Articles
Why I’m Sick of the Female Representation Arguments
outside of the extremely
popular first-person-shooter
model. This is coming from
someone who would call
themselves an FPS veteran. I
would go as far as to say it’s
my favourite genre. But I am
aware that it’s stagnant and
instead of there being more
of the Sci-fi/Modern Military
Shooter games cobbled
together we need to look at how
other and possibly unknown
genres can help gaming be
seen as something less than
a 16-year-old’s wet dream.
While some developers have
strived to push the boundaries
of what an FPS can be, the story
it can tell and the emotions
it can convey, there are very
few who do. Bungie arguably
invented the console shooter
with Halo: Combat Evolved
and are once again pushing
Issue 59 • September 2014
the envelope with Destiny by
integrating MMO sensibilities
into a space more known
for its standard eight-hour
campaigns, not open expansive
levels and replayability.
This is only one example. Many
others like Gone Home and
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
showed us that we could
explore in first person and not
shoot a thing and that you could
show the horrors of nuclear
armament in a compelling
and emotionally charged way.
Once the industry grasps that
there are other ways to tell
stories, things will be better.
Job Stability
We enjoy games made by big
studios all the
time, but these
are the lucky
ones. Most
moved to a point where we
lack almost any middleware
developers anymore. Any
developers in this small area of
the ecosystem are very much
in a bad way and are not in a
hugely stable financial position.
With the very public collapse
of THQ recently one of the
last of the great middleware
publishers vanished. Games
are now AAA or Indie. There
is very little middle ground
and many smaller studios that
did exist ar e being swallowed
up by the larger publishers.
Where am I going with this?
Well, this makes any new studio
that wants to open, without
large publisher backing, a
very high risk operation. Most
smaller studios suffer layoffs
and closures constantly. The
industry is so fickle and has
13 • GameOn Magazine