PC Gamers: A Call To Arms
Friday, June 02, 2000 -
Guy
Akiva
Everyone wants to know, "what does the future hold for me when I am 30 and finally get tired of playing Quake 3 Arena? Will I be swinging a sword on a holodeck? Can I watch today's Yanks vs. Red Sox game from within my copy of Triple Play 2030? Will the "Hit Bill Gates With a Pie" game still be available on some abandonware site? Will Mechwarrior: Mercenary run on my Microsoft 10 THz (Terra Hertz) Processor system? I'll let you in on a little secret: I don't care.
I'll let you all in on another little secret: I didn't like Q3 after I bought it. I played it for about 3 months cause I had a clan to represent but were it not for them, I would have let the CD collect the dust I feel it deserves to collect. It just wasn't new. When I played it I didn't feel like I was playing the latest and greatest that technology had to offer me.
I felt cheated. Q3A was announced about a month after Quake 2 was released. After waiting a year and a half for a game, I got something that resembled a First Person Shooter Software Developers Kit. I call it the FPSSDK. I felt like I was playing a game that wasn't released as a game, but as a showcase to the engine behind it. The Q3A engine is remarkable but the game itself is a snooze. I think anyone who ever played Unreal for any length of time might tend to agree with me. I also think that most old school Quake players who remember what a Quakeworld console looked like and how a Diamond Monster 3d cost $300 would say that Q3A is last in terms of the best Quake game.
I wasn't alone. Like I said, I was representing a clan that dates back to the original release of Threewave CTF. When Q3 was released we all bought it. We all drooled at how good it looked and then waited for CTF. When CTF was released we were all disappointed by the maps but like it or not we were a Quake Clan. We set out to be the best players that those suck-ass maps had ever seen. Fast-forward 6 months; we stopped kidding ourselves and the clan disbanded due to inactivity.
FPS's aren't dead; they're just dormant. I don't know about you people but I haven't seen anything great with the market penetration and (what I call) "subculture revolution" that Quake had since, well, Quake. What do I mean by subculture revolution? Did you ever hear a programmer say "This game rocks! The best thing is I can easily modify the rules so a grenade kills everyone on the level!" (True story btw) and the developers encourage that kind of attitude? Well, at least from a development standpoint. When Quake was released it absolutely exploded. When (mod) authors realized that they could do whatever they wanted with a great FPS, a fully-fledged, 100% enthusiastic community was established and then united.
"What about Counter Strike, or Team Fortress? There are literally millions of people playing each one of these games!" That is true. Can't argue with numbers but is CS revolutionary (*cough* Action Quake)? Is TFC breaking new ground (ported mod)? Did you skip school and/or work cause you really needed to play or cause you really just didn't want to go? What about on the third day?
Don't get me wrong, I love these games. You actually have a glimpse at my top 10. But before you get ready to string me up ask yourself, "Did those games blow my mind? Would I really miss 3 days of existence for this game? Do I see myself playing this 6 hours a day for the next year?" I haven't been blown away by a game since Quake. I haven't dropped off the face of the earth for 3 days to play a game since Quake. The last game that really held me for more then 3 months was FF7 and only because it was just so damn long.
Give it 5 years. Prey will finally be released and FPS' will officially be declared "Dunzo". Star Wars Episode 3: The FPS, RTS (Real Time Strategy), RPG, Mega-Multi-Online-Whatever-You-Call-It and the Interactive-Multimedia Speak-and-Say Action Figures will all be sitting next to the Jar-Jar Binks collectable baseball cards. People will stop buying the same old crap, refuse buggy software, and be respected by software developers and vendors instead of exploited by them. Buzzwords like "greatest", "spectacular" and "jaw-dropping" will only be used to describe the Britney Spears Playboy issue. People will rely on the community's opinions instead of listening to a Marketing Guy who tends to be more creative then the programmers who actually wrote the games.
I remember a time when 3d meant those dumb blue and red glasses. Let me tell you, the games back then were GREAT. Developers focused on gameplay cause they assumed 486 users were in the minority (as they still are today hehe). Prince of Persia and Tie Fighter, Doom and Flashback, Alone In The Dark and last and certainly not least, Rex Nebula and The Cosmic Gender Bender. Most of these games are still available at your local AbandonWare trafficker and I highly recommend them. Those games had stories. Good ones at that! Eye candy was nice, but not necessary and computer games were almost as intriguing as a good book because the story editors worked as hard as the programmers, if not harder. Those were the days. Oh yeah, and I had to walk to school everyday, in the snow and uphill both ways.
id Software is not the cause of the problem but merely a manifestation of it and in my opinion is their saving grace. I can point a finger at companies like Hasbro (Falcon 4.0) and Micro$oft for a lot of the same complaints. Micro$oft's only saving grace is that I am actually pleased with Windows 2000 (my P3-700 boots in 35 seconds). I'd like to say that they finally did something right but if you quote me on that I'll sue. I wouldn't go so far as to say that M$ and id are guilty of the same injustices against the world but given the power I would punish them equally. The one crime they do have in common is pride.
Everyone thought that by 2000 we'd all have computers that are infinitely more powerful then they happen to be right now and yet we don't. I can accept that. What I can't accept is the current state of software as it is regarded today. Don't complain about the pressure we're putting on you to release something when you're the ones putting fuel into the hype machine. It's only a matter of time before some PR guy says, "Our game only has 20 (known) bugs. Isn't that great?!" No, it's not. Stop taking advantage of us as your consumers with software that sucks and in turn we'll stop taking advantage of you by paying for the stuff we use because we are proud to use and (more importantly) support it.
(Comment?!)
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