; the rails that game designers had spent their day jobs creating had been dismantled, and in its place was free fall. A new plateau had been reached, since now it was the job of the designer to create environments that would encourage improvisation and competition in the form of multiplayer, rather than creating tight single player environments. Within the sphere of multiplayer, FPS games found a new evolution that would shoot them into popularity.

Counter-Might

A lot of the older gamers nowadays will have fond memories of Counter Strike (CS). I remember the days when we still had LAN cafés and people would pay a little money to play a few rounds of CS before going home. I also remember spending hours and playing until 5 AM sometimes, trying to master the game.

Here’s what CS did well. It combined arcade style gameplay with realism. This created a direct reference point between the player and reality; a scenario in where the player (whilst learning the game) would imagine a scenario in real life in order to help them win the game.

A lot of players were surprised or impressed for example, when the game exhibited life-like rules and behaviour. Gun recoil for example, could be controlled by moving the mouse in a downward motion in order to steady the gun while it fired. Flashbangs could be avoided by turning around at the moment the grenade exploded. Frag grenades could be bounced around corners.Footsteps could be heard from other players but were quietened if they crouched. Holding a knife meant you ran faster than if you had a full rifle in your hand.

Of course, games do not have to fully conform to the rules of reality. This would mean that a single shot would render a player incapacitated (or he would at least hit the floor), but game design that is based on reality is about reaching a happy compromise between realism and gameplay balance. Thus, this inherent tether to reality meant that the learning experience of the player was sped up.

When you die, you get to observe the other players who are alive on your team. Therefore, dying didn’t become a wasteful experience, because now you were able to experience someone else playing and more importantly, LEARN from them.

The impact of this is twofold, not only does the learning curve of the game dramatically flatten out since gamers were able to spectate from FIRST PERSON PERSPECTIVE OF THAT PLAYER rather than watching a pointless zoomed out 3^rd person model run around (though there was the option to do so), they were able to copy players who learnt tiny things that new players had not learnt, such as shooting sweet spots, possible enemy locations, map routes, hiding spots and so on.

Second, it created pressure because now when you were one of the few left alive on your team, you knew that everyone was watching you. It created an intense rush when you single handedly outplayed a team or achieved the objective. But most importantly, it created a sense of camaraderie and team bonding which meant that even if it was only for 2 or 3 mins, you functioned as part of a team that lived and died together.

There are many reasons that CS became popular world-wide, some of those reasons are above(design-related). Some of those reasons are because of Steam. But essentially, the spectator friendly nature of CS, as well as its fast paced, round based gameplay meant that it was easy to drop in and drop out. It was easy to learn the game, near impossible to master.

It showed the world that multiplayer and FPS go hand in hand, a secret combination that was previously hidden to game designer. As famous and as effective as cheese and tomato, or salt and pepper.

The Grid.

Here are some summaries of game theory and game design. Click to zoom in.

1. Games are art

We could argue forever about what art and what isn’t. But to boil the debate down to its essence, art is about using representation in a creative way in order to make yourself, or someone else feel a certain way. All the different aspects of a game (Graphics, music/audio, story elements, architecture/level design, voice acting, narrative, and so on) are artforms in themselves. Games combine elements from fine art, film, literature, music, and technology in order to make a unified coherent whole. Anyone who says games isn’t art is missing the glaringly obvious point that the components of games are bits and pieces of art in themselves.

2. Good game design is about teaching without a word.

We’ll go into depths about this later. But what is the first thing that you do when starting a game? You learn its controls. You learn its world. You learn the logic, what is permissible and what isn’t. You find out about how to combine different controls together to create effects. In some games, learning patterns is a requirement. All of this learning has to effectively be done through experience of playing the game itself. Unfortunately, game designers seem to have forgotten about the power of experience and experimentation in teaching a player how to play their game. The best way to learn is to do it! Not go through hours of tutorials and text just to gain an understanding. The best games make learning their world not feel like learning at all and instead they make it feel like a natural extension of your will.

3. Press X to escape reality.

Games simulate reality. Other games create their own realities. The “suspension of disbelief” in films, or devices such as the fourth wall in theatre, literature and so on. These are all things to maintain the illusion of reality and experience. Games take this a step further. They create a kind of trance. They create a temporal space. In games it isn’t “the suspension of disbelief” but the opposite, “the creation of belief.”

4. A better word for player would be controller

What art form has control as the central part of the viewer experience? When you look at a painting, read a book, or watch a film, you passively receive the image into your mind. In some senses, you control your reaction to these mediums, but within gaming, the element of control is so vital and so central to the experience that it becomes an active process. One of the great words of our 21st century is interactivity. You aren’t a passive observer, you are the controller of the game’s reality. This virtual element of response, of instant gratification, of manipulated time is what makes games unique in comparison to other traditional art forms.

5. Imagine a 12 hour film where you essentially become God.

This is where games have more in common with books than anything. Films are a slave to a time limit. We may see 3 hour films, or series and boxsets that deliver a 12-24 hour experience in one hour chunks. Books inherently have more longevity because of content. Games can be anywhere from a few seconds to hundreds of hours. And within this time, whether short or long, you become a God like figure in the sense that you control life and death of characters, their fates, in some cases you control their sense of morality. Games feature control on the “micro” level (pressing buttons to perform an action) and “macro” control (controlling the flow of the game, objectives, narrative choices). When we play, we transcend.

6. Games as a state of being.

When playing a game, you enter a mentally created space that dampens the sense of time passing, your own thoughts, and even your behaviour towards others. This is not as different to films for example, but rather than dissolve into the anonymous mass of “the audience” a gamer becomes an individual. They assume the role of a character, like an actor on stage. They behave in ways that fulfils their fantasies or behave in ways that they wouldn’t normally do in reality. Obvious examples of the GTA series with people becoming senseless drivers, stealing and killing people as they wish. RPG’s make players assume the role of someone or something. In essence, the “being” of a game is personal, reactive and dynamic. It is constantly changing according to what we do and what variables the designers choose to put. More analysis on this later.

So those were some thoughts to get the ball rolling in terms of how we can think about games in an intelligent way. To take them more seriously is to appreciate the work and the craftsmanship of the product.

Introduction.

Games have widely been regarded as entertainment devices. That is to say, you plug it in, you have a good time, you take it out and then you get back to work. Between those processes, a lot of people have argued that there isn’t much thought involved. But for something so emotionally involving, something that takes years to create, and being one of the largest industries in entertainment, it can’t simply be thoughtless. I argue that there is a lot of thought involved – but like a hidden stage or item, it’s done in such a way where it emotionally pushes you first.

This is a blog that is dedicated to the analysis and discussion of video games. If you are looking for detailed discussions about games, game design and the more philosophical side of games, this is the place.

Why has this image captured us?

Is it really that simple though? Our emotions and our thinking is constantly being updated and shifted while we watch a film, watch a sports game, or while we’re in class or reading books. I want to unravel that process that causes us to press buttons with passion. My argument is that it isn’t that simple and we can reverse engineer, or deconstruct our gaming experiences and our perceptions . 

In some specific posts, we’ll deal with a case study, a particular game and the way it works. Other posts we’ll go more broadly into genres, styles, content using many different examples. Gaming is representation. It is art. It is more involved than you think.