Guns n Stuff

I recently started working part-time teaching an after school program, so my blog hasn't gotten a lot of love lately. but on the bright side I will be shifting more time back here.

Now I got some time so I'm gonna write a post breaking down guns in first person shooters (mostly because I really have enjoyed action games over the years, and it's something I've been chatting about with my designer friends lately).

So to keep things simple, I've found that guns in a first person shooter essentially grind down to one core concept. 'This gun' is better/worse based on the 'relative terrain' the opponent is in. So what does that mean? Essentially each gun has a role or optimal relative terrain. For example in most first person shooters if you have a shotgun its going to be good if your opponent is close to you, and bad (less effective) if they are far away. That seems pretty obvious. It's easy to see how shotguns, sniper rifles, assault rifles all sort of fall on this line of distance vs effectiveness.  In a sense 'distance from the player' is the relative terrain (relative terrain is the answer to the question, 'where is the target in relation to the player?').

But you can take the idea farther than just distance, for instance take a throw-able grenade. Where does a grenade fall on the distance chart? It kinda doesn't, a grenade is best when your target is behind cover or you have a group of targets together. Or think about the Bioshock's Electro-Shock plasmid, it's great when your opponents are in standing water or you surprise a single opponent. Or think about the myriad of games that include a sort of 'area denial' or a trap weapon (like land mines or remote detonated bombs). Those weapons are great when you know your opponent has to move through a specific area.

You'll also notice that the roles guns have often overlap, or in some cases multiple guns will share the same role. This is about creating an interesting choice for the player in what weapon they want to use or feel is the most powerful (the Borderlands series is all about finding the overpowered gun). The guns should feel overpowered for their role. Players then have to evaluate the map and the objectives and their play-style to determine which guns they want to use.

A lot of flack gets thrown around about guns all being the same in first person shooters and how creativity is gone. In reality this isn't so much the case, it's just that the roles of guns are figured out and defined and new guns aren't needed. However by defining guns as having a 'role' based on 'relative terrain' I think we can open up a new perspective on guns in first person shooters. For instance focusing less on distance and more on other environmental factors would be an interesting way to change how the guns in shooters or create new weapons while still retaining the essence of what makes a shooter fun.

* Also I know that I make a lot of assumptions here. Mostly this is in regards to new first person shooter titles and not certain indie games. Lots of really good first person games like Thirty Flights of Loving, Kairo, Jazzpunk, Lovely Planet, and Receiver just plain don't follow this. Also older styles of games like Half-life and arena shooters like Quake and Unreal Tournament are working on a different set of assumptions so these ideas don't transfer as perfectly

Mountain

I don't think Mountain is a game.

But it can be analyzed like one.

Mountain is an exe that first prompts the user to draw  pictures based on a word three times. These words are randomly selected, and the pictures are stored but seem to be meaningless (they may be used to seed a random number generator, but that's dubious). The exe proceeds to create a mountain (seemingly via heightmap) and the upper right corner shows a small faded icon. Upon clicking the icon the user is presented with the ability to turn the audio on and off (which effects more than just audio). The user is also shown that the controls are "nothing" for the mouse and keyboard.

This is a lie.

The scroll wheel of the mouse lets the user zoom in and out on the mountain. Right clicking and dragging allows the user to rotate around the mountain (faster than the pace the mountain slowly turns at). The second and third row of keys allows the user to make tones. These tones will eventually cause a prompt that sounds a tone and message relating to the simulated weather or time of day. If a player repeatedly hits these tones the time scale of the simulation will speed up, this only occurs if audio is enabled. This will prevent random actions from firing.

Randomly, additional prompts will sound a tone and state text (the next line in a stored text file). If the user doesn't interact with the simulation for a long enough time a random object will crash into the mountain and stay there. These objects may very in scale and objects may repeat, they are random. Weather patterns also change and shift randomly or semi cyclically.

While normally games with such random events and content try to encourage the player to explore, the interaction is restricted to such a degree and events move so slowly that the feeling of exploration is not achieved. Often prompts craft some sort of story, or lend to reinforcing a core experience. Here it seems to only ask questions, as if its trying to provoke thought or craft some sort of character for the mountain. However this character of questions has little importance.

The simulation builds the façade of deep contemplation but fails to deliver any coherent lines of questioning. Its essentially shallow while acting as if it is deep. Games are not new to the use of smoke and mirrors to craft the sense of meaningful choice. However here the interactions are so far removed from any result the effect is a passive experience. The illusion that is being created, the experience that is attempted, is lost.

There is however the meta game that persists around these simulations. The 'game' serves as a starting point to conversations around the topic of games. The experience desired is the one I, the author just had, and as you the viewer are engaged in. It is to think, discuss and create text or media about the 'game'. It exists to start a conversation.

In a way the meta game is self perpetuating, as another's response will undoubtedly be another game to be discussed.

If you want to keep playing this game I suggest you check out these 'games'.
Progress quest
Proteus
One button RPG
(Links coming soon)