Motherboard

With all their fanfare, record-breaking sales numbers and accompanying controversy, it’s interesting to ponder what exactly, if anything, has really changed about shooting games in the two decades and change since videogames began to appear in arcades, pizza joints and living rooms across the globe.

According to IGF founder Simon Carless in a recent article, the answer is ‘fundamentally, not much.’ When examining last year’s action blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Carless reveals some striking parallels that make modern shooting games seem confused; a mixed bag of painted set pieces tied together only by the barrel of a virtual gun.

“Beneath the bombast, it has everything in common with gaming’s proto-shooter Space Invaders. You take cover behind walls before peeking out to shoot aliens. Twenty-two years ago the aliens were line-dancing extra terrestrials. In 2009 they were Afghans. The metaphor changed, but the principle remains the same: avoid missing headshot for high score.”

There is a simple explanation for this: Since the earliest days of interactive entertainment, the most common principle to express within a videogame has been the elimination of elements on the screen. Not because we are a horrible and violent race of large-brained mammals who use entertainment to train our young to kill, but because the creation and ‘canceling out’ of something on a screen was one of the simplest operations one could program on an early computer.

So while the scenarios become more elaborate and the graphics and audio more lifelike and intense, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the shooting game is still an affair of simple ones and zeroes – the procedural elimination of threats into non-threats. Everything else is just a skin. And yet, Modern Warfare 2 still managed to impress the lot of us with its disjointed, schizophrenic gameplay.

What starts out as a tense patrol through hostile territory aboard a humvee quickly swerves into a high-speed snowmobile chase, an airport massacre and other, increasingly rollercoaster-esque scenarios. All the while, the effectiveness of any one of these scenarios, especially the chilling airport level, “No Russian,” are simply lost in the deluge. “Perhaps this is the point,” Carless writes. “Modern Warfare 2, and its legions of impersonators, offer a Disneyland tour of scenarios, an exhilarating parade of scenes and feelings that do little to educate or enrich in the long term.”

But what about shooters like Half-Life 2, where the story, however theme park-like it may be, is seamlessly experienced through the player’s eyes? Perhaps what made MW2’s gameplay so all over the place is its constant re-configuration of player identity, almost like the game was hand-feeding us different flavors of sugary candy, forcing us jarringly in and out of other people’s skulls. Whereas in Half-Life, the varied gameplay justifies itself because, as the game makes very clear, you are Gordon Freeman. Not some random military goon, and then an undercover CIA agent chumming with terrorists, and then an exiled SAS captain caught up in a massive military conspiracy… You get the picture.

Sure, Half-Life 2 has speedboat races of its own, but they are underscored by a consistent tone and prevailing sense of seamlessness that thrust the shooter into the realm of role-playing. There are no cutscenes or moments when the game seizes control of the player’s character – Everything we experience is seen and heard from the virtual eyes and ears of the person playing. It’s through this consistency that our role in the game, as Gordon Freeman, allows us to better relate to the drama that’s unfolding before us, however much of a carnival ride it may be.

Games like Call of Duty might be boasting the biggest entertainment launches in history, but shooting games have the potential to offer at lot more than the blustery, incongruous overstimulation that Carless describes. It’s a primitive archetype, but games like Half-Life and perhaps even scenarios like MW2’s “No Russian” prove that with enough focus it’s possible to turn today’s first-person shooters into first-person experiences. But don’t forget to reload, just in case.