Alex Seropian: Morning Star *sOT* (Gaming)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Thursday, August 01, 2013, 16:10 (3919 days ago) @ Cody Miller

See, if you start with an FPS as the base, it's about 2 things really:

1. Moving through 3D space
2. Shooting stuff

So if you make your player hold a gun, as of now this doesn't leave hands free to look and move, so these games moved for you on rails. However, because this portion has been simplified, they instead ramped up the shooting portion. Aiming and firing a gun for real is challenging, so these games had tons of enemies, they pop out quickly and brutally, and often times you'd have to shoot the projectiles they fire at you to stay alive, manage your ammo and reload at the appropriate time, not hit innocent civilians, etc. They understood that if you simplify one portion, you have to make the other portion more complex.

But if you're just going to tap a place on the screen to shoot, you are making the shooting portion less complex. Have you ever played duck hunt sitting right next to the TV, pressing the gun against the screen to easily shoot the ducks? You get to level 99 and it loses all challenge. You utterly ruin the game.

In five minutes I knew this was a bad idea, which shocks me that professionals (who are Bungie alum no less) don't see it.

Have you played the game, or at least seen it be played?

Extra Credits is right in their episode about touch screen gaming: you need to really think about using it properly. As far as touch screens go, I think the following genres would be enhanced:

<snip>

That's it I think. Everything else, and you are handicapping your game.

So help or hurt, those are the only choices?