With the latest addition to the Call of Duty franchise hitting stores in time for the end of year holidays, I look back to the growth of two of my favorite things: First-Person Shooter games and storytelling.

In 2003, American game programming legend and co-founder of Id Software Inc. John D. Carmac was asked about the place of storytelling narratives in video games. As the lead programmer in many of the first-person shooter genres’ most iconic titles (Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake), Carmac famously said: “Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.”

I now believe this position to be wrong.

As a genre, first-person shooters (FPS) are not what immediately comes to mind when people talk about good storytelling elements in games. At one point in time, FPS grandpappy Doom was the single most installed piece of software in the ‘90’s. Set in a demon-infested Mars, the player (affectionately referred to by fans as “Doomguy”) is tasked to mow through legions of assorted bad guys that include, but are not limited to, floating random monster encounters from old Dungeon and Dragons Monster manuals and evil demon Nazi soldiers.

DOOM INDEED – At one point, Doom was the most installed piece of software on personal computers. Sensibilities towards content were much different then, with blood splatter and gore being the norm.

The narrative was not a primary concern for game developers then. In fact, a more detailed storyline was originally created for the original Doom game in 1993, “The Doom Bible,” but Carmac vetoed the idea. Only snippets of the original plot made it into the manual insert of the game. It was easy to understand why. In the early days of FPS gaming, the emphasis was placed on the player; you were the one beating back the demon hordes of hell. Whatever tidbit of story was left from the original narrative was mostly atmospheric to let the players come up with their own versions of events, motivations and conclusions as they crawled to the end of the level.

As the genre evolved, emphasis was placed on exploring the mechanics of the FPS genre. Everything from the most explode-y of weapons, health packs and regenerating shields to the real-world, cover-based shooting and dreaded escort missions. Mechanically speaking, however, the FPS genre seems to be reaching a plateau.

One of 2014’s most anticipated titles, Titanfall for the Xbox One system, fell short of the estimated sales. While still a resounding success thanks to its visually stunning design and many new mechanics, including the ability to have physically augmented feats thanks to riding giant robot suits and a refreshing supply-based game of incremental advantages for multiplayer, there’s just so much you can variate from the tried and tested formula of: “Run over there, shoot some things.”

Electronic Arts’ (EA) latest earnings report reveals that net revenue went down in Q4 of 2014, at $1.12 billion compared to the $1.21 billion in the same quarter last year. Net revenue for the entire financial year went down from $3.8 billion in 2013 to $3.58 billion in 2014.

Although there are no conclusive figures released for Titanfall’s sales, its absence from the digital games’ giant’s reports sparked interest from the gaming community. By VGChartz.com’s estimation, Titanfall sold 3.31 million copies worldwide across three gaming platforms — Xbox One, Xbox 360 and the PC — which are respectable, but ultimately disappointing for a game that received so much attention before its release. Although by no means a flop, speculation on the the title’s underperformance included the lack of innovation in the shooter genre.

Designed mostly as a multiplayer game, Titanfall pays no concession to incorporating story elements or other immersive elements; it prefers instead to make multiplayer mechanics that are as intuitive and accessible as possible.

A TITAN OF GAMING — Electronic Art’s Titanfall featured new multiplayer options previously unseen from their other AAA titles (Photo by Electronic Arts).

And it shows: even the game’s “story” mode is a series of multiplayer objective maps, similar to Starcraft in all but story. The bare minimum of story elements are narrated as the action erupts around the group of player characters. While the game is fast-paced, visually stunning and impressive, it’s hard to get invested in the game past its multiplayer appeal — what little of a plot is delivered by non-player characters who are immediately drowned by the explosion and the hordes of other people trying to shoot you.

As a game, Titanfall throws you head first into the battle and the weight of the hardware that supports it. There is no time to enjoy it.

Fellow Doom alumnus John Romero, another old guard of the genre, announced in Gamescom that he will be working on a brand new FPS. Asked about his thoughts on the lack of innovation in the genre, Romero said that there is still unexplored ground in terms of gameplay mechanics to revive the genre. Most interestingly, Romero asserted that the “technology race” in game design is over.

With consoles and peripherals offering more and more in terms of raw computing power, graphics and polygon count, the man behind Quake is sure-footed in the idea that there are still boundaries to be pushed in designing the mechanics of the shooter genre. 1080p graphics and the latest 3D accelerators do not make the game. “It comes down to design, not technology,” says Romero in an interview with Develop. “New consoles let people create more polygons on the screens. They let you do more with AI because they’re faster. But they don’t make good design.”

Although I sympathize with Romero in the idea that there is much room for growth in the shooter genre, I personally feel that the FPS can be held to a higher standard, in another direction. “There is an unbelievable amount of new stuff to do in that genre (FPS),” he told Develop. “The idea of a shooter is running around with weapons, in first-person, blowing things away. But what are you really doing? What is the world like? Who are you, and what do you care about? What are you doing in the world that’s different?”

Where Romero suggests a shooter that borrows from the open-world feel of Role-playing games and the intuitive environmental design and interaction found in open sandbox games such as Minecraft, I believe that the FPS genre can bring about a golden era of the storyline narrative.

Why FPS?

First-person shooters, by their very design, are built to be sleek and immersive to the player. World designs are clean, sharp and ferry the person behind the keyboard from key area to key area efficiently and quickly. In fact, the architectural movement of Brutalism — a 1950s style of structural design that emphasizes clean, clear lines that take into account the movement of people from point to point within the structure at the cost of unnecessary ornamentation — is well-documented in the level designs of Halo: Combat Evolved and the murderous Aperture science labs of Portal.

This hallmark of FPS level design — the efficiency and vigor of movement from Point A to B — lends itself to good storytelling: Having a brisk and active level allows the plot to lead players into investing more on the story upfront. It is here where you can see that some of the FPS genre’s best performing and most iconic games can evoke a sense of immersion through the effective use of level design. A prime example would be Portal 1 and 2. Though much of the plot is inferred in the interactions between Chell and the murderous computer GlaDOS, the tiny clues and cryptic messages are all delivered to your senses as you move from room to room.

While Portal is decidedly sparse in hard storytelling elements, its example echoed to produce more story-driven shooters as we will later see. This brings us to the next reason why FPS design works to convey story: By being in the first-person, a player is easily placed in a position of caring about the world around them, leading them to explore and uncover that world.

While some shooters prefer to leave the narrative open for interpretation by relying on atmosphere to convey a sense of story, one of 2013’s games of the year, BioShock Infinite, chose to take advantage of the genre’s propensity for using atmosphere and instead engaged the player in an unapologetically vibrant and complex story.

INFINITE — Irrational Games’ mark on the industry has always been on the back of narrative-driven shooters with unrepentant explorations into dystopian themes (Photo by Irrational Games).

In BioShock Infinite, players take on the role of former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt: a man sent on a mission to the floating city of Columbia to find a young woman named Elizabeth. Right from the get-go, players are set adrift into a rich and vibrant world with many clues to the overall story painstakingly meshed into the game world.

Following old FPS conventions, this would have been enough to drive the entire game; after seeing the haunting beauty of the lighthouse in the first stages of the game and up to the momentous launch as the player reaches the beautiful air city of Columbia, the game could have kept mum and just churned out objective after objective — only taking the time to introduce new game mechanics in between.

“The idea of a shooter is running around with weapons, in first-person, blowing things away. But what are you really doing? What is the world like? Who are you, and what do you care about?” — John Romero

Instead, BioShock Infinite chose to go a different route. Taking full advantage of a beautifully crafted environment, crisp level design and impeccable attention to detail, Infinite began crafting a compelling tale that included themes of American Exceptionalism, redemption, alternate realities and metaphysics without sacrificing core gameplay mechanics. The result is a game that demands attention, not only because a horde of computer generated baddies are out for your blood, but because it has something to say that demands to be experienced — featuring an ending that has spawned sub-communities dedicated to understanding its implications.

At times, Infinite chose to convey its story through lengthy exposition. Other times, it did so through conversations between characters laced with implications and strategically designed levels with newly accessed guns and/or powers to reveal key plot points. In summary, the game used every tool in its disposal: mechanics, cool guns, Brutalism, level design and etc.

The result is a wonderfully unapologetic story wrapped in an enjoyable shooter; Christmas to some and a milestone for enthusiasts.

Ultimately, Infinite isn’t even the first title in FPS to take on this challenge. Icons of the genre include the Half-Life franchise and Deus Ex, famous for introducing ground-breaking gameplay mechanics and amazingly detailed worlds. But in the last few years of the Call of Duty franchises’ dominance in the shooter market, many fans have decried the seemingly photocopy-pace that the genre has adopted.

While the studio that created Infinite, Irrational Games, ultimately closed shop, the games they have created and the attention they have poured will linger on in the industry.

By all accounts, the closure of Irrational Games could not be attributed to poor sales performance of Infinite, giving rise to the hope that there is space for the narrative-driven auteur to develop games for the mainstream crowd.

In his farewell address, co-founder Ken Levine assured fans that he will continue to create narrative-driven games for the core gamer market.

A COMPELLING VILLAIN — Valve’s GlaDOS is one of many rich characters made by the software company in their long history of breaking grounds in the FPS genre (Picture from hdw.eweb4.com).

While Romero points out that an engrossing game design should offer a fun, core loop of actions, a meaningful interaction with environments and tiered rewards to keep players from coming back for more — all solid foundations of good design — I maintain that there is no reason that a solid narrative and engaging plot should find no space in this paradigm. Infinite has shown us that a game can succeed in the modern FPS world if it decides to take itself seriously.

I would love to have more interesting weapons, tighter driving controls and more challenging AI in my shooting games, but I would also love to stalk the halls of a beautifully crafted world, with the full knowledge that I rocket-jump into sniper scope not for myself but for the fate of the world I’m in. If the FPS genre can bring good stories back into games, then there’s no excuse for the rest of the industry to remain as bland, almost photocopied tweaks of last year’s game titles.

Across the gaming industry and the fans that have made it the center of their lives, a common thread is exactly how much games have become a certifiable cultural artifact; a modern medium filled with meaning beyond entertainment. While the debate on whether games should focus on game mechanics or their aesthetic value rages on, I believe that the FPS genre — painted with the undue reputation of being immature, mindless repetitions of successful franchise titles — is the unlikely savior of the video game medium as a whole.

As the holiday season homes in, more and more AAA games will make themselves known and among them, a new crop of FPS games will make their way into the world. Being inherently competitive, I can only hope that these will not skimp on new gameplay mechanics and that due attention should be paid to tuning player experience instead of rehashing old ideas.

However, being inherently human, I can only hope that these same games will not skimp on the vehicle for telling stories and delivering the culture that they have inevitably become.

The ripples that Infinite and Irrational Games have left is a challenge to the rest of the industry. Only time will tell if other studios and titles in the AAA space will pick up where they left off to advance the medium.

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