A wider point of view, The Title Fight

The two game most FPS gamers were keeping eyes on were Battlefield3 and Modern Warfare3. A lot of us were wondering if BF3 would make the same impact as its predecessor. Battlefield2 was the first game to use the modern combat setting but it was Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare that made it popular. Since then the market has been bombarded with a CoD every year. Pointing the way for rival shooters through sheer success. But as the novelty wears off, a lot of gamers are getting tired of the formula. Though the quality and production values of the series are what makes it such a hit every time. The reward-a-minute treadmill might have something to do with it too, and so might the stiff online competition. The gameplay is fast, often rage inducing and frustrating. But when things go your way, it's an ideal way to blow off some steam after a day's work. I should know. The game has to cope with diminishing returns however.

When games like Crysis2 and Homefront tried to copy the formula, some of us got a case of desperation because you couldn't buy a AAA shooter without getting a good dose of Call Of Duty with it. This fear persisted all the way through the development of Battlefield3. Even though most of us who played Battlefield2 knew that series had a lot more going for it. But more importantly, it had different things going for it. From the direction the Bad Company games were going, more console focused, we had little reason to be overly hopeful. But Battlefield3 turned out as an incredible step forward from Bad Company. And while it incorporates a few select innovations from CoD, the game turned out something else. A game with a very high skill cap, not only does a player need to know what role to play at what time, he needs to know it on foot, in tanks or in the skies. And he has to be a team player. This alone isn't the novelty though, but the way the game was made and the way it plays are. The pixel perfect user interface alone makes it stand out compared to the bulky font and laggy mouse found in the MW3 interface. The entire layer of post processing, and colour separation in BF3 also apply to the interface. When I first saw it in the beta I had the wide eyed look of a child who discovers that his new toy not only looks shiny, but also transforms into a robot. It looked so very expensive.

MW3 sticks to its guns. It isn't a spoiler to say that MW3 is "like MW2 but newer". A mark of the stagnation of Call Of Duty, which is just as well because the sub-series has now come to a close. Right on time for the end of the Xbox360. Does this mean that CoD is beaten by default? Not really. And I wager Activision doesn't see it that way either. Queue Black Ops 2 for November 2012 as the swan song of the CoD series as we know it. Another sign of decline could be measured in its players. I'm not saying we should crack open their skulls to examine the dopamine levels but instead look at their dedication. CoD4 was played for two years. And if you're a competitive player, you still do after 4 years. MW2 was actively played for 1 year and wasn't even that good. Black Ops was hot for about 3 months and now MW3 already seems on it's way out after only 1 month. It's hard to tell if it is because MW3 is considered to be slightly less good than BlOps was or if the formula has run its course, regardless of MW3's quality. Battlefield, with its new engine, bigger scope, more interesting shooting mechanic, seems the title to beat now. But still, it seems a very frail reign if we base this claim on sales.

Truth be told, CoD and Battlefield aren't that similar conceptually. They share the modern combat setting. Both have a team deathmatch and the M16, Americans and Russians. But they also share the mudslinging ad campaigns. To the untrained eye, both are advertising the same game! They aren't, but the perception is still there. Neither companies are informing otherwise because they actually are rivals. Both would want the public to buy their game, and not the other. If we go on customer loyalty, Call of Duty takes the lion share. As console popularity has given it the biggest audience. BF vets are almost always on PC, where the series by and large stayed, and are a minority.

As predicted earlier, Call Of Duty remains the more popular of the two. And as long as there's another dollar left, a company will keep making its product. Even to its own detriment. I'm not sure Activision has the audacity to carry the franchise into the future on the same tech though. Which in turn means that Activision will have to procure a new next gen engine to power their franchise for the next generation of consoles if they do. They will, Call Of Duty is a very important money maker for Activision.
This dependency is where Activision may have a problem.

Not a typical PC publisher, Activision has yet to show off a next generation engine or a game using one. Others did, EA has the Frostbite2 engine from DICE. Bethesda has the Rage Engine from ID. THQ has a few projects, Nexuis & Homefront2, using Cryengine3. And no doubt EPIC is working on a next generation iteration of Unreal Engine 3. Unfortunately I was only moderately impressed with the Good Samaritan Trailer they showed at GDC 2011. But we have yet to see a game using it.

Out of all these mentioned next generation engines, Frostbite2 has seen the most actual use thus far. Need For Speed: The Run used it, and rumour has it Dragon Age 3 will use it too. It's no stretch to say that the next generation of Mass Effect, Medal of Honor and Dead Space games will use it too. Just a few weeks ago, Bioware has already confirmed it is using Frostbite for the upcoming C&C Generals2. And then there's Respawn. The original CoD developers, now with EA, who are poised to fill the void that CoD will presumably leave in the next generation if it fails to reinvent itself.

Maybe the future for CoD as we know it today, lies with a free to play model, not unlike TF2 or Battlefield Heroes. A hardcore shooter running through a browser isn't new either. It could be an opportunity to bundle the entire Modern Warfare series onto one unified platform. With all maps, all weapons and a selection of balanced perks. Optimizations could even be made to create a Pro Mod to promote professional play.
Since the specifications to run CoD have become far below those of the standard PC, it can live quite a few years longer in this form, using the same engine, generating revenue through micro transactions or subscriptions. Away from the bleeding edge of technology, where expectations are more tempered. A key ingredient may be the social aspect of CoD. The basic framework is already in place: Call Of Duty Elite. The community site where player's multiplayer stats are shown on profile pages. People can watch video content, participate in community activities, start community groups, etc. Activision has delayed, or aborted according to some sources, the PC release of CoD Elite because they are worried PC gamers will mess with the statistics.
My inner cynic would rather think this story is hogwash because when was this company ever worried about PC gamers or what they did with the game? History has shown that Infinity Ward didn't care in the least about what the (PC) community did. Glitches, exploits and hackers in MW2 didn't push the developer into any sort of action. I'm also not inclined to think IW has had a change of heart, after the stellar job Treyarch did in supporting Black Ops, because the proof is in the pudding. MW3 has no Dedicated servers and no accessible in-game console. The buggy release version and no CoD Elite only add insult to injury. To further tarnish IW's image, this just happened. My guess is it will go unresolved. PS3 users have my condolences.
An argument that comes up time and time again is piracy - by now the oldest cliché in the book. In the case of Activision it's mind boggling considering what its other half, Blizzard, has been doing on PC for years. If a game runs through a (web)client with a bunch of server side operations, its useless to pirate. MMO's can't really be pirated.

DICE is halfway there with BF3 as the game launches from the web browser. Plus Battlelog is available for all platforms. And it's great. So great in fact that I'd wish other EA published games, such as Crysis2, Battlefield Heroes, Mass Effect3 MP, Medal of Honor and the upcoming C&C: generals 2 would use it. The statistics it tracks are useful, the internet browser server browser, yes you read that right, is the quickest thing and the social interaction is just logical considering the time we live in.
It almost goes without saying that BF3 is a pureblood PC shooter. It's very customisable: FoV, dedicated servers, a long list of tweak able variables. A PC gamer marvels at the mere sight of it all. Rendered in a brand new engine that pushes our hard earned computer hardware. Meaning, of course, that the graphics look absolutely stunning. Just look at this clip from FRANKIEonPCin1080p.

I'm tempted to write a good review on it, I really am. But those are so hard to do, and might even be superfluous considering the game speaks for itself. I recommend it as it is, in my opinion, superior to MW3 in every meaningful way, as a serious FPS.

And With that I'll leave you with some BF3 entertainment by BirgirPall. Enjoy, and have fun.

A wider point of view, The Aftermath

As far as gaming goes though, 2011 has been an important year for first person shooters. There were some ambitious titles this year, many debuts. Most of them poised to capture the hearts and minds of the same public. Now at the end of the year, at last, we can look back as the dust settles. As I type this I am aware that I'm writing this from the one perspective, that of the PC gamer. I also realize there were more interesting shooters this year then mentioned here. But I wanted to keep the scope of this post limited to those games aiming squarely at Call Of Duty. For some these are competitive games and PC still remains the home of that. Console gamers should look to PC as well, because the tech that's present now will be what dictates the hardware of the next consoles. This is especially important now, because the next wave shouldn't be too long out.
Talking about hardware almost always means talking about graphics. But I shouldn't sell PC gaming short, it's not all about graphics. The social aspect of gaming shouldn't go unnoticed. More and more people are playing games. Pulled in by their friends, or simply because everyone else is doing it.
It won't be long before we find it hard to imagine the social aspect absent from gaming. For a good long while now Steam, Xbox Live and PSN have been familiar names to gamers, yet these platforms are still evolving. Becoming more social oriented instead of being just a digital marketplace. Facebook is the norm to follow. This year was also important because it marks the point at which console ports seem to look really dated. This is generally a bad thing, making developers push their tech if they want to keep selling on PC. It only takes one, because if the competition does...
So how did the other contenders to the throne fare? I'll give you the rundown of what I remembered.

Homefront turned out a little Battlefield-clone that could. Or at least wanted. At first glance, gameplay looked like a cross between the fast paced action of Call Of Duty and the scope of Battlefield Bad Company. Multiplayer was about that, if you could handle the way it played. Inertia and loose screws are two words I could use to describe the experience. None of them are overly negative, but it took some getting used to. Not nearly as fluent as CoD, but still fast. Not nearly as deep as Battlefield but not shallow either. The PC version of the game got some extra attention and it showed as this was by far the superior version. Just looking at the archaic options screen that looked as dense as an excel sheet made me smile. But that's where the praise stops for most people. Homefront got outclassed by the competition in every way. I also make a deliberate point not to mention the campaign mode. It set the scene for Homefront, let's leave it at that.
The Homefront franchise is not done though. THQ wants its militairy shooter. After all, they've been doing very well recently with their other titles such as Darksiders, Saints Row and all things Warhammer 40k. To everyone's surprise Crytek will be making Homefront 2. Originator Kaos studios was put out of business.

Crytek also had its own seminal shooter this year. Showing the prowess of the Cryengine3. At the time of the release of Crysis2 is was quite clear that real time computer graphics had taken the next step. This first engine that was ready to enter the next generation was still on current consoles. But it was until the engine started showing some muscle on DX11 tech that we saw we were dealing with an engine for tomorrow. My quad core PC with a single gtx460 had to bow out but the screenshots thrown around the web spoke volumes. Crytek had made another engine for tomorrow's systems.
The game itself was very good indeed, the gameplay mechanics deviated drastically from the standard run and gun found elsewhere. Instead you'd run, gun, cloak, super-jump, shield up and gun some more. Unfortunately the game was run like a console game, even the MP part was done by a console developer: Crytek UK, formerly Free Radical Design. Known from Timesplitters and more recently, not to mention notoriously, Haze. As a result the MP was well done but FRD was clueless when hackers started taking over as soon as the game went live. Pirates could play MP unhindered. Bringing with them the ire of all honest Crysis fans that made the franchise what it was. Steps were taken, but by then the game was bleeding active players.
The single player campaign was quite good. I'd rate it higher than both Battlefield 3 and MW3's campaings. Sure it was a lot more linear than Crysis1, but it still had set pieces which one could tackle whichever way you wanted. The story was a lot better and held a few interesting twists.

Brink didn't need a new engine. Brink took another, more artsy direction. The look of the shooter game with the hooligans was well established. The caricatures in this game wield caricatures of real guns. Too bad then, the gameplay wasn't quite the caricature of what Team Fortress has to offer. The concept of the game was painfully limited. Multiplayer matches were essentially a series of objective-oriented team challenges. Where one side would have to stop the advance of the other. These story missions got very old very fast though and that's what killed the game for me. The missions were well made but once everybody figured out the maps, every match would play out more or less in the same way. Needless to say, things got boring. I still feel extra, more open, game modes such as team death match, domination and payload could have saved this game.

After my disappointment with Brink, I was hesitant to give Bethesda more money for Rage. So I am holding off until Rage gets a hefty discount, or steam has a sale on it. Rage was well received by the press. And people seemed to like it well enough. The PC version wasn't very good at first - the techniques used by Carmack were more fit for consoles. This brought out the usual pitchfork mob of disgruntled PC gamers. Carmack sold out. Carmack lost his mind. Carmack has left us. Carmack made amends. He then stated that the PC should propably have been the lead platform for the game, and will be for future ID projects. PC problems were fixed within a few patches though, so in the end it all came together. The big upside to Rage is that Bethesda now has a established next generation engine. The engine is very powerful as it is, making Rage run at 60fps on current consoles is no small feat. Though it remains to be seen if it will be used in the future. The next big FPS from Bethesda will be Prey2, and that looks fantastic even though it still runs on the old Doom 3 engine.

Once, in a Steam review of the game I wrote the following (see quote):

Simply put, TF2 has become the best shooter of all time. It has proven its staying power for years now: the timeless art style, the classic gameplay, the support from one of the best developers. The micro-transaction based free to play model is a sign of things to come, as TF2 is the herald of a new age in computer gaming.

And I feel I was pretty much right. Even though I wrote it in a hurry in exchange for an event achievement. TF2 went free to play this year. Boldly going where no big mainstream shooter dared go. Valve was rewarded in a huge way for their calculated gamble. The game even surpassed Counter Strike, which had been on top for years, as the most played Steam game.
Income from TF2 now comes solely from microtransactions from the in-game store. Once a player buys an item, he'll activate the random drop roulette that exists within the game. Which gives him even more, craftable and tradable items.
By making the game free, Valve has effectively invited everyone to the in-games store that has already made them, and the in-store item creators, a fortune. With this Valve has changed its initial stance on character customization. They had always put character silhouette first, to improve the recognizability of the various classes. Don't take out the pitchforks just yet, because this means we can expect more solid titles from Valve because of this. Dressing up your own characters is fun but this doesn't say anything about how fun the game is to play. The answer is very. But by all means try the game out for yourself. It's free. Despite being really old in gaming terms, TF2 is still getting a ton of attention from its creators, almost as if it was an MMO. There's something new almost every month. Valve isn't resting on their laurels either. Soon Counter Strike: Global Offensive will storm Steam, and the world as the next e-sport. Next to DOTA2. Another e-sports game. They don't seem to concerned about what happens in the world of FPS, keeping Counter Strike in a league of its own. Much like that other e-sports titan, Starcraft from Blizzard.
Duking it out for the mass market though, are EA and Activision. The title fight! In the next post.

A wider point of view, part two.

In part one I talked at length about current games and their console and PC features. One of which is an often ignored option that has been irking me to no end: A configurable Field Of View (FoV) variable. A limited FoV is usually a telling sign of consolitis, a term the online PC community uses to denote a game that is marred by its console origins. Yet I have not explained just why it's such a big deal. Why the fuss over adjustable features? And what makes the FoV so important?

An example might clarify what I'm talking about. If you want to fully notice the difference between the following clips, watch the peripheral vision, size of opponents, sense of speed and turning speed. The effect is clearly visible when you look at the onscreen size and position of the AK47. This first clip is Black Ops at its standard 65 FoV:

This second clip is Black Ops at its maximum allowed FoV of 80. Which still considered on the low side by most PC gamers who'd want the scale to go as far as 90:

The differences are subtle, yet make a world of difference while playing. CoD might not be the best example of this because the gap between min and max FoV isn't that big. The engine is quite performant and so the standard FoV is still quite wide compared to other games.
But does it make a difference? Of course it does. Compare the render area with this picture in picture image images courtesy of the GamingAU.net Forums). In the picture is a screenshot of Bad Company 2, the numbers on the shot is the used FoV. 55 Is what the console uses, 85 is typically around what a PC gamer would use on a 16:10 monitor.

The difference in number of assets that are displayed on-screen is clearly visible. More on screen logically means the computer will need more system resources to display them. Also note that the 55 FoV screen is zoomed in, enlarging objects in depth. The shot with 85 FoV is less zoomed in, but objects in the distance appear smaller on screen.
There's an additional concern with the zoomed-in view. If we were to apply 3D vision to it, the effect would be less pronounced. If you've ever looked through binoculars and moved from left to right, you'll know that depth perception is minimized. This means that any game with a very narrow FoV will gain little from 3D effects, and might even get in the way of gameplay because it is so unnatural, at least on PC.
If the viewing angle gets to big though, the image will become noticeably warped, like watching through a fisheye lens. What's more, if more image is squeezed into the view port of the monitor, objects in depth will get pushed even further away, making them smaller and, as a side effect, harder to aim at in a shooter. Debunking the claim that increasing the FoV would be some sort of visual cheat, just because you get to "see more". Players need to find a workable medium, one that looks and feels comfortable.

PC gamers demand adjustable FoV because, unlike their console playing brethren, they're sitting quite close to the screen. A low FoV makes you look around constantly in order to take in your environment. Combine this with the screen distance, a lack of peripheral vision and one can easily get motion sick.
What's more, a larger FoV is more immersive because our natural FoV is quite large as well. So it is best to match the natural FoV with the one in the game. The further you sit from the screen, the smaller it can get without appearing unnatural. But when watching a screen up close, as is the case with a PC, it needs to be quite wide. To drive the point home: if your eyes were the screen, logically, you'd want to have the full natural FoV which is about 180 degrees. Fun fact: a large FoV also greatly increases the sense of speed.

So why don't console games provide a bigger FoV? The low FoV on consoles could be there for a number of reasons. As I mentioned before, one is that the player sits a distance away from the TV, his "window" into the virtual world. Making a smaller FoV appear more natural. We'll ignore the naturalistic appearance of a pair of arms more than a meter away for now. One argument against this then is: why don't they incorporate a FoV slider and give players a choice. I can imagine some console gamers are sitting quite close to the screen too.
Perhaps console devs simply can't. And that really narrows down the number of design choices.
Linked to system resources, a low FoV can also be due to the limited horsepower of the consoles. Rendering less makes a console render faster. Here is where we get to the crux of this topic. This highlights what infuriates PC gamers so much about badly ported shooters: inferior hardware dictating and limiting the way a game plays on potentially superior PC hardware.

In the past PC's have always been used for immersive applications that greatly benefit from wide viewing angles. A good example are flight simulators where, even in the early days, multiple screens would be used to simulate a real cockpit in which the pilot could watch not only in front but also to the sides. This was even more useful when piloting a fighter, where dogfights would take place in 3D space. By which I mean a fighter pilot has to keep track of his targets all around him, back, front, left, right, up and down. Watching rigidly ahead would narrow his spatial awareness to less than 1/6 of what it should ideally be. If the used foV is around 90 degrees.
We could quite easily change the context to shooters, where a soldier needs to keep track of his targets in a 3D environment. Perhaps not so much under and above him, but certainly in front, to the left and right and to the back.

With all this in mind. Let's watch the following youtube movie. The commentator, the esteemed El Presador, doesn't have an inkling about how a game engine works technically, but what he's saying from his gamer background is pertinent. And that's what really matters. The game is Killzone 3.

If you enjoyed that, there's more on topic El Presador on Killzone 3.

Killzone 3 is a prime example. A low FoV is its main persisting problem, as it has been present since the first Killzone. And its bad controls are always what people complained about however the "sluggish controls" are wrongly attributed to the controls. The game looks sluggish because the view is so zoomed in. It can make people nauseous. It makes the environment harder to navigate which in turn makes people run into walls. That's also what happened in the video.
I assume Guerilla squeezed the PS3 for performance, making the game look good, by squeezing the FoV. Render less to make it render faster. And despite the sacrifices the game doesn't run any faster than 30fps. Meaning that a TV running at 60hz will display every frame in the game twice, where it would display any given frame only once at 60fps. Twice the frame rate makes a game feel more responsive.

Because engines have gotten harder to run on consoles, the FoV has become more narrow. And in many cases can be blamed for the sluggish or unresponsiveness in console shooters. Which makes all of them fail to topple Call Of Duty. It has the lightest engine, the widest, most natural FoV, the highest frame rate and the most responsive controls on the market. Does this mean it is untouchable? On the current consoles it probably does. But I for one feel that the age of Call Of Duty is coming to an end. The new engines dazzle players with their effects, physics, realism and immersion. The visual fidelity of Cryengine 3 and Frostbite 2 will raise the standard in a way that Call Of Duty players will expect the same quality from their favorite game. Unfortunately though, if Call Of Duty has to upgrade its engine, it will also have to leave behind its 60fps and 65 degrees FoV in favor of 30fps and 55 or less FoV. With the same sacrifices on gameplay in favor of visuals, it would get attributed the same dubious award of looking great, but playing like garbage. Current console hardware only goes so far.

For PC players though, this tipping point is a sweet release from the shackles of console hardware. We're seeing it with Battlefield 3 already, where PC is the leading platform. PC hardware does have the power to run a 64 player battlefield game at 60fps with a 80+ FoV. Which is bound to get the goad of at least some ardent console players who'll have to admit that the PC platform is leaping miles ahead in both gameplay, scope and graphics. The consoles will only be getting a limited version of the very same game. Again, Battlefield 3 will have to use DX9 technology on consoles leaving out all the realism gained with DX11.

Ultimately, it's hard to point fingers. I guess the lead artist or lead gameplay designer of these games are responsible for allowing it. Even though they might not even be aware of the issue. Not knowing about the legacy of shooters or technical limitations. Perhaps they simply have to comply with the lead programmer that the game just doesn't run fast enough with these kind of high-end visuals.
Maybe it's the fault of their customers, supporting bad practice with their money. Though they are even less aware of the issues. And are at a loss about what some other, often PC players, are raving on about. Why are they getting so upset? They only know that this game doesn't feel as good as Call Of Duty but can't quite put their finger on as to why. So they play it for a week and go back to their beloved franchise with the crisp controls and the responsive frame rate. Even though they wished the other game would take them somewhere else.
Then, the newest trailer of Battlefield 3 stuns them into a new dream. The lighting looks amazing! And look at the soft shadows! Will it run at 60fps? But of course it won't. Even Josh Olin, Treyach community manager, hinted at that smirking all the way from his gold plated throne. Disappointed once again console players will go back to Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3, while DICE wonders why only the PC crowd keeps cheering them on. And EA, learning too little, will break their heads over how they could possibly reclaim the FPS crown from Activision once more. Funny that, how this cycle repeats itself.