Through the Lens: Video Games - Game Design Theory - page 121

gether more. Unfortunately, Team Fortress 2 has several loner classes
(the Sniper, the Soldier, the Spy, and the Scout are examples) who re-
ally can hold their own without interacting with any teammates. Some
FPS designer should take this to the next level! Maybe there are only
three classes: one can shoot, one can heal, and one builds infrastructure.
Something like that—use your imagination, but know that each class has
to have really strong and distinct weaknesses to make sure that the other
classes are needed.
A Third-Person First-Person?
More recently, there has been a swell of “third-person� FPS games. (Of
course, this doesn't make sense, but designers do it anyway.) Essentially
these are first-person shooters, but for reasons not related to gameplay
these games show players their characters from third-person perspec-
tive ( Gears of War is an example)—when players aim or fire, the game
uses a sort of over-the-shoulder camera mode and zooms in a bit more.
The issue here is that large sections of the screen are being taken up
for no good reason. Why do we need to see the character again? Why is
seeing a 3D model of the back of this character (whom I cannot interact
with) more important than seeing the enemy who may, at a given mo-
ment, be behind that 3D model? The only reasons given for this are non-
sensical statements about immersion, or feeling tied to the character. I
refer anyone who says this to Chapter 1 of this topic. Unless hiding infor-
mation from players is a game mechanism, you should never be placing
large solid objects in their field of view. Just make the game first-person
Avoid Single-Player
First-person combat does not make for very interesting single-player
gameplay. The reason for this is that the mechanics of aiming at some-
thing and shooting is actually, on its own, not terribly interesting. It's flat
and largely an execution contest. The ambiguity and stimulation of these
games comes from trying to read the actions of an opponent.
Unfortunately, AI-controlled enemies tend to be extremely predict-
able and therefore uninteresting. For this reason, I can't advocate making
a single-player FPS unless it's something radically different than anything
we've seen before—something that doesn't use aiming and shooting as
the core gameplay mechanism. But then . . . is it really an FPS anymore?
For now, I would say that unless you have some revolutionary idea for a
randomized, score-based FPS that somehow makes shooting really in-
teresting (perhaps a fast-paced roguelike FPS could work?), go for mul-
tiplayer.