Hey good topic.
Why are FPS games so popular now? Cause killing people and guns are the in thing right now, it’s what a lot of kids think is cool. I could go on but its pretty much all been covered in this thread, there are a lot of good responses here.
Oh and to anyone who says that FPS games dont require any skill,spend some time http://www.the-elite.net/ there and then see what you think. Hahah and while youre there do a search on the user CyanideAssassin, Ive been playing Goldeneye since it came out and a lot of my times arent even close to the records, this will give you an idea as to how much work is actually involved in this. Watch some vids and read some strats and then tell me theres no skill involved, this is serious dedication.
Oh and I agree strongly with the post by Master Chibi that said “how do you explain to someone what a poking string is?”. This sums up the situation with fighting games very well. It takes a lot of dedication, a good memory , good reflexes and common sense to play these games, somthing a lot of gamers nowadays DO NOT have. Ive taught a few people 3S, and it is no easy task, especially if the person is a little slow.
Fighting games will prevail though, the arcade scene is NOT dead, contrary to what everyone and their mother says. Its not what it used to be but it wont be dead until arcades are GONE.
I just think it’s what has been mentioned here time and time again–it’s the accessibility. I prefer fighting games because of their longevity and the satisfaction I get from learning all of the details and seeing myself get better. Sure, it’s rewarding, but it takes devotion, and it’s not for everyone. If somebody doesn’t feel like putting in the effort, that doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve something that they can just pick up and play, and I hold nothing against them for that.
Sure, FPS games give the player a lot of potential to be insanely good, but they can be played on a competitive level without the devotion…where with fighting games, you can’t, unless you’re one of those CPU playing kids who loves fighting games for their storylines.
DING! That’s me!
I’m not sure if I can be labeled a FPS fantatic but I do like FPS. Most of my games and time spent on the PC is largely dedicated to FPS. So far I’ve played and enjoyed:
Aliens Vs Predator 2
Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising
Battlefield 2
Halo
And than there’s just those games where it’s just leet infested–this is where you’ll need to conform to strategies used widely by other players or you won’t make it: UT, Quake, Counter Strike, Halo etc… :wow:
I can’t answer the question of why FPS games are so popular though.
Hahahhahahah. Nobody can escape playing FPS games without being called a noob.
I know Tekken and Soul Calibur sell in the millions. People still care about fighters. But it does seem people don’t care about competitive play with fighters anymore.
FPS games are easy to learn, hard to master.
Fighting Games are relatively hard to learn, even more difficult to master.
This has nothing to do with how much “worth” each genre has though because both require skill at high levels, but still there are clear differences. Heck I still know guys who play SF pat themselves on the back because they can do Hadouken.
The real question is why do neo-nazis love FPS games?
hahaha me too!
And you know these people dont bother me, as long as youre having fun thats the point of playing games in the first place. Not everyone has the patience or motor skills to play fighting games successfully. I think thats a good thing, it makes the arcade scene more fun in my opinion, cause you know most of the people youre playing are as devoted to the game as you are and have put in the hours work and taken the losses with the wins.
That falls under patience, I know a lot of people who wont play fighting games because they can accept the humility of loss. In an online FPS or on XBox you can simply drop out of the game and hide, whereas when youre standing right next to the person its a different story. Thats just part of the territory.
sorry for rambling lol.
There is a geek factor at work for better hardware/technology, but that isn’t the factor to the mainstream player. The question I ask is why so many casual players love FPS games, but don’t get into fighters. The casual player I’m thinking of doesn’t really know or care to know about frames per second, bump mapping, or whether his game is more technologically advanced than some other game. He cares about the game on a more visceral level, it’s easy to conceptualize running around and shooting stuff.
I think that for the most part, FPS games are a better exaggeration of reality. Fighters, on the other hand, require more acceptance of conventions and abstract concepts of game mechanics. More casual gamers tend not to like creativity, they prefer a facsimile of reality with some added twists like big guns and alien attackers - it’s a “reality simulator” spiced up with some fanciful elements.
I don’t mean to say that Halo 2 is realistic in that you could go outside and recreate the events, but the immersive perspective and ever-increasing graphics provides a world in three dimensions that you can move around in just like our real world. It’s also realistic to think that any average Joe could be an ass-kicking machine with some superpowered cutting edge weaponry. Even the slightly stupid, slightly wimpy social outcast can kick some serious ass with a rocket launcher.
On the other hand, most fighters suspend reality with concepts like life bars, super jumps, chain combos, and fireballs. In a FPS, it makes sense that if you get hit by a rocket you die. In a fighter, the idea of exhausting a predetermined life bar is only a learned convention from years of video game playing - it’s not as natural of an idea. Attempts to make a truly realistic fighting experience (say, the UFC games) don’t have the needed flash to capture the attention of most gamers.
As for the pseudo-“realistic” fighters like Virtua Fighter, they aren’t as over the top as the FPS setups. It’s not as fun for Bob Average to stay in one ring and do karate on his opponent as it is to pick up a big gun and run around causing havoc. In the real world, Bob can’t kick anyone’s ass with martial arts and he isn’t going to invest the time to learn. In the real world, Bob would be a menace if he had a railgun, even with no real training, additional skills, etc. In addition, there isn’t that sense of immersion in a fighter, even a “realistic” one. You see your onscreen puppet in a fighter, and you control that puppet with skillful manipulation of the strings. You don’t really feel like it’s YOU living an adventure though. Bob wants to imagine he is the one running through the jungle chasing the enemy or defending his base from a Nazi attack.
For the record, I love fighters and don’t tend to like FPS. I enjoyed Doom back in the 90s just as much as anyone, but one of the few FPS games of the past decade I’ve particularly enjoyed is Metroid Prime. I think it’s because MP doesn’t try to be a 3D simulation of a close-to-reality scenario. It goes blatantly over the top, and uses VIDEO GAME conventions - like learning how to do the screw-jump attack, rolling into a ball to drop bombs, platform jumping up to go face a “boss” monster. It’s an adventure game that happens to be from a first person perspective. It feels like a video game, not like I’m running into a war zone or in a realistic future abandoned space station.
The reason fps are cool with me is that you are…more deeply immersed in the game. You ARE the dude kicking ass. In fighters, you simply CONTROL the dude kicking ass.
Only from the viewpoint. When I play a character in a fighting game long enough, sometimes I feel like that’s either me, or at least an extension of me. But yeah, I can see what you mean, you get that feeling of that being you right from the start with a good FPS game.
This thread sucks…and I can’t believe some people are trying to make the argument that since you kill people in FPS’s it makes it popular. Isn’t that the point in fighting games also?
If fighting game connectivity was done right, instead of the half-assed offering from kaillera, fighting games might still have been alive today. Arcades really are no longer feasible, but neither Capcom nor SNK made any effort to move into the Internet Age. I’ve played all three genres, and fighting games were only fun back when I could go to different regions and play at different arcades. Back when there was actually a difference in playstyles, back when there were groups of people to play with, who had differing levels of ability but wanted to play anyway. RTS I think was the first to truly understand and do multiplayer and the Internet correctly. Blizzard laid the foundation with Warcraft I and II, but they put everything together for Starcraft and Battle Net to really give a great gaming experience that you could have at home. FPS followed suit. 2d Fighting games never bothered. It could be because both Capcom and SNK are based in Japan, and neither ever cared about the US Market. Well, Blizzard did care, and most of the FPS companies did as well. Maybe thats why over in Japan fighting games are still popular, but over here they aren’t. Its not us that gave up on 2d fighters, its them that never gave a damn about us. You didn’t have to pay a monthly fee for Starcraft, you just needed your PC, a connection, and the product. The closest thing to a fighting game internet community is laggy and unplayable kaillera, which is free but is actually ‘illegal’ hence, none of the newer games, and Xbox live which requires a specific system, the high-speed net connection, and a subscription. If Capcom really even cared the slightest bit, they could either release a new game on PC, or just release 3s or redo SF2 and make something like Battle Net, and I can almost guarantee that ‘magically’ we’ll suddenly have lots of people playing SF again. The people WANT to like the game, you can still tell that SF was consided ‘cool’ at some point, but Capcom isn’t bothering to try. I’m sure that with Capcom and some decent programmers behind it, we could get a non-laggy version of kaillera for free, actually, a much improved version. So before you guys go blaming FPS and hating on the players, why don’t you take a long hard look at the people who make the games and ask them ‘Why aren’t you giving me the same options? Don’t you see the community that is screaming out for it?’
It might also have to do with this community being possibly the weakeast, most antisocial, and whiniest of all. Starcraft had patches that took out bugs and overpowered tactics, but we never stopped playing because some overpowered tactic was made unavailable to us. We accepted that the game changed and we moved on. We actually loved the game so we still played it. You try that on a fighting game, and you have people whining that everything changed so they can’t play it. They refuse to play without the crutch. Well, fine, this is what happens when you annoy everyone else out of the arcade. Did I use the sliding command center and the invincible drone bugs in Starcraft when they were there? Sometimes, but I knew it was total utter bullshit and I knew I’d be DQed at tournies anyway, so I improved my play in other areas instead. The fighting game community would never bother with that. If we were to get an online iteration of SF, would you people play it if it got patched or would you whine and complain and then refuse to play? Do you really like fighting games or do you people like telling people they’re scrubs and whining about them? If we had more casual players again most of this site would just make fun of them anyway, so why would you want them back? You guys should be happier that they’re playing FPS games instead of bothering you. Don’t be jealous of other people having fun. This is what you guys wanted. Theres no one left now except the die-hards, the people that look for every small advantage and practice the hell out of a game to do lengthy combos or traps that require extreme precision, just to be competitive. FPS has the same types of things…AT HIGH LEVEL. But it also has lower levels that you can play at without having to immerse yourself like that. We no longer have that. RTS had that too…you had a lot of different strats and counter-strats to work with. Fighting games don’t really have that, the games are too limited, and the player base is too small. Maybe the internet and patches could be a solution, maybe not. Either way, even if the mentality I described in this paragraph is true, it doesn’t matter because the preceding paragraph is true too…Capcom just doesn’t give a fuck. And neither should you.
I don’t remember ever seeing a character in an SF, GG, or SNK fighter game explode into chunks of flesh and bone when you win.
There’s a difference between beating some one up and killing them. The GG insta-kills (destroys) are mild at best, and no one ever seems to die in the series except like 3 characters, who of course are brought back to life.
The MK series was hugely popular on release for the very reason that it was so violent. But no one takes them seriously because they are crap games, especially on a competitive level. I wonder how things would have been if the SF series had been as equally violent as MK.
violence helps alittle, but lets face it… mk came out around a time when NO ONE was expecting so much violence… it was controversial, and thats why it did so well. but now violence in games are looked at the same way as violence in movies… its no big deal.
also ppl DO care about gameplay in fps games lol… ppl are acting like fps are more popular cuz it can be more casual… but i bet there are more hardcore players in fps games, than there are any players in the fighting genre.
another point, violence and sex always helps sells, everyone knows it… but its a gimmick and nothing more… sure theyre may be some ppl that want to play a certain game cuz theres some nudity or the violence is off the scale… but at the end of the day, that person will KEEP playin the game only if its actually a good game.
I dunno if that was directed at me or as a general statement, but. I’m not arguing that FPS games are good or not beyond a superficial level. Of course I think they’re good past the aesthetics and casual play. If I thought otherwise, I wouldn’t have continued playing Q1 for years (at tournament level), even after Q2 and Q3 were released.
Casual play, however, helps people get into the game more easily. They’re able to learn how to play the game before being tossed into the hardcore dueling and high level play.
In fighting games, it’s hard to get low-level experiance when everyone at the local arcade is incredibly good/experienced. I believe that new comers often only have experience against the CPU, and when they finally get some human opponents they get destroyed and called scrubs, which can deter a lot of would-be hardcore players.
But speaking from personal experience, in FPS games you’re able to train against players your own level vastly more easily in random casual play, and you’re free to choose weather to continue doing so or start going for higher skill levels.
This would make them more popular in a sense that there’d be a lot of players that would have given up, had their first experience with the game been nothing but horrendous losses. A LOT of people HATE losing…
[Edit]: Actually, that’s precisely why I don’t play Marvel. Everyone’s already too good, I can’t find anyone on my level to play with to learn the game and probably never will. Thus, I gave up. I’d probably love the game if I knew how to play it.
That’s the thing though, even if it’s just a gimmick, if it gets people to buy it then the odds are then infinitely better that they’d continue playing it, than if they hadn’t bought it at all, right?
Some people do only buy stuff based on appearance and not word of mouth or reviews. If MK had been a really good game with violence, a lot more people would have continued playing it than if it had been a good game with very toned down violence. And that’s because less people would have bought the toned down version in the first place.
The KoF series and a lot of 3D games LOOK like crap to me, and because of that I’ll never play them. Who knows if I’d like them or not?
I originally bought Doom 2 for the sake that it was violent. It didn’t matter to me at the time how good it was. I bought it thinking it’d be a cheap thrill and it turned out to be one of the best things ever. Who knew I’d get so addicted to it and play it for years? Who knew I’d be literally laughing out loud for hours during both single and multi-play?
Quake 1, 2, and 3 I bought and played because of my experiances with Doom 2. Diablo 1 I bought for similar reasons and ended up hooked on that for years as well.
So yes, the game has to be good for some one to keep playing, but… If they didn’t buy/play it at all, for whatever reason, then odds are they never will.
In my opinion:
Because they are easy to get into
Because of good online play, were you can always find competition or play against large groups of people
Because you can make “clans”
There are many FPS out and being released. Whats a “new” 2d fighting game released on consoles lately? I can only think of the unpopular Guilty Gear XX. Capcom is happy to continuely make cheap and lazy games like Capcom Fighting Jam and put litle to no effort in and “recycle”.
I think Serpent has the best post here and is 98%. The only thing I disagree with is that Capcom doesn’t give a fuck, they do but not to the extent of a Blizzard or EA or any of the big FPS companies. Capcom came out with CvS2 Evo for Xbox and I think SF Ann is online (I think) but at this point though its “alittle too late” for fighting games to get into the online thing now cause of the gap between experts and noobs. Like he said there are levels where experts and noobs not only play at there levels but can entergarde with each alot easier than in the fighting community. When the next SF or KOF comes out the top players already have the upper hand if the gameplay is somewhat the same. Top levle players can adjust with no problems where as noobs and average gamer will get fustrated and quite. Not to mention that “scrubs” will bet on these guys and say they suck just to make themselves feel better and those the community takes a hit.
Media is another problem that I didn’t see get mention. G4, mags and even websites tend to throw the average gamer off cause they either don’t know shit about fighting games, don’t care for them or both. Case in point when Tekken 5 came out the figthing scene got a boost and is well recieved but if you read anything about it, they say “it looks good but not as deep as SCII or DOA” which we all know is BS. Also when any sequal gets made the first thing they say is “looks good but plays like the last or if you played one you played them all”, funny they never say that about the 1,001 WWII FPS out now.
I guess you can pass the blame in all kinds of direction but in the end its about the right game and the people who play the games. If we can get the average gamer to love and play fighting games without making them feel like shit for losing and teaching them the ends and out than the scene will grow but remember also that scene in time go through a down period as will and FPS will go though it too. The circle of videogaming I guess.
Xenozip :
first off, my 2nd statement was directed to everyone. but i really agree with alot of stuff ur saying :tup:. the only thing im not sure about is the fact that its harder to play casually, bc ive gotten ppl into fps games and its so fustrating for them, i really have to carry them around every where i go in the game. i think not gettin one measly point out of 50 is more common for newbies than not getting one hit in a fighter. also the arcades are dominated, but that really isnt a factor… its all about online play now, and in almost every game, u can find someone ur skill. but then again i still agree with with u about it bc if ur a newbie u can play on ur friends team and still win… but in a fighter, its 1 on 1, so unless they do good, theres no chance of winning… i guess if we really want to know, we have to ask the ppl not playin fighters.
gamer x:
i kno how u feel, and the sf ann. really has crappy online play… they could do soooo much with xbl but they just do the standard stuff :tdown:
ok one of my clan members for fps games told me what he thinks:
Bwestfootball7: cause people can adapt to fps easier
sb nastradamus: so ur saying the learning curve is quiker?
Bwestfootball7: yeah
sb nastradamus: but uve been playin fps for a long time
sb nastradamus: u think if halo2 was ur 1st
sb nastradamus: it would be any easier than pickin up tekken or doa?
Bwestfootball7: lol
Bwestfootball7: no
Bwestfootball7: some people dont like learning combos on fighters, plus in fps u have a gun so thats america for u
Bwestfootball7: its mainly the gun part
sb nastradamus: lol
Bwestfootball7: i think
Bwestfootball7: not saying that there is not a lot of stuff to do but fighters get repetitive very fast
sb nastradamus: i think thats to the cassual player
Bwestfootball7: yeah u get on a figther ur gonna find a person like u and get yo ass whipped or get a newbie and win to easy or get someone that uses the same cheap move over and over again
sb nastradamus: ya i guess u cant really enjoy a fighter casually with out it gettin repetitive
sb nastradamus: intresting
sb nastradamus: u think alot of ppl feel this way?
Bwestfootball7: yeah
sb nastradamus: k
Bwestfootball7: cause in fighters ur eitehr really good or really bad
sb nastradamus: ya kinda
Bwestfootball7: unless u use the one cheap move like subzeros three freezing moves in one the kombats
sb nastradamus: well to be honest
sb nastradamus: no one really takes mk seriously
sb nastradamus: the main fighters ppl play competitively are…
Bwestfootball7: yeah but that is the only fighter i liked enough to rent
sb nastradamus: tekken, virtual fighter, street fighter, guilty gear, and some snk games
sb nastradamus: ya ppl say that if street fighter would be more violent it would have ppl try it more…
sb nastradamus: would u?
Bwestfootball7: no i like guns
Bwestfootball7: lol
sb nastradamus: lol
Bwestfootball7: think about it off the top of ur mind what game doesnt have a gun taht isnt a fighter or sport game
sb nastradamus: guns definitly play a big part i gues
Bwestfootball7: its hard to find oneBwestfootball17: think about it off the top of ur mind what game doesnt have a gun taht isnt a fighter or sport game
sb nastradamus: guns definitly play a big part i gues
Bwestfootball7: its hard to find one
im not sayin what his knowledge on fighters is anywhere near truth, but this is what ppl think. (i changed the number in his aim name so he doesent get any one to preach to him about fighters lol)
I agree. I play FPS games for “fun” and I play fighters for the competitiveness+fun which could be just the opposite for competitive FPS players.
Fatal1ty!!!
Pretty much.
But actually when I played FPS for fun+competition, I simply didn’t have time for fighters as just for fun.
It’s only untill FPS games outlived their longevity for me that I switched over to playing fighters for fun+competition and FPS just for fun and nostalgia.