What Is It Good For?
War is one of the fossil fuels of gaming, characterised by its ease of use, its ability to pollute a market and, most importantly, the fact that its soon going to run out.
Though war is one of the more hideous things in life it is, in effect, a game waiting to happen. A case in point is the recent slew of vietnam-based shooters. The focus that the war put on a single soldier lends itself well to games such as Battlefield: Vietnam but the desire of developers to apply any game template they thought would generate a profit has led to apalling results that will no doubt damage that era of entertainment resources for good.
However the story isn't always so bleak. The average gamer will have at least heard about, if not experienced, the moving experiences offered by World War II games, both old and new. World War II has been treated with the care and thought generally associated with game design of years (and platforms) gone by. As a result, the Omaha beach landings and the storming of Stalingrad will remain engraved in the annals of gaming history as some of the most influential set-piecing of the decade.
But it's getting old now. We've been fighting Nazis since Castle Wolfenstein, and the VC have been on our screens since Platoon. War doesn't go on forever, so what next? What happens when the shooting stops?
Though the temptation of some publishers and developers will no doubt be to milk the nearest fresh cow (and there's a lot out there, considering how long we've been fighting for - essentially forever), there are many other ways forward. After all, what made Medal Of Honour: Frontline so great? The bolt-loading rifles supplied tension. The graphical portrayal of wartime France is neatly spot on. But what really moved people are those moments which, to slip into a PR guise for a few moments, have 'the X-factor'.
Would Omaha have been the same if you were carrying a Railgun and had a spawn point on the beach? Would Stalingrad have benefitted from dumping you on a road and throwing enemies at you? These games excel, like Half-Life did, at giving you your part to play in a story and somehow not letting you escape it. If you don't make it to the beachhead you'll die. If you don't win Stalingrad the Germans will press on into your homeland.
But gamers don't need the leash any more. You split them into two teams, and give one team a beach and the other a transport ship and with the right interface you can let them create their own war stories. Battlefield is close to getting there, but the real master of this is Planetside.
Though it may look long in the tooth now, Planetside is the gaming format of the future for the FPS gamer. Sony Online Entertainment have given gamers a world and told them to fight for it. And fight they do. A quick perusal of a few fansites show that this kind of rich non-linearity leads to astonishing stories of real interest.
Now take that further - take that two years further when most of us will be running the kind of machines and consoles that are currently of our dreams. Instead of a island, give them an entire city... an entire country... living, breathing, waiting to be taken, garrisoned and sacrificed for.
Build the world, they say, and the gamers will come. Is it time to make war, not set pieces?
Though war is one of the more hideous things in life it is, in effect, a game waiting to happen. A case in point is the recent slew of vietnam-based shooters. The focus that the war put on a single soldier lends itself well to games such as Battlefield: Vietnam but the desire of developers to apply any game template they thought would generate a profit has led to apalling results that will no doubt damage that era of entertainment resources for good.
However the story isn't always so bleak. The average gamer will have at least heard about, if not experienced, the moving experiences offered by World War II games, both old and new. World War II has been treated with the care and thought generally associated with game design of years (and platforms) gone by. As a result, the Omaha beach landings and the storming of Stalingrad will remain engraved in the annals of gaming history as some of the most influential set-piecing of the decade.
But it's getting old now. We've been fighting Nazis since Castle Wolfenstein, and the VC have been on our screens since Platoon. War doesn't go on forever, so what next? What happens when the shooting stops?
Though the temptation of some publishers and developers will no doubt be to milk the nearest fresh cow (and there's a lot out there, considering how long we've been fighting for - essentially forever), there are many other ways forward. After all, what made Medal Of Honour: Frontline so great? The bolt-loading rifles supplied tension. The graphical portrayal of wartime France is neatly spot on. But what really moved people are those moments which, to slip into a PR guise for a few moments, have 'the X-factor'.
Would Omaha have been the same if you were carrying a Railgun and had a spawn point on the beach? Would Stalingrad have benefitted from dumping you on a road and throwing enemies at you? These games excel, like Half-Life did, at giving you your part to play in a story and somehow not letting you escape it. If you don't make it to the beachhead you'll die. If you don't win Stalingrad the Germans will press on into your homeland.
But gamers don't need the leash any more. You split them into two teams, and give one team a beach and the other a transport ship and with the right interface you can let them create their own war stories. Battlefield is close to getting there, but the real master of this is Planetside.
Though it may look long in the tooth now, Planetside is the gaming format of the future for the FPS gamer. Sony Online Entertainment have given gamers a world and told them to fight for it. And fight they do. A quick perusal of a few fansites show that this kind of rich non-linearity leads to astonishing stories of real interest.
Now take that further - take that two years further when most of us will be running the kind of machines and consoles that are currently of our dreams. Instead of a island, give them an entire city... an entire country... living, breathing, waiting to be taken, garrisoned and sacrificed for.
Build the world, they say, and the gamers will come. Is it time to make war, not set pieces?
posted by FinalSin at 1:33 pm
1 Comments:
We need more freedom!
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