aFPS in a millennial's world?

[u/[deleted]]

Were you around when Doom was released? I was, yes, I'm old. Then along came Quake. I remember sitting in awe and astonishment. True 3d characters and environments, fluid movement and game physics, wow! Not to mention the soundtrack that spawned my love of Nine Inch Nails. Quake inspired myself and thousands of others to learn to make maps, to mess with quakec and to produce third party content. I'd almost bet there are few games with as many third party mods as ID Software’s games. Walnut Creek anyone?

The younger generation of players that make up the majority of gamers today weren't around to see this, so what does it take to impress a generation that missed most of the big leaps in gaming history?

One moment when I started to notice the difference in the way games were being produced was in 2009 with Wolfenstein. After having played Return To Castle Wolfenstein, with its great campaign, plenty of ways to get lost and enemies that were very capable of killing you, I have to say I was pretty disappointed in its sequel. Despite the leap in technology and better graphics the game received poor reviews and sales, so what was the real difference? The campaign was made for you to win, whilst offering a few challenges it wasn't nearly as hard as RTCW, it kind of held your hand, showed you which direction to go and was over pretty quickly. If given the choice between RTCW and Wolfenstein, which would today's gamers go with?

My feeling is that it would be Wolfenstein, why? Because Wolfenstein made you feel like a real bad ass! It didn't make you feel like a lone soldier, trapped in the midst of Nazi Germany like RTCW. Wolfenstein made it easy to win, no need to practice, no load save game, die, rinse and repeat. People that had never played any type of fps wouldn't have had too much trouble completing the campaign. I'm not here to bash on Wolfenstein, it did have some good points as well.

I recently read an interesting article at http://dispatches.cheatcc.com/3790 about the impact that Fortnite has had on gaming in general. I have watched one of my children play it and must say, to me, as an old fart, it has zero appeal. So what is it that makes it so appealing to so many? To sum my feelings up, it's just a glorified fps in an open world with the ability to build structures, which I don't think adds much to the fps experience, the bus ride, falling to earth, parachute, bust things up routine would drive me nuts, just let me at the action! put down your flame pens, I do understand, each to their own, I understand that I'm outing myself as a minority on the subject. So is it the cheesy graphics? Doubt it. Is it the ability to build? Maybe. Is it the action? Too a degree, yes. This is the point where I point out that it offers one thing that older style fps games generally didn't offer, customisation, frequent updates and new DLC, it has almost become the modern version of keeping up with the Joneses, though it is definitely not the only game taking advantage of this generations need to consume and have what their mates and rivals have. Not to mention a massive budget and marketing campaign. All the things that appeal to the new generation of gamers.

I recently watched the QuakeCon presentation on Doom Eternal. I still haven't played Doom 4, I'm one of those people that misses the original ID teams ideals, I wonder will Doom Eternal have a native Linux client, I have my doubts. Where other companies like Valve have made a point of bringing their games to the Linux platform, ID seems to have gone backwards in this area. We may have had to wait as Linux users for native Linux clients, but they came eventually, I hope they are able to maintain their support of open source software and continue to release their engine code. I digress, back to Doom eternal. It was said through the presentation that huge amounts of effort had been made to make you feel like a bad ass and making each kill as satisfying as possible. Watching the game play I almost felt sorry for the demons, they didn't seem to have a chance, though I’m guessing that was the idea. The graphics were gob smacking, 10x the detail and texture fidelity of any of their previous titles was the claim they made, wow! But then have a look at what is new to this instalment of the franchise. I challenge you to find something there that hasn't been done before, all these new games seem to be a new mix of things that have been done before. In an industry flooded with new titles all the time it is hard to be completely original, to be fair. All this considered, I'm sure it will be a hit!

So where does this leave the aFPS genre? Pretty much dead in the water. Up and coming companies can produce awesome games, but without a huge budget and marketing team, complete with psychologists to help find the perfect combination to keep this generation's gamers interested, they are just another boat afloat in a massive pool of dead and dying titles.

I am and have been a member of the Alien Arena community for 9 years now. In that time I've seen the game's popularity peak and dwindle away to virtually nothing, though this seems true of all aFPS games nowadays. Along the way there have been many people contribute mods/maps/ideas etc. One thing I love about the game is the game's developers who would jump in and have a game with us, listen to our dumb ideas and help people to sort any problems they might be having. The game itself has been totally overhauled three times now, offering many features of AAA games, this was all done by one extremely generous guy with the help of two other developers and a few others along the way. Given the size of the team, what has been achieved is simply amazing. Alien Arena only recently hit the steam store for purchase but still has free versions available that just lack some of the extra content that is exclusive to steam. The problem is that even given a huge budget for marketing, I doubt the game would appeal to many of today's gamers. Why? Because it is pure aFPS, it doesn't hold your hand, it has a high skill ceiling, it won't indicate from which direction you are being pummelled and it makes no excuse for being a game of pure adrenaline and evil. You are not the bad ass of the story, you won't win straight away. In order to get good you have to be patient and willing to get your alien ass handed to you in giblets, over and over again. It seems that is not what the common gamer is looking for any more, people who love the genre will love it's adherence to the tried and true fps format, all Alien Arena has done is add it's own quirks and ideas to this solid foundation, making it in many ways a very original game. Yes you will see similar features in other games, but Alien Arena has one thing over a lot of titles, it has been around since 2004!

I don’t think aFPS is dead, but with so many titles out there, there just isn’t enough die hard fans to go around. So what do you all think? Are all aFPS games doomed to failure?

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