Is the FPS killing gaming?

It seems ever since the xbox all western gamers want to play are shooters. The FPS has become what platformers were back in the 80-mid 90s. It's making gaming seem violent and immature. When will the fps die? Will it last forever?

I think the reason FPS is so popular for devs is its easy. It does not take much imagination to make a first person shooter.

Im not saying FPS games are bad but the market is bursting at the seems with them. Many older gamers hate the turn gaming has gone.

Women tend to not be turned on be violence like men are. So they tend to stay far away from most games young men play. So i worry that the FPS could alienate gamers now and in the future.

People will grow up and many could leave gaming. So how long can devs keep making the same games?

It seems ever since the xbox all western gamers want to play are shooters. The FPS has become what platformers were back in the 80-mid 90s. It's making gaming seem violent and immature. When will the fps die? Will it last forever?

I think the reason FPS is so popular for devs is its easy. It does not take much imagination to make a first person shooter.

Im not saying FPS games are bad but the market is bursting at the seems with them. Many older gamers hate the turn gaming has gone.

Women tend to not be turned on be violence like men are. So they tend to stay far away from most games young men play. So i worry that the FPS could alienate gamers now and in the future.

People will grow up and many could leave gaming. So how long can devs keep making the same games?

This is how the industry works: a game is successful, developers try to imitate that success, and they flood the genre in the process. Of course, none of this would be possible without the willing participants that are the consumers. Besides, it's not all bad; in fact, there are still many good FPSeses, as well as good non-FPSeseses.

@banishedsoul1 said:

So how long can devs keep making the same games?

As long as its making them money.

There are plenty of great games being made that aren't first person shooters.

No I do not think FPS are killing gaming. I do not get the logic behind the genre of a media that is most successful killing that media.

@laserbolts:

I think he means "killing creativity in gaming"...which doesn't make much sense, since there are still quite a few creative games out there.

There are more games in more genres being made today than at any other point in history. You try to reference games history while being effectively ignorant of it, and that ignorance offends me.

All right. Let me think for a minute...

Rayman Origins, The Witcher 2, Skyrim, Darksiders, Darksiders 2, Dragon Age Origins, Tomb Raider reboot, Red Dead Redemption, Diablo 3, Need for Speed Most Wanted, The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword.

All of them fairly recent (some not released quite yet), none of them first person shooters. And those are just games with huge budgets that are on store shelves; we could always talk about Torchlight 1 and 2, Bastion, Amnesia, Fez, Trials Evolution, or one of the many other cheaper downloadable titles that have made a name for themselves this generation.

No, shooters are not killing gaming. Shooters are the most successful genre these days because they're big, flashy, pretty, fun, easy to get into, and fun with friends - kind of like summer blockbuster action movies.

No? If anything they're helping the industry by attracting people who just want to play FPS. I have played very very few FPS games the last few years, yet I've played plenty of games. If you think there's too many FPS then you need to educate yourself on what's out there.

BIG BO! 

@The_Laughing_Man said:

BIG BO!

That was SWEEET!!!

@The_Laughing_Man said:

BIG BO!

That was SWEEET!!!

This feels like this question keeps getting asked every other month.

I don't know if FPS are killing game but big budgets and demands from big budget producers are probably doing a lot of harm.

First Person games will be around for the rest of gaming. Players are able to relate more with the character they control as the events are seen and experienced through the characters eyes. So, it is easier for the Player to see the story as happening to themselves, as opposed to some character they are controlling. I feel that this is one of the reasons why they are so popular.

The reason why there are so many FPSs is because of the popularity of the perspective with the gaming audience. Third person games are just as dominant, and with the popularity of Gears of War (possibly even Resident Evil 4 prior to Gears), third person shooters are on the rise. When a type of game sells well, publishers will take notice and try to capitalize on it. There will always be copycats, but there will also be those that take the play style or genre and do something amazing with it, but may have not getten the chance had some other game not paved the way.

I take issue with you saying that first person shooters are easy for devs to make, and don't take imagination. That is a disgusting statement, and shows that you are quite ignorant when it comes to how games are made, and how difficult it is. Some games seem to lack imagination because of development constraints, not the developers. No developer, possible even no publisher, sets out to make a bad game. But sometimes extenuating circumstances force them to cut features, and shorten the dev time so a generic and often bad game is released. The devs don't like this as much as the players, possibly even more so, as their name is attached to it.

@banishedsoul1 said:

It seems ever since the xbox all western gamers want to play are shooters. The FPS has become what platformers were back in the 80-mid 90s. It's making gaming seem violent and immature. When will the fps die? Will it last forever?

I think the reason FPS is so popular for devs is its easy. It does not take much imagination to make a first person shooter.

Im not saying FPS games are bad but the market is bursting at the seems with them. Many older gamers hate the turn gaming has gone.

Women tend to not be turned on be violence like men are. So they tend to stay far away from most games young men play. So i worry that the FPS could alienate gamers now and in the future.

People will grow up and many could leave gaming. So how long can devs keep making the same games?

No to just about everything you said.

I don't think that's a good way of putting it, but it seems like major developers are less likely to take risks and are content with making another "cookie cutter fps" than trying something new. Having said that, it seems like it's getting more and more risky to release a game that emulates so many things from other games because people are catching on and are getting bored with oversaturated genres.

Remember when every other game was a platformer? I imagine so since you mentioned it. Are games dead? There's your answer.

Oh, and lol at "Women tend to not be turned on be violence like men are." The most twisted (in a good way) people I know are women. I know that's anecdotal, but I found that statement funny in light of my experiences.

If all it took to kill videogames was the over-saturation of a single genera then we never would have gotten past the NES because of all the 2D platformers.

@SoldierG654342 said:

If all it took to kill videogames was the over-saturation of a single genera then we never would have gotten past the NES because of all the 2D platformers.

well back in 83 games were all the same so thats why hte market crashed.

Nope.

Edit: Also, how the shit does what arouses a woman factor into a genre killing creativity? Seriously, that seemed like the stupidest, most random part of this entire post.

@banishedsoul1 said:

@SoldierG654342 said:

If all it took to kill videogames was the over-saturation of a single genera then we never would have gotten past the NES because of all the 2D platformers.

well back in 83 games were all the same so thats why hte market crashed.

The market didn't crash because of homogenization, it crashed because the lack of any real quality control created a flood of busted and utter shit games.

FPSs have been around a long time and gaming isnt really dead. if developers are lazy and creatively bankrupt then FPSs are a symptom and not a cause.

Nope.

ITT: OP still think it's 2009.

@Raethen said:

First Person games will be around for the rest of gaming. Players are able to relate more with the character they control as the events are seen and experienced through the characters eyes. So, it is easier for the Player to see the story as happening to themselves, as opposed to some character they are controlling. I feel that this is one of the reasons why they are so popular.

It's nothing about the perspective and people identifying with it, it's about herp derp Call of Duty. That's why. People want a piece of that market share for the $$$$$$$$$.

@Sooty:

Some yes, but I wasn't speaking of just shooters, but the use of the perspective in general. First person perspective is used in many genres of games, and quite successfully. Yes there are the games that are trying to cash in, and I spoke of that in the next paragraph. In the paragraph you quoted, I was speaking as to why I think the first person perspective, and shooters with it, are here to stay.

If this were the 90's the OP would probably be asking if platforming games were killing gaming.

@SoldierG654342 said:

If all it took to kill videogames was the over-saturation of a single genera then we never would have gotten past the NES because of all the 2D platformers.

well back in 83 games were all the same so thats why hte market crashed.

Man guys, I wish whyareyoucrouchingspock was still here. At least his dumb threads were absurd to the point of comedy.

Do you only make shitty flamebaity troll threads?

Say what you will about the Call of Duty or its demographic, but first person shooters have made video games super popular. There are still plenty of great games in other genres that are doing quite well.

No.

Is Portal 2 killing gaming? Is BioShock killing gaming?

I think you meant "Militaristic FPS" aka Call of Duty and clones , yes too bad they are going through that lame route too often ... were are the new Stalkers? the Half lifes? etc. ... the only soon to be out shooter that pickes my interest is Borderlands 2 , because is not another kill terrorist ad infinitum ... sigh -_-

Breakdown time!

It seems ever since the xbox all western gamers want to play are shooters.

I don't think this really has anything to do with the Xbox, the hardware itself is not the cause. The rise of the modern shooter has really been kickstarted by series like Halo and Modern Warfare. While I think the idea that we have an over-abundance of shooters and samey FPS games is a valid one, and one that I agree with, shooters and FPS games are certainly not all western gamers play. We can see plenty of examples of platformers, RTS games, action-adventure games, fighting games, and more that are doing well in western territories.

The FPS has become what platformers were back in the 80-mid 90s.

In a way, yes, but surely if the over-abundance of platformers in the late 80s and early 90s didn't kill gaming, that's an argument against the idea that an over-abundance of shooters now will kill gaming.

It's making gaming seem violent and immature.

Maybe a lot of gaming is violent and immature. Violence is a very common theme in gaming outside of the FPS genre and I can't see any great deal of maturity that FPS games don't carry but others somehow do.

When will the fps die? Will it last forever?

I think the basic answer is that the FPS as we know it will continue to be top dog until it either gets so played out it decreases in popularity, something more popular comes along, or both.

In the long-term market saturation may be a risk, I think there are reasonable arguments to be made here, but it's just not as simple as "Devs keeping making the same games, it's going to ruin the market". What's more you're being very reductionist over why the video game market went through the crash it did. It wasn't just that "games were the same", it was a multitude of reasons; The fact that the industry had a ridiculous number of consoles in competition, the fact that greatly hyped games turned out to be complete crap (like the E.T. game), the fact that in many cases PCs were a better alternative to consoles, and the fact that console manufacturers lost publishing rights.

Even when talking about games that were "the same", we're not just talking about similar titles, we're talking about a market where games were literally cloned and sold as separate products. As you can see this is a very different situation from the one we have now where the likes of Call of Duty have actually made the games industry more money than ever and expanded its audience.

@Gamer_152:

Thanks for doing that breakdown. I had a momentary glimpse of a thought to do that. Then I remember how lazy I am and didn't.

I remember when every game was a sidescrolling platformer... then they became niche. I recall reading an article in a gaming mag during the 16 bit era and seeing a letter to the editor complaining about a lack of variety and imagination in gaming. The editor recommended Earthworm Jim. Times change and gamers tastes change. It'll pass.

Shooters are popular but it actually seems like lately there is more choice than there's been in years! So I think we're good.

With point and click adventure games popping up here and there and even a couple Roguelikes it's hard to feel like the industry is dieing. I'm sure shooters will eventually get supplanted by something else.

FWIW as a gamer for jeez three decades now I don't feel deprived.

@Gamer_152 said:

Im not saying FPS games are bad but the market is bursting at the seems with them. Many older gamers hate the turn gaming has gone.

Yes and I do think some criticism from older gamers is entirely valid, but you must also accept that in just about every aspect of the world the older generation dislike what the younger generation are doing and criticise them for it, while holding up how things were in their day as superior.

Hey now, Gen X likes you guys. We're not like Baby Boomers who still seem to collectively think every other generation but theirs is terrible. :)

I think what most older gamers miss is the perception that there was more variety. And in this older gamers are actually wrong although I understand it. The games are still there today, but there is a much bigger disparity in budgets between genres these days and thus marketing budgets. Shooters make the big bucks, so they get the big budgets and the big ad campaigns. Platformers, JRPGs and such still exist but they don't get TV spots like they used to. So it feels like those kinds of games are gone, especially to people maybe who are scaling back from gaming a lot, when they really aren't.

Heck even 2D games seem to be back on portables and downloadables. But again not heavily advertised. So unless you look or come somewhere like Giant Bomb, you might not know.

But I think you already knew all that.

FWIW I thought the rest of your post was spot on.

@banishedsoul1 said:

I think the reason FPS is so popular for devs is its easy. It does not take much imagination to make a first person shooter.

I highly doubt making any modern video game is easy.

There's something poetic about the way this post was written, as in it was deliberately written to be a poem. Not a great poem but it reads like one to me anyway.

I think your clue is "The FPS has become what platformers were back in the 80-mid 90s." That's a pretty large timespan for one genre to dominate and people look back on those times with more nostalgia than two old men on a rocking chair. The FPS has been the standard genre for when a game chooses to do action it seems and when game design centers around surmounting obstacles and conflict resolution, then its easy for shooters to be the biggest genre there is.

I don't think its developers being lazy or anything but all sides being realistic about what they know they can do and how much of a budget they can work with. The flip side to that is though is publishers don't just hand out free money to any old shooter. They have to really pitch the game on something in order to get the funds and just being another brown shooter ironically enough isn't enough. Sadly that's what it turns out to be sometimes, and the publishers know that when reviews come in, and sell the product anyway because you have to at that point.

@Sooty said:

@Raethen said:

First Person games will be around for the rest of gaming. Players are able to relate more with the character they control as the events are seen and experienced through the characters eyes. So, it is easier for the Player to see the story as happening to themselves, as opposed to some character they are controlling. I feel that this is one of the reasons why they are so popular.

It's nothing about the perspective and people identifying with it, it's about herp derp Call of Duty. That's why. People want a piece of that market share for the $$$$$$$$$.

so all those millions that enjoy CoD are idiots are they. what makes the games you like better than the games they like.

Yes, there should be more frames per second. 30 frames per second is killing the gaming industry.

I will just make two observations. The first is that FPS seems to be gradually getting usurped by third person shooters and action. I think the reason for this is simply that many players prefer to have a visual manifestation of their character, rather than play as a visually anonymous entity. The concept of the avatar is one of the most successful and fundamental elements of video gaming, and FPS is a departure from that. While the trade off is that FPS can have an immersion factor which comes from the inability of the player to "leave" their body (this was first perfected by Half Life and has been emulated since), contemporary FPS titles are in general putting less effort into the immersion factor.

And my second observation is that I believe the current reign of Modern Military FPS is a product of 9/11 and the War on Terror (which I interpret to include Iraq), the two major events that have dominated America over the past ten years. I'm not sure I can explain it very well, but I feel deeply that franchises such as Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Splinter Cell, Delta Force, and others are all subconscious efforts by American culture to rationalize and simplify world dynamics which are complex, and which our political class have been unable to explain to the public. I know this is a very broad statement, but I think that in general, the Modern Military genre promotes the idea that America is in a constant international struggle against unconventional threats from all corners of the world which must be countered by a secret American military which is not necessarily immoral, but amoral. Like the tv shows 24 and The Unit, they provide subliminal reassurance that our wars, our military presence overseas, and our security state at home, are all necessary to counteract threats which can appear from nowhere and with little warning. Additionally, they provide players with the illusion of knowledge about the War on Terror, elevating them (within their own estimation) above the level of the stereotypical, uninformed, uninterested, and uncaring citizen. Players are reassured that their "knowledge" of military jargon, and technical aspects of weapons and military tactics (neither of which are accurate), makes them an informed person who can better interpret the news.

Finally, the Modern Military genre allows players to simulate military service. This gives players a subliminal message that they are in fact participating in the War on Terror. Note, I am not trying to say players believe they are service members, but there is a sense that while average citizens have segregated themselves from the experience of war, (because they ignore news, because their family members are not service members, because they are not service members, and because they disassociate with war-related politics), the FPS player is engaging in a cultural experience that is unambiguously contributing to the national narrative of the War on Terror.

Now I confess these are purely my opinions, but I play a lot of games, I play the games I'm talking about (on and offline), and I've enough hubris to consider myself a capable observer of culture.

I object to the term "cookie cutter FPS". Have any of you ever tried to make a game? It's really, really hard. Regardless of your opinion of the Call of Duty franchise, Activision doesn't just press the iterate button and out spits a new CoD. A lot of hard work goes into each installment. And as to the OP, how can a genre that literally generates billions of dollars of revenue annually lead to a market crash? The trend would have to stop on a dime and do a complete 180. Thats not gonna happen.

It'd be interesting to see how many games are released every year from each genre, and look at it historically on an annual basis. There have been fps dating back 20 or so years, and I'm sure there are more now but not drastically so. It just seems like they're dominating the industry because the Halo and CoD franchises are such big sellers.

You might as well say "Call of Duty sucks right? I hate it ergo it's killing all gaming! Death to the first person perspective because if I hate a few games that have it then that's obviously spelling the end of gaming as we know it".

How about "are we at the FPS peak?", because FPS's are just on the same trajectory as fighting games and racing games were in the 90's and mid 00's respectively. Things go in and out of fashion and even the most egregious cash cows didn't kill the medium.

Given your previous track record in making threads; you either have no idea what you're talking about, or intentionally trolling. I think you're focusing on a select handful of games when you suggest that all FPSs are "the same". According to the wiki, this is a list of all FPSs from last year (feel free to correct me if I've missed any):

• Duty Calls: The Calm Before the Storm
• Bulletstorm
• Killzone 3
• Homefront
• Crysis 2
• Battlefield Play4Free
• Dino D-Day
• Conduit 2
• Brink
• Operation Flashpoint: Red River
• Duke Nukem Forever
• F.E.A.R. 3
• Call of Juarez: The Cartel
• E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Bodycount
• Xotic
• Hard Reset
• Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
• Dead Island
• Rise of Nightmares
• Rage
• Payday: The Heist
• Blackwater
• Battlefield 3
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
• Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
• Serious Sam 3: BFE

That's 28 FPSs that were released last year. Also according to the wiki, there were 1187 games released last year. Your definition my vary, but 28 out of 1187 definitely doesn't fit my description of 'bursting at the seems'.

@BeachThunder said:

Given your previous track record in making threads; you either have no idea what you're talking about, or intentionally trolling. I think you're focusing on a select handful of games when you suggest that all FPSs are "the same". According to the wiki, this is a list of all FPSs from last year (feel free to correct me if I've missed any):

• Duty Calls: The Calm Before the Storm
• Bulletstorm
• Killzone 3
• Homefront
• Crysis 2
• Battlefield Play4Free
• Dino D-Day
• Conduit 2
• Brink
• Operation Flashpoint: Red River
• Duke Nukem Forever
• F.E.A.R. 3
• Call of Juarez: The Cartel
• E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Bodycount
• Xotic
• Hard Reset
• Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
• Dead Island
• Rise of Nightmares
• Rage
• Payday: The Heist
• Blackwater
• Battlefield 3
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
• Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
• Serious Sam 3: BFE

That's 28 FPSs that were released last year. Also according to the wiki, there were 1187 games released last year. Your definition my vary, but 28 out of 1187 definitely doesn't fit my description of 'bursting at the seems'.

dead island is not really a shooter cus its pretty much mostly melee.

@boj4ngles said:

And my second observation is that I believe the current reign of Modern Military FPS is a product of 9/11 and the War on Terror (which I interpret to include Iraq), the two major events that have dominated America over the past ten years. I'm not sure I can explain it very well, but I feel deeply that franchises such as Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Splinter Cell, Delta Force, and others are all subconscious efforts by American culture to rationalize and simplify world dynamics which are complex, and which our political class have been unable to explain to the public....

I see were you are going with that but I don't fully agree. I think what you describe might be a contributing reason WWII or of late Modern Military was the theme for so many of those games but not why the genre itself got so popular. (and fwiw those concepts were popular before too)

FPSes were getting and were absolutely absolutely huge well before 9/11 happened and to me it was all about the communal gaming experience. There is no other genre I know of that's so easy to get a group of buds together to play an accessible, quick, high energy game. Only in the late 90's did the tech get good enough that the FPS genre became so vivid.

Goldeneye, Doom and Quake were the college party games of choice for a good reason in their day and that's because they were easy get going and fun to play.

Marathon was pretty big hit before 9/11, I think Halo and what followed would have happened anyway.

@banishedsoul1 said:

dead island is not really a shooter cus its pretty much mostly melee.

Except for, like, the entire second half of the game, where you're using guns a lot anyway.