Slashdot Mirror
An FPS Minus the Shooting
phaedrus5001 writes "Ars has a story about a first person shooter under development that involves no shooting on the part of the player; at least, no shooting bullets. The game, Warco, has the player in the role of a war correspondent. The object is to immerse yourself in missions and firefights in order to document what happens. From the article: 'Players will experience the process of filming conflicts, going into dangerous situations armed with nothing but a camera. They will then edit the footage into a compelling news story.' While it's an interesting and different concept, it should be even more interesting to see if the developers can actually convince a publisher to release the project."
Why do you need a publisher these days? Just release it yourself, online!
So it is shooting! Shooting pictures and films :)
What about Portal? It didn't involve any bullet shooting and it was a FPS
It's not quite the same thing but anyone interested in a non-shooter FPS type game should check out Amnesia: Dark Descent.
It's pretty creepy but the puzzles are pretty good and so is the story and voice acting. Should be available for not too much dosh on Steam.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
An FPS minus the shooting? It sounds a lot like Myst.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst
Now there's the free marketing, all they need now is to finish it and release it on steam.
But I don't quite get the idea of the blood spat when you get shot. If you were a journalist, well, you'd be dead (like anybody else really), but for the sake of the game a mechanic where you black out for a bit of time and get a very different story from what would have happened if you were a conscious would have been a lot more interesting.
Very interesting, the underrated game Beyond Good And Evil involves creature photography as a fairly central gameplay element, and that bit is very good.
So it's like Pokémon Snap. Nothing innovative, move on.
Not much to brag about !!
Games generally need some kind of scoring mechanic to keep players playing. If this game moves ahead, then it would require a system that scores the report based on objective criteria - the only other option would be to have a gaming community score reports (but with a niche game, and a troll-ridden community, this seems unfeasible).
So what gets the most points? Shooting video of soldiers fighting hard for their country? Or getting insider shots of blatant war crimes? Perhaps civilians cowering in fear, or mass graves? The kind of shots that a true war correspondent would want are not the kind that are suited to a game.
A clever concept, but impossible to judge the success of the player to any meaningful degree. It's more likely to be a dialogue-driven story game, with bits of running around, making "moral" choices, and shooting video that's edited together for nothing more than the pleasure of the gamer. I applaud the originality, but I'm skeptical of its appeal.
Publishers really are not the problem. Publishers have more to fear handing money over for a knock off FPS than this. Your COD low budget rip off isn't going to make any money. What publishers do have to fear for is game play. If the game play is solid, they are going to have absolutely no problem gathering up the cash. In fact, if there is good game play here, I think publishers will be clawing their eyes out to get their hands on this. Everyone wants a Portal or Minecraft.
If this game doesn't get picked up, it is because it is not fun. You are free to wrap up a moral lesson on the value of journalism, war, or whatever, but if it is just a moral lesson wrapped with empty and dull game play, no one is going to play it.
You can color me mildly skeptical of this game. They have spent a lot of time talking about the neat gimmick that is the setting and the protagonist's job. Nearly everyone agrees that the setting sounds interesting and unique. What I have not heard them say much about is how they are going to make the game fun. Am I going to be an idiot with a health bar chasing the Call of Duty guys as they tear up the street and mow down civilians? Is this going to look more like an on open world FPS RPG than a shooter on rails? Am I going to be scoring points for getting action shots of civilians getting shot and terrorist getting blown away, or am I sleuthing around and talking to people trying to find a story?
Fun game play doesn't have to involve putting a bullet between someone's eyes, but I am pretty sure it has to involve more than chasing around the Call of Duty guys with a camera as they run through scripted battles. I'm not saying that this game isn't going to be fun, just that they have not shown what neat game play gimmick is going to go along with what everyone agrees is an interesting concept and setting.
If they don't have an Easy Mode (embedded journalist mode) the games will be very quick; both sides will be shooting at you, and that makes writing very difficult.
Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made. - Otto von Bismarck
What is there to brag about when playing a FPS?
OB: http://xkcd.com/569/
The problem with most of these types of games where they have some sort of "message" is that they get all preachy with it and forget the fun. Games are ultimately about fun, everything else matters much less. So if they find a way to make their idea entertaining, then they'll probably find someone interested in publishing it. However if their objective is to send a message about war and/or journalism, then probably not.
Games don't have to have violence or shooting to be popular. They do have to have fun though.
What about Pokémon Snap? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokémon_Snap I can imagine the tag-line: "War crimes! Gotta catch 'em all!"
But can you beat people to death with your camera? Or stab people with mic?
but instead of bullets, it is about shooting a film!
First Person Journalism - hasn't got a ring to it really.
On a long enough timeline. The survival rate for everyone drops to zero. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996
World Skin - a photo safari in the Land of War - an Interactive A/V Installation by renowned artist Maurice Benayoun won the golden Nica award at the Ars Electonica Festival in 1997! It was presented in a 3D-Cave on 6 Screens using OpenGL on SGI workstations. quite a feat for that time.
"World Skin" is a 3 person game. One driver, two photographers.
"Armed with a camera, visitors are placed in a sinister war zone that is visualized on a large projection screen in 3D animation and video. By operating photo cameras visitors may take pictures of the war scenes and experience how the camera becomes a 'weapon' that enables them to wipe out the projected images. Only the outline of the taken picture is left as a silhouette in the projection. Visitors can take a print of the photos they shot with them." http://www.benayoun.com/projet.php?id=16
why the fuck do we have to always shoot around in 3d games ? with few exceptions and a number of rpg games, this is absolutely the case in modern 3d gaming - environment, first person, shoot.
despite the immersion 3d environment can provide, no use of this is being made. its now possible to see the world from a medieval peasant's perspective, or a prehistoric caveman's perspective. with 3d, total immersion can be provided.
imagine - when patrician 1 (amiga, pc) came out, it created so much immersion with beautifully and artfully painted 14th century environments. most of the success of the game can be attributed to this. other examples can be given. we are at a time in which immersion like never before can be provided, but, noone is going for it.
i guess it is much easier to create 3d environments, then fill it with scripted bots and have the player shoot at them. shitty, lazy game development.
Read radical news here
The game's final cutscene will undoubtedly be the player receiving the Pulitzer Prize or possibly the Nobel Peace Prize for reporting atrocities. How could the game possibly end otherwise?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Steam in particular, but other digital services as well (like Impulse and Direct2Drive) have become a way that many people get a good number of games. Well, they also promote games as well. Steam runs games on promo on their front page. The trend seems to be either games that are really big and popular, or games that are indy and somewhat obscure, but well done.
A recent example is Bastion. Made by a team of 7 friends it has won a rather large amount of acclaim. I'd never heard of it, until Steam had it featured. It interested me, and apparently a ton of other people. It has sold really well, been written about in the game press, and so on. No big studio, no big marketing budget, just a good game that got promoted by Steam.
Likewise you have other opportunities for promotion with these digital sellers in that they love doing deals. Impulse and Steam like to offer a sale every weekend, and one each day as well. So you agree to a temporary price reduction, and you get front page exposure, or even a special popup in the case of weekend deals. Plus people repost it on various sites.
If you have a high quality game, it really can rise up and do well with nothing behind it. Might not happen in one day, but it can happen.
Most of the people who complain that you "have to have a big studio to make it," just don't produce good games (or often produce any games at all, they just talk about doing it). Not any more. Digital downloads have become a great equalizer. No, you won't do Call of Duty's billion dollars of sales, but you may sell a couple hundred thousand copies, maybe even a couple million. You aren't likely to get rich, but you can make some money.
Big studios and big budgets are only needed for big games. If your project involves tons of high end art, voice acting, and so on then yes you might be talking a $50 million budget and you'll need financial backing to make that happen. However if you are less ambitious, there's plenty of market for cheaper indy titles.
There really wasn't much shooting in Mirror's Edge, either. In fact, you can complete the game without shooting a single bullet, and that doesn't even increase the difficulty all that much.
Whole idea seems interesting... a bit, for single play mode. But I cant imagine mulitplayer mode - best picture of the carcass?
They even have the female journalist.
Here is a cool idea:
Build an Unmanned News Reporter and have it controlled by a gamer for live coverage of conflicts, disaster struck areas and other dangerous locations.
sigo ergo sum
Amnesia: The Dark Descent comes to mind.
Great game btw.
Back in the day, I had feeble dreams of someone making a paparazzi photography mod for Max Payne. Weapons ranging from tiny point-and-shoots to motorised SLRs with gigantic telephotos. ...no, seriously, that would look awesome on bullet time.
In corridor shooters such as Bad Company, the AI is atrocious and completely incapable of achieving anything. You are not the hero because you are so great but because everyone else is so crap.
AI routinely is running into a corner and needs to be reset to catch up to you. Almost all games have issues like this. But that is okay, you are the hero in the lead taking all the lead so you don't notice the keystone cops behind you.
BUT as games like Operation Flashpoint shows, when you have to rely on your own sides AI, things often get hairy. This is why the successor games added a LOT more purely scripted events, rather then AI events. I once had to cancel a mission because a second squad was unable to board a vehicle.
If in this game you are not just going to be filming perfectly scripted events, then how many wars will not happen because the AI got stuck? Or you are in location A watching a soldier trying to shoot a wall and the action happens in location B? That is life you say but life sucks. It reminds me of racing games in which the most spectacular crashes happens and you don't see anything because you are on the other side of the circuit. In game, you want to be in center, not miss the action because that is realism.
It sounds an intresting idea but I think it will fail as they realize just why all FPS are so much the same. Same reason all porn movies show the money shot, because a closeup of the lights at the moment might be artsy but not what the audience wants.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So is this going to be anything like the Fatal Frame series?
http://www.youtube.com/user/Dslyecxi#p/u/38/9e4cL7laL_M
Unfortunately I can't find the video where the War corespondent(a real PC gaming writer in this case) was taken hostage, and held for ransom.
So Modern Warfare meets Pokemon snap? That'll be... uh.... interesting.
But you know, if they teamed up with Adobe or some other video editing software publisher, they might have something that can teach people about photography, videography, and editing. This could be used to generate professionals in these fields in a way that is faster and more effective.
Video gaming can and should become more involved in such things, I think. Trick is, how to make some of the more mundane things more interesting. In this case, being in a war makes it more interesting.
I dont see those participating in Humble Indie Bundle with problems in marketing... in fact, they are making a good money
Big publishers releases today are mostly just remakes of the same games, with better graphics... in fact, many times the game is even less fun to play, because "all" the development work was put in the graphic and very little on new ideas, the game story, bug fix, balance or simply in the fun of playing!
That is also why humble indie have lots success, most of the games are original and very fun to play, even if sometimes the graphics arent the state or art.
Taking things to extreme, to show that what is important is the fun to play, nethack and Dwarf Fortresshave almost no graphic feedback, yet are very famous, fun to play and people play it for years, even decades!
Higuita
if I understand correctly you have to develop for each console separately.
Unless you make your game exclusive to one console. The market encourages this: Microsoft's "Xbox Live Indie Games" is the only console developer program open to the public.
Better start with the PC platform
Which doesn't work for all genres because people like CronoCloud appear to be under the impression that people are unwilling to plug in USB gamepads and play shared-screen co-op games on PCs. He thinks shared screen is for consoles only and PC games should require a separate gaming PC per player, despite that TVs have PC inputs and desktop PC monitors are getting as big as bedroom TVs were in the N64 era. So if this game had a two-player co-op mode, for (let's say) one driver and one photographer, he'd make the PC version require two computers as opposed to making available a mode suitable for one computer, one gamepad for the driver, and one mouse+keyboard for the photographer.
How did 2DBoy get World Of Goo released on the WiiWare store then
By convincing the owner of a Starbucks franchise to tell Nintendo a little fib, passing off the coffee shop as an office. As of the launch of the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo has updated its developer qualifications page to try to close that loophole.
I want to escape into a world that I can affect. Impotence isn't a compelling fantasy.
-Dave
I can't wait to not read about in PC Gamer.
You could still have a first person combat game without shooting. Just using swords, spears and other hand to hand weapons.
You could also go more into fantasy than historical and have magic spells
Just because "F" sounds like "Ef" does not mean that you use "an." It should read "A FPS..." I don't care how dumb the game concept is, I just care that the headline is easily parsable. -- Today's Grammar Nazi
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
MS seems pretty indie-friendly. I think Steam is too. Not sure about Sony.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Until someone developers a Speed Grapher mod.
I could care less about the semantics of the FPS argument, what I want to know is what cameras will be featured in the game? Will you start out with film or will it be all digital?
If there is film, will you have developing and printing mini-games? Can I load my own 35mm cartridges? Will medium and large format cameras be available along an upgrade path? Will you be able to find a Speed Graphic 4X5 in a chest hidden on the third floor of the warlords compound?
Will lenses be accurately modeled? Its going to suck if the Nikkor 70-200 f2.8 doesn't have soft focus unless you're stopped down one or two steps.
How about camera bodies? Will I have to choose a path like a tech tree? Will selecting Nikon over Canon open up secret areas for me, like the special Nikon only brothel or the Canon only poppy field?
My god you guys, this could be like Grand Turismo, with cameras!
Pokemon Snap had a similar concept, minus the war setting of course...
They should see if Valve will pick it up.
Portal is also a game where you don't shoot people, you solve puzzles with a gun that just happens to create portals. I was more interested in Portal than I was in the latest Half-Life excursion. At the end of the day, FPS' interest me because of the exploration of a full 3d environment, not because I am developing my skilzz with a fake gun.
This game sounds just flat-out awesome.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
One of the best games of the early 90s was Disney's Stunt Island. You could either just play the game as a stunt pilot or better yet was the sandbox mode where you could set up stunts, perform and film them and then edit them with sound effects and music. It was an extremely creative game.
I believe it's available as abandonware now: http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/287/Stunt+Island.html
I could see this being a bit more interesting if they used it to have AI driven combat scenes that you photograph rather than scripted scenes. Or something like that, just so that going through a particular stage never means seeing the same thing over and over again. Though from how fps games have worked lately I have my doubts.
Sounds like Pokemon Snap to me.
What publisher is actually gonna take this on? Most gamers would die of boredom very very quickly with this. Most gamers get bored with MW2 and BFBC2 after only a short period. Maybe if they took out the gore they could market this as a TEEN game but otherwise this will be a Crash and Burn no win situation for the publisher.
Some people never learn...no matter how many times something happens to them.
It's more likely to be a dialogue-driven story game, with bits of running around, making "moral" choices, and shooting video that's edited together for nothing more than the pleasure of the gamer. I applaud the originality, but I'm skeptical of its appeal.
http://www.drmustafaerarslan.net
First Person F*cker!
"Leisure Suit Larry Goes All the Way!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Yeah, and Quake was originally about a guy running around with a big hammer.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
So basically it's the idea all of us have had when we run out of paintballs at the end of a match.... in that the whole thing should be filmed. infact the whole thing should be filmed from every angle. sod that, the whole thing should be filmed from every angle VIRTUALLY to get the idea of which angles are best. inject some adrenaline and you have a game thought of in NAM.