Victory Game Center

http://www.shooterbook.com/
Amazon link - http://www.amazon.com/SHOOTER-Reid-McCa ... 00YPF74TQ/

New book that just came out full of essays on shooting games. I just bought it and will be posting thoughts about the contained essays here. I'll be skipping some since a few deal with games I haven't played all the way through yet, such as the essays on Far Cry 2 and Wolfenstein: The New Order. But I plan to go back to them after I do. Once done, maybe this'll get turned into a frontpage article.

Wish I'd known about this project earlier, as I'd have liked to contribute.

Clint Hocking hints at a powerful idea in his foreword.

Clint Hocking wrote: the authoring of an arbitrary skill bar by a designer makes the skill component of the game only as important to its meaning as any other authored element.

Here he's describing the relationship of authored challenges (such as an enemy encounter) with other authored elements like a game's story using examples from film such as Million Dollar Baby and Raging Bull, where the fighting "becomes a motive force for the development of the characters and the plot." He says that the only way toward achieving a balance like this in a videogame is by first of all "having something to say". Now that's as crucial a first step as I've ever heard, and I heartily agree.

What comes after that, well, it would seem that would depend on just how strongly you believe in what you have to say.

Off to a rocky start with David S. Heineman's chapter on Battle Garegga. First of all, it's very strange for this game to even be considered for a discussion topic in a book like this. I can't help but think that it was chosen simply to show off that the author knew that it exists (since he probably supposes few, if any, FPS players have ever heard of it) and to publicly display his refined taste in shooters for all his System11 Shmups forum buddies.

He says that Garegga is "the shooting game's apogee", praises the ridiculous suicide tactics of Garegga high scorers, seems to think "public exhibitionism" and "arcade performances" were what shooting games "were designed for", and since "the demise of the arcade", says there's now "little incentive to immerse oneself in thick systems with steep, costly learning curves" in "empty arcades".

And yet, he supposedly plays Battle Garegga. No doubt, he wouldn't if not for the Shmups forum and their high score boards.

With a perspective like that, I can't imagine him having anything useful to say on the subject. And his conclusion that story, character, graphics were "largely incidental to the development of a shooting game" seems dead wrong. It might be easy for him to say, but even he himself mentions what a big deal it was that Yokoo Kenichi was working on "Garegga's story and characters" a few pages back, so it's hard to take him seriously here.

I'd recommend skipping this essay.

Reid McCarter's essay on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a little better, with its analysis of the historical and cultural context that gave rise to its creation. I would have liked to have seen some quotes from the developers of the game to back up some of McCarter's claims though, because some of what he says sounds like a bit of a stretch.

Reid McCarter wrote: The wars of 2007 weren’t being waged against villainous armies, but insurgent groups fighting for reasons more complex than national interest or blind patriotism. To remain vital the subject matter had to change and tackle the conflicts weighing most heavily on Western minds.

The first Modern Warfare doesn't quite seem to fit that description. Now, the later ones may very well qualify. Especially the second mission from Modern Warfare 2, which has you operating a humvee turret in a battalion moving through the streets of Afghanistan. As seen here.

That mission deserves more praise and recognition. Far more so than the No Russian mission does. Because the atmosphere that it created when you were driving through the volatile city, with the eyes of a hundred hidden hostiles oppressing you, while everything starts closing in around you was incredible. It was certainly no "power fantasy", that's for sure.

But accurate war simulation is not what these games are about. They are designed and packaged as "a grand action film— one in which the camera winces away from the ugly effects of violence in favour of its more exciting aspects." It's war as blockbuster entertainment. That doesn't mean there won't be moments in the game that reflect an authentic image of war, like in the example above and in the nuclear aftermath segment in Modern Warfare. It's just that in a game like Call of Duty, they're going to be highly controlled and regulated. I.e. scripted. Chaos is kept largely at bay, and the battlefield operates only as it's directed.

War has changed.

McCarter recognizes the game as a "fantasy", meant to "purge our demons" via "a large-scale exercise in catharsis. ... And the best part? Inside the game we always get to win." He sees it more as a "therapist's couch" than a game. Which is funny, because at this point, this is beginning to sound a lot like how the Hatred developers described their own game. But you know, if you're bothered by all this, there's quite a lot you can do to fix it. For instance, he mentions playing as an "immortal" soldier. Well, I don't know about him, but I don't remember ever playing as any immortals with "consequence-free" deaths. If he feels as if CoD is too much of a power fantasy, it's probably because he's playing them in such a way that they become power fantasies. It's a little disingenuous to fault the game for that, when you yourself made it so. And probably wouldn't want it any other way.

He then ends the essay by taking the game to task for not fulfilling a rather serious role.

Reid McCarter wrote: To properly grapple with our place in this increasingly tumultuous world, the West is going to have to provide work more complex than Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Fantasies of righteous wars and immortal soldiers aren’t going to be enough as we move forward.

It's a good thing we don't have to rely only on videogames for such things.

Holly Green's essay has so far been the most enjoyable. It begins with her trepidation about dipping into first person shooters, thanks to "a lifetime of being talked down to" by gamers. But once she "realized the need to broaden [her] knowledge in the field, particularly when it came to the big-budget shooter arena [she] had avoided for so long", she jumps right in.

Her first shooter? Fallout 3. She doesn't feel that great about it at first, but she thinks at least it would give her the chance to "build [her] skills in private", away from the horrible eyes of the modern gamer. Before you know it though, she's "shrieking with joy" and acclimating herself quite well to the game. It isn't long before she's transformed into a battle-hardened sniper of the wasteland like one of the Vuvalini women in the new Mad Max.

She then moves on to play Fallout: New Vegas, then to Borderlands, and then even to F.E.A.R., and I love what she had to say about it.

Holly Green wrote: The single-player mode was a triumph, deftly blending action and horror despite their supposedly contradictory nature. The game managed to ensconce the player in an atmosphere of growing dread despite the frequent interjections of rapid-fire gun fights. The defenselessness that serves as a linchpin for the modern horror game is completely absent, and yet for all their fire power, the player still senses they are at the mercy of forces much stronger than they.

She experiences these games in the fullest sense of the word. You can't write something like that without having felt it first-hand. And what is the result?

Holly Green wrote: I’m not supposed to admit that playing first-person shooters makes me feel more like a “real gamer.” As a pastime videogames are no longer so marginalized as to necessitate the safe haven of shared, monolithic identity. Videogames encompass a breathtaking spectrum of expression, none any more or less valid. My passion for puzzle or adventure games is as much a part of my identity within the hobbyist community as my ability to rack up critical-hit kills. In many ways I never had a reason to feel left out.

But within the rigid definitions of what a “gamer” is supposed to be, imposed by so many gatekeepers before me, I paid my dues. I’d gained a skill and a love of first-person shooters that no amount of shifting goal posts could take away from me. And that, frankly, feels better than the ability to rack up any number of head shots.

Turns out the ones that have been "left out" are the head shot gamers. She may have begun her journey into the genre with the idea that it's all about the skill. That you've either got it, and you're welcome here, or else you'd better get lost. But she soon found something much greater at the heart of it, something she wouldn't trade for all the head shots in the world. Something worth falling in love with. And although she doesn't mention anything too specific apart from her growing confidence, precision, and control at these games, there's no doubt that once she really got into them, she'd already seen far more than any gamer who could possibly find anything praiseworthy about a Counter-Strike performance.

Alex D. Jones's essay on S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat isn't too bad either. This is one of those games I've always had near the top of my backlog, since I've always heard such interesting things about it. And the way Jones describes the Zone, as if it was an antagonist, makes me all the more excited to check it out for myself sooner rather than later.

Ethan Gach wrote: Epic Games used the chainsaw to transform the third-person shooter.

Ethan Gach begins his Gears of War essay with a questionable claim. Then drops an even bigger one.

Ethan Gach wrote: The chainsaw-gun is where Gears of War begins and ends.

This isn't that far removed from the people who say that the only remarkable thing about Duke Nukem 3D was that it contained nudity.

Recommend skipping. Which is a shame, since I was hoping for some quality Gears discussion. Oh well.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... sMf73YNi24

I wrote: Did not care for the Gears of War essay at all. Gears is one of my favorite series, so I had high expectations for this one. But instead, the author spends the majority of the essay picking away at Judgment's narrative. Since he perceives its literary ambitions, he takes it to task for not being literary enough for his tastes.

Judgment has little to teach us about the human condition.

At least he lays bare his assumption for why he believes such ambitions are out of place in a Gears game:

The chainsaw-gun is where Gears of War begins and ends.

In other words, the presence of such a gun, and the ability to use it with extreme prejudice makes a "vision for a sophisticated Gears game built on introspection and hard truths" impossible.

Well what about the sophistication of the original games?

https://twitter.com/therealcliffyb/stat ... 6392716288

Maria was my personal statement on Terri Schaivo and my belief in right to death...through a dudebro shooter with lizard men. #GearsFacts

https://twitter.com/therealcliffyb/stat ... 3061064704

The torture the Locust did in Gears was my thinly veiled statement about Gitmo...through a dudebro shooter with lizardmen. #GearsFacts

These facts are startling in their implications. Aren't "dudebro shooters" supposed to be void of stuff like this? And yet here they are, despite the author having called the original Gears games "simple and childish" meatgrinders. Oops. Maybe there's more going on in these games than we thought, and a quick categorization like that isn't doing the game justice. And all because he couldn't look beyond the chainsaw-gun. It reminds me of the casual critics back in the day who never saw past the nudity in Duke Nukem 3D.

As for his "amputated" shooter, which he alludes to in his conclusion, I expect it might look something like Tales from the Borderlands.

Headshot: a visual history of first-person shooters - http://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2016/02 ... -shooters/