Let’s be real here: A lot of games today involve the player shooting someone or something until it stops moving and then you move on to the next scenario and the process repeats. While repetitive by its very nature, many people, including myself, got into gaming through games like Halo, Counter-Strike or Call of Duty. In fact, the first person shooter genre has become the most lucrative genre to develop games for in this generation of games, with Call of Duty on the tip of the spear selling millions upon millions of copies each year. Games that were once top-down style role-playing games usually see an FPS release to revive the franchise, but does that make the FPS genre the easiest genre to develop games for?
When game series are looking to make a comeback into relevancy such as Fallout, Syndicate and X-Com, they will usually see a First Person Shooter release. Each of the mentioned games were ‘90s PC games that were in the top-down view, emphasized strategy and had a very steep learning curve. Before their First Person Shooter announcements, your average gamer had no idea these franchises even existed. Back in 2004, it was announced that Bethesda Game Studios, developers of The Elder Scrolls series, would be developing Fallout 3 after a six-year hiatus from Fallout 2. When it was released in 2008, it received high accolades and received many Game of the Year awards. It had elements from the PC Fallout games such as the targeting system and the dark humor associated with the series. But some had a problem with Fallout 3.
KenAdamsNSA wrote about how the design hybrid of a First Person Shooter and Role-playing game inevitably marred Fallout 3. “More than anything, Fallout 3 is a game that suffers an identity crisis. While it alienates the hardcore Fallout fans for its sharp departure from typical Fallout games, it also attempts to appeal to those who enjoyed Oblivion… Is it deserving of all the [Game of the year] awards it received last year? Not by a long shot.” Is that the inevitable trap developers fall into when trying to cross genres as they often do for these comeback games? It seems that in this wide and vast market that is the gaming industry, developers that try to appeal for a more mass acceptance of their game don’t refine themselves in either genre mechanic.
Take X-Com, another top-down view role-playing game that was all about strategically fighting aliens and was revered in the ‘90s. In 2010, X-com was revealed to be a First Person Shooter set in the 1950s and fighting black goo, re-imagining the game’s narrative and design as an FPS/RPG hybrid. Fans were so upset over this news that the First Person X-Com was delayed to 2013 and X-Com: Enemy Unknown, a return to the top-down view and a return to strategically fighting aliens. I think this is the proper way to go about bringing a franchise back to relevancy. Make a game for widespread appeal and have elements from the franchise and make a separate game for the core fans of the original.
Give me your opinions of the mentioned games in the comments below or send me an email at shfawcet@asu.edu.
