A History of Violence: The Evolution of the First-Person Shooter Video Game, from ‘Maze War’ to ‘Overwatch.’

Posted August 2, 2016

External Article: The Ringer

Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, was quoted in “A History of Violence: The Evolution of the First-Person Shooter Video Game, from ‘Maze War’ to ‘Overwatch’” for The Ringer.

Excerpt:

Predictable, kind of played out, but also disturbingly fun when you’re in a bad enough head space, the military FPS has become gaming’s classic rock. Fans expect a certain experience (realistic weapons, player models, and locations; a satisfying shooting mechanic; lots of explosions) from a military FPS. And those expectations limit the genre’s potential to innovate.

Not that fans really want innovation. When Activision recently announced that a remastered version of 2007’s Modern Warfare would be available only as a paid add-on to the franchise’s latest release, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare,fans of the series howled. Call of Duty heads prefer a remastered nine-year-old game to Infinite Warfare’s New Coke vibes (now with 80 percent more war inspace!).

“In some ways, what makes genre fiction good is [when] it’s the same as other genre fiction,” says Ian Bogost, a professor of interactive computing at Georgia Tech and a game designer and writer. “And I feel like that’s what the FPS is. It’s the ultimate genre fiction of games. The ultimately self-sustaining genre. You get these little twists and changes that respond to current trends.”

For the full article, read here.