30 Great Seconds Make Perfect FPS Shooters
A shooter's repetitive gameplay should be defined and perfected within 30 seconds.
While in San Francisco promoting the upcoming first-person shooter Bulletstorm (People Can Fly, EA), Epic Games' design director Cliff Bleszinski defined what it takes to make a perfect shooter. More specifically, he detailed what needs to be accomplished in order to make thirty perfect seconds--that little chunk of gameplay which becomes the repetitive ingredient throughout the game.
"The fact of the matter is if you're going to make a shooter, you better make sure that those 30 seconds that you do over and over again are more fun than anything else in the game," Bleszinski said in an interview. "Like, you could take Halo, right, open up with the grenade, soften him up with bullets, melee--that is fun, and you can just do that over and over again, right?"
He said that the People Can Fly team is reaching that key development milestone with Bulletstorm, cramming in kicks, lashes, gunshots, and more into the core thirty seconds. But many developers fail to reach the point in overall gameplay design where gamers actually want to keep going. "I've played a lot of shooters that just want to be a shooter, but don't really ever nail that," he said. "It's like, okay, well, I should want to be the rat with the feeder pellet who's addicted to that one little thing in your game."
Bleszinski also added that sound is a key component to a successful shooter. "The sound needs to be perfect, and, you know, to give the Bungie guys props, their grenade sound is still one of my favorite ones in all of games, because it has that little high-pitch pshew at the beginning, and I just want to throw a grenade just to hear that sound," he said.
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So, for an FPS (and 99% of all MMO's to be hones) to be successful, all you need to is to reduce the player to a rat pressing a button for a food pellet? Well it sounds like that's what most development teams have been doing for some time now.
Most games today are just digital "whack-a-mole" hot button mashers.
More importantly "Whats and FPS Shooter?"
Only in America do people get paid for talking this amount of rubbish.
Why is he swinging on Bungie's nuts for?
sounds like the poster of this article has RAS syndrome.
How about this: regular fps cores + ability to engage target (that is close enough) in a melee brawl like Mortal Kombat. Huh? Huh?
He's probably right in thinking people are stupid, but I'd prefer to have better thought out games, like Half Life 2. There was a lot of variation to the gameplay. Even with weapons. (Half Life 1 even moreso!)
Why is he swinging on Bungie's nuts for?
LOL
In my opinion, what makes a perfect shooter is the heartbeat factor. If every so often you get those moments where everything is going crazy and if/when you survive, afterwards your sitting there saying to yourself.... "Holy Shit that was close".
In BFBC2 multiplayer, every once in a while I get those moments where you are being attacked, take out one with primary, take out another with a granade, knife a guy who just came up on you, bring out your gun and shoot the guy who just spawned on him. And then when you can finally breath, you are like "Wow". Its moments like those that make a good shooter.
Another shooter with alot of that is also L4D, and L4D2
The enemies in every valve game have varied AI that requires changes in combat and strategy. They are not a repeat of the same 30 seconds all over again.
Every valve game is gold, both in sales and in reviews.
So eat that, Bleszinski!!
You can't plant a bomb and wait for it to explode in 30 seconds.
You can't rescue the hostages in 30 seconds.
You can't build and upgrade your sentry, dispenser, and teleporters in 30 seconds.
You can't disguise as an enemy, get behind enemy lines, then take them out with backstabs in 30 seconds.
The list goes on, but those are just from the two shooters I play, CS:S and TF2. The point is, the first 30 seconds only shows the most primitive of the gameplay mechanics, the actual "shooter" aspect of it. There are many more factors beyond the core gaemplay that go into an FPS that take much longer than 30 seconds to enjoy/master.
What is this idiot saying? What 30 seconds is this moron talking about? Why 30? If you're saying that shooting things is repetitive, why not 2 seconds? It only takes 2 seconds to shoot a zombie or whatever.
Ehh This guy doesn't know what He is talking about.I think he is just talking about what makes a good Console shooter's.If he was talking about PC also he would have mentioned the great things valve does to make a great shooter.I gave up on this guy after unreal 3 came out.Gears of war is garbage too.First one was fun on 360 when I was still into the whole console gaming scene.He is just glorifying the cookie cutter crap he does now days.
140 characters or less; 30 seconds. hey, it's the trend.
If you can't survive a FPS longer than 30sec perhaps you should not be playing.
Depends on the game, but in a game like MW2, your average life span is about 30sec to 1min. Hence what you do in that short amount of time is all the game your really playing. It could also be broken down by engagements, as the more you have, the more likely you are to lose, and start over.
Even in games like TF2 and CSS, you are still playing mini games that last only a minute most of the time. Its just that these mini games change as the level progress, which is why I luv TF2 and CSS.
The point being, if the best part of your game requires you to live beyond the normal lifespan, few people will experience it. Even fewer people will experience it on a regular basis, and the rest will become frustrated before they get to it and quite.
Depends on the game, but in a game like MW2, your average life span is about 30sec to 1min. Hence what you do in that short amount of time is all the game your really playing. It could also be broken down by engagements, as the more you have, the more likely you are to lose, and start over.
Even in games like TF2 and CSS, you are still playing mini games that last only a minute most of the time. Its just that these mini games change as the level progress, which is why I luv TF2 and CSS.
The point being, if the best part of your game requires you to live beyond the normal lifespan, few people will experience it. Even fewer people will experience it on a regular basis, and the rest will become frustrated before they get to it and quite.
More importantly "Whats and FPS Shooter?"
Saying FPS Shooter is like saying ATM Machine. Great article title.
first 30 seconds only shows the most primitive of the gameplay mechanics
He isn't talking about the first 30 seconds in the game or a specific 30 seconds of the game. He's talking about the most commonly performed tasks (killing your opponent) that only take up 30 seconds of game play but are repeated over and over again.
Modern Warfare 2 has a great part in online multiplayer play. The experience system. The delays in commands is quite annoying tho. A great FPS would have some kind of experience system added to what he said. But when I click on a button, I expect the action to be happening at that time, not a second later.
Aside from all the console hate in here. I believe Cliff is talking about a general FPS design concept in that if developers want to make an enjoyable FPS; The repetitive step(s) that the players endure during a given 30 second time-span of playing such game should be "fun" otherwise the player will be turned off from the game whether it be a console FPS or a PC FPS.
At least that's what I got out of the article.
Only in America do people get paid for talking this amount of rubbish.
Oh please have you ever seen Europeans (western) play video games....?
He makes shooters sound so shallow. Oh well maybe for competitive multiplayer that's enough of a hook. I prefer shooters that are more like Goldeneye and Crysis. There can be more to shooters than just.... shooting.
I forgot Half Life 2 as well haha.
I do believe the 30 seconds in question is the average time it takes to complete an individual "engagement." This is the core of any FPS game; however, do keep in mind that this number can stack and does not take into account the other areas of gameplay.
To simplify it: The game has to make the "conflicts" interesting.
So, for an FPS (and 99% of all MMO's to be hones) to be successful, all you need to is to reduce the player to a rat pressing a button for a food pellet? Well it sounds like that's what most development teams have been doing for some time now.Most games today are just digital "whack-a-mole" hot button mashers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera [...] ng_chamber
MMOs have used this since day one. One of the Skinner box experiments that emphasizes this most is the repetitive behavior reinforcement experiments. You can reward the rat with a treat for pressing the lever, then gradually increase the number of times the rat must press the lever to get the reward. After a while, you'll end up with a rat that just presses the lever all day long regardless of how long the reward takes to get (great MMO analogue: Lineage 2).
Basically, all this game designer is saying, that lever just needs to be really fun to push and people will push it over and over.
Gameplay is not about 30 seconds of shooting, its about how a game draws you in, challenges you, makes you think about your actions
This guy has probably only ever played games like serious sam, fun for a little while but repetitive and boring very quick. At least I know not to try the crap he is designing
The days of games like Doom, serious sam etc are over, the audience has matured, as technology develops, so do our tastes, people want immersion, want to feel the game challenged them but that they were smart enough and good enough to beat it, it gives a sense of achievement, repetitive 30 second game play...NO THANKS
You can't plant a bomb and wait for it to explode in 30 seconds.You can't rescue the hostages in 30 seconds.You can't build and upgrade your sentry, dispenser, and teleporters in 30 seconds.You can't disguise as an enemy, get behind enemy lines, then take them out with backstabs in 30 seconds.The list goes on, but those are just from the two shooters I play, CS:S and TF2. The point is, the first 30 seconds only shows the most primitive of the gameplay mechanics, the actual "shooter" aspect of it. There are many more factors beyond the core gaemplay that go into an FPS that take much longer than 30 seconds to enjoy/master.
The 30 seconds he's talking about are in gameplay scenarions. So in Halo for example, the 30 seconds would be throwing frags at peoples feet and finishing them off with one BR shot, firing a shotgun shot followed by a quick melee, and so on. All these things you listed are part of these games 30 seconds. Don't take the term so literally.
Call of Duty 4 is the best FPS I've ever played, and I've played a lot. The maps are just...fun and the gun sounds are original enough to make me smile everytime I headshot a guy with a Bolt Action, Counter Strike is good too, but cod4 takes the cake IMO. Of course that's just lille 'ol me.
Wow, I thought console platform fanboys are bad, PC gamers seem to be just as bad when it comes to wanting to say, "NO, WE'RE THE BEST!" Nice way to hijack a thread into a PC > console thread.
Anyway, he's basically stealing a quote from Bungie when they described Halo and not saying it anywhere near as eloquently, which I think is why he's being misinterpreted. Bungie said it better when they said "30 seconds of fun. Now do it over and over again." They're saying basically every 30 seconds, there should be something totally and completely awesome that just happened. Where Cliff messed up that quote is by adding the word repetitive in there. Bungie meant something different every 30 seconds. Not neccesarily new, that would be impossible to maintain, but different from what you just did the last 30 seconds. Basically, never let the game be boring or repeat itself for more than half a minute.
A lot of shooters nowadays including Call of Duty, Battlefield, Left 4 Dead follow this philosophy now. Older games, even fairly recent ones like Half Life 2 (the original, not episode 2) don't always do the 30 seconds of fun over and over. Granted it's a great game and there's tons of moments of fun in there, but there's also the older legacy design of late nineties shooters where you would walk across a landscape for 30 seconds without much anything interesting going on around you.
You know what was good shooter? Not first person mind you, Resident evil 5, you did more than just shoot, sure it wasn't really fast, but it got your heart beating in harder difficulties. And cinematics that force you to press buttons at the right time were fun, a lot of enemies had unique ways of fighting and being fought.
Repetition is NOT how you make a good FPS, the second I read "Halo" I did not care what people would think of the game, it's gonna be over hyped junk once again.
You better watch this guy, he sounds intent of throwing and hearing that "grenade sound"!