FPS games tediously overdone or still some potential?
So I have been working on a little FPS game over the lest few weeks and I got wondering. FPS games are possibly one of the most popular genres when it comes to game development.... well that and platformers. But what I am getting at is is there any potential left in the genre or is it simply overdone and not fresh anymore?
I know im possibly going to get flamed for this but I think its worth exploring new ideas for the genre. The idea of FPS is fun and it can be used with/in combination with more or less any of the other existing genres from FPS Horror/FPSRPG etc...
In the end does anyone think it stil has some potential and why? If developers just copy off each other and clone CoD or whatever the kids are playing these days I find this genre has reached its end. Though I do not feel im copying but trying to create something original the subtle thought of using a mechanic I have seen in some of the games I have played through the years seeps in every now and again.
So Yay or Nay!! Has FPS run its course? Cast your votes/comments without burning the forums down :D
I know im possibly going to get flamed for this but I think its worth exploring new ideas for the genre. The idea of FPS is fun and it can be used with/in combination with more or less any of the other existing genres from FPS Horror/FPSRPG etc...
In the end does anyone think it stil has some potential and why? If developers just copy off each other and clone CoD or whatever the kids are playing these days I find this genre has reached its end. Though I do not feel im copying but trying to create something original the subtle thought of using a mechanic I have seen in some of the games I have played through the years seeps in every now and again.
So Yay or Nay!! Has FPS run its course? Cast your votes/comments without burning the forums down :D
Comments
There's no hard and fast rule. Every genre has popular and overdone tropes. If you want to do them, do them. If you want to explore new stuff, do that.
It's pointless trying to "copy CoD" because you'd need a team of at least half that size to get that quality. Do you? If not, moot point.
As @Tuism said, you can't match the production quality of a AAA game. Are you then doing something mechanically/aesthetically/thematically different which would make the everyman care about your game?
There are game-types in all areas of video games where there is oversaturation, with game after game trying to copy the success of whatever game is successful right then. Like how so many companies tried to make World of Warcraft after its success. Or in the indie-scene, there are now more First Person voxel-graphics crafting games than anyone wants to play.
War-shooters are a style of FPS that is very popular, perhaps the most popular, and so FPS is somewhat synonymous with COR and Battlefield (in some peoples' minds). And so there are a lot of war-shooters each year (big budget and tight budget), and they tend to be quite similar.
Team-based Arena-FPS's are another style of FPS that looks to become a bit over saturated (with games like Overwatch, Battleborn and LawBreakers on the horizon, and staples like Team-Fortress still being played a lot). These games have more differences between them than Warshooters (I'd argue), with games like Evolve changing it up quite a bit in the team aspect, but they're getting kind of samey.
This still doesn't mean Warshooters and Team-based Arena-shooters (or Mincraft-likes) are overdone in the sense that there isn't new territory to explore. It just means that there are a lot of similar games being made. There are a lot of games being made that have chosen to imitate and compete on budget.
As an example of a recent FPS that looks likely to be a big success, Super Hot is an FPS and it feels very new https://superhotgame.com/
There's a few FPS rogue-likes, and this type of FPS is starting to find an audience. Like Tower of Guns and Ziggurat http://store.steampowered.com/app/308420/
I wouldn't say there's enough Pay Day 2 style co-operative FPS experiences yet. Pay Day 2 has got pretty standard shooter mechanics, but innovates with some stealth options (that require teamwork) and has a very different progress between levels to most FPS campaigns (basically structuring levels as raids, in the MMO game sense).
There have been a lot of attempts at retro-FPS's. Most aren't very good, but there have been a few standouts: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strafegame/strafe (and on a much larger scale, Far Cry: Blood Dragon)
Personally I want more physics-heavy FPS's, like Red Faction Armageddon. The franchise didn't exactly take off with AAA gamers, but I'd expect there is a fair audience for that type of game in the indie-scene.
I'm not trying to give an exhaustive list. I'm just trying to say that in a standard definition of FPS there is definitely exciting and unexplored territory.
Let alone a loose definition. There's a ton of unexplored space in puzzle FPS's (like Portal, Talos Principle etc). Splatoon is basically an arena-shooter (although a third person one) and feels pretty damn fresh next to other team-based arena-shooters.
But if you're thinking about making a Call-of-Duty clone, or a Quake 3 clone, then you're faced with an audience that doesn't really want innovation, and you're going to have to compete with some of the most experienced and well-funded teams in the industry.
With my first project balance was a massive issue but moving back to the topic at hand.
Which mechanics would you like to see explored more in FPS games? By FPS I mean anything in first person view and is a shooter... think I nailed it... Anyway I thought id ask around and see what you guys think are some unexplored areas as @BlackShipsFilltheSky mentioned with the puzzles though I'm working on some puzzle elements atm work does go slow as I work alone.
So the question in the question inside of the hidden question is... What areas are still left unexplored or have been explored very little in the genre?
I havent played every game on the planet so asking is next best.
Take a look at Doom. It's into it's 4th incarnation, and is essentially the same game as it was years ago. What's changed? The technology is, I think, the main influence, greater power and better game engines, design, graphics, etc have allowed the game to be reborn over and over.
The next step is Oculus... and then? Augmented reality? Being able to roam the streets of Benoni, wearing an eyeglass and carrying a controller, finding virtual objects and clues whilst fighting virtual monsters? Yeah, you'll probably get a lot of strange looks as you dodge imaginary rockets, a new type of tourism emerges as gamers travel around the globe to play games in different cities... might be getting ahead of myself. Anyway...
But to list it a bit more clearly:
Borrowing progression and customization structures from Rogue-likes seems promising, though there hasn't been a lot of commercial success as yet.
Survival experiences are still a bit nascent, there's probably a lot of space to explore there.
There are relatively few co-op focused FPS's. There's definitely demand right now in that area.
Designing ways to manipulate the environment is relatively unseen in FPS's. AAA FPS games are mostly so high-fidelity that everything has to be static and indestructible for the thing to run at all. So there's a lot of room for indies to fill that space.
AAA FPS's have been experimenting with giving players extra mobility (like Dying Light or Titan Fall and in the future LawBreakers), but there's still a lot of potential there.
If you're curious about the space between Quake and Serious Sam: I think this is an area of FPS's that AAA has been avoiding. And so the market feels a little underserved. There have been a few throwbacks (like re-releases of Rise of The Triad) and new games (like Shadow Warrior and Blood Dragon) and of course Doom4 is on the horizon, but I think the best game to look at is Bullet Storm.
Play Bullet Storm. Someone should be making a spiritual successor to that (because EA has culled the franchise and the team who made it has disbanded). Nothing else quite feels like that, it's far from perfect (particularly the wide use of hitscan enemies disappoints me), but it's great fun.
I think FPS puzzle games are also very underexplored. However I don't think it's smart to try make a Quake-style game with puzzles, or a puzzle game with Quake-style gameplay sections. You'd be better off finding a single type of experience that you want to deliver and run with it.
A good example of this is Croteam for their last game The Talos Principle. Croteam were busy developing Serious Sam 4 when one of the level designers built a bunch of puzzle sections. The puzzle sections really excited them so they went and made an entire game out of them (The Talos Principle). The Talos Principle was very well received both commercially and critically. What they didn't try do was put a lot of puzzle sections into Serious Sam 4 (though I guess we'll see when it launches).
Games are often defined by their weakest element. A great shooter with weak puzzle sections is a weak game. A weak shooter with great puzzle sections is a weak game. It's possible to make a great shooter with great puzzles, but in truth the audiences don't overlap that well. So building a game that does one thing really well is often the best approach, and is certainly the safest.
Of course, when you're still exploring, trying to find that one thing, it's worth trying a lot of different things. Later on you can figure out what to focus on. I guess I'm just saying it sounds like you're trying to include too many things in one game (Quake and Serious Sam and puzzles). Not sure if that's the case.
I dare steal a quote from Zombieland "Enjoy the little things". FPS Survival does have alot to offer check out The Forest possibly one of the best survival games I have seen in some time. Though 7 Days to Die showed promise at first it didnt bite me (no pun intended) at first but it has been updated since my last visit to the zombie infested wasteland.
Im going to throw together a little play area to test some stuff out eg some rapid gameplay with a mass amount of enemies etc etc and post it on here for a little playtest. I think the genre itself has alot of potential take Mirrors Edge for example FPS Platformer and it was very well done. Now im not looking to create the next best thing since sliced bread but I do believe some of these idea need some exploring.
Etc etc.
So it seems like you're asking everyone else what they like, then you're telling us what you like, and trying to reconcile the two, when in fact everyone can definitely like different things, and different things can and should be explored.
Just make stuff :) Explore. Yes, rapid prototype.
If you focus on a single concept and turn that up to 11, you're more likely to find a gameplay idea that can carry an entire game instead of hoping that "it's like game X and a bit of this concept from game Y" returns fruit - there are so many ways to combine those games that you're more likely to feel like you've "done it wrong" rather than conclude something doesn't work so it would be better to try a different idea entirely (instead of re-bake the previous combination)... I really don't know if I'm explaining that correctly. Um.
Maybe all I can do is point to single concepts that underpin an entire game's design as examples:
- Linking points in a level arbitrarily - Narbacular Drop, then Portal (note how they decided NOT to have any other guns, the whole game is about the portal mechanic)
- Escher-like game spaces that ignore accepted "game physics" - Antichamber (interestingly, Alex decided to go with a series of mental (not performative) puzzles in this because it emphasised the differences in the game idea)
- You only have X bullets to do things with - Heavy Bullets
- What if guns in FPS games were actually realistically reloaded - Receiver
- Would a game work if time only progressed when you were moving - Super Hot
- Swing from tall buildings because swinging is awesome - Gravity Hook (might not be FPS these days)
etc.Sometimes a rich source of game ideas can come from the assumptions that other games take as a given. What would a game exclusively about rocket-jumping be like? What if you had to fire where you were going to run (and then followed that path automatically) because everything is lava? What if looking at something automatically damaged it and you were trying to NOT destroy a city? (Superman with always-on laser eyes) The neat thing is that every concept here is going to be different for everyone that thinks about how to turn them into a game. So what's your result? :)
FPS is mostly just a reference to the perspective of the camera.
I doubt it will stop being useful... but the games sell because of features beyond that perspective.
What you would need to think about, is what will make it a game people will remember.
You've mentioned that you want it to be fun.
Fun for me fun, jumps to memories of the following.
Quake 2 with a grappling hook made me feel super ninja. Also, rocket jump.
So did the crouch jump and crowbar in half life.
Hexen felt amazing for the exploration of a strange world full of odd creatures.
Call of duty .mw. had the clan games with those jump grenade tosses.
In a lot of these you recognize a special skill the player had to practice and resulted in making the game a fond memory.
Pure physics alone doesn't guarantee these special abilities.
Heck sometimes it's just a happy accidental bug.
Back story and characterisation are here to stay, i guess.... but I long for the days of Redneck Rampage and the original Duke Nukem. Duke Nukem had such irreverent humour too.
what i'm trying to say is - less is more!
We tried something similar with a game jam of ours, partly inspired by Gun Godz, with varying success ( if you're interested http://gamejolt.com/games/super-wolfenstein-hd-now-with-realistic-physics/39194 )
But that's probably overscoping for me :P
I would be curious to see if that could work with a traditional combat FPS. You'd need to impose some unusual restrictions to keep the player moving forward, but I think it could work. They (pikpok) kiiiind of did it with Into the Dead, but there wasn't really much aiming going on there-the focus was more on dodging obstacles than the actual shooter element.
I agree yes, it would be interesting to see some application of it into FPS, though, the same thing applies... FPS on mobile will always suck if it stuck to the twinstick control scheme that requires a virtual button to shoot.
Cue Opera Sentai :P
@tuism yes, that's definitely an issue, though possibly less so if it's treated like a runner where you're constantly on rails. You could use tilt for switching lanes, and focus touch controls entirely on firing control?