The First Person Shooter Epidemic! OH NOEZ WEZ IN A RUT!

Its no secret that the entertainment industry is at its core a business and will do whatever it is that makes them money. Often times this means recycling old ideas constantly or sticking with what works... which is why we get so many "fads" for lack of a better word. With movies and video games we see this happen with genres. Movie genres usually explode in popularity for a short time and die out after a few years whereas with video games... the effect is long lasting and stagnates the development of the entire industry.

The most notable instance of old would be the platforming explosion the late 80's and early 90's. Super Mario Bros. ignited a powder keg of imitators by defining a genre for the rest of video game history. Many of these subsequent games were brilliant like Sonic, Mega Man and Kirby.... while most others.... they fall into the abyss of game history obscurity.

This genre fad is still prominent today in the form of First Person Shooters. Doom, Golden Eye 007 and Perfect Dark were among the pioneers of the genre in the mid and late 90's acting as prophets for the on coming cancer that is the First Person Shooter.

Whether you place the blame in the onset of hits like Counter Strike or Halo, the genre picked up steam at the beginning of the millennium and has not let up ever since. The problem? We are ten years in and there still has not been a significant leap in the genre.

Improvements have been limited to better graphics, smoother game play, more guns and better multiplayer... the problem here is a lack of innovation. Aside from improved graphics (which all genres enjoy) it is hard to tell the difference between an FPS made in 2001 and an FPS made last week. Many of these games feel like the same game over and over and over again.











Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2007)



Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2009)

Another popular genre, the RPG, has stayed popular because its been so innovative over the last decade (western RPGs anyway). Developers like Bioware innovate the genre with each release and have are responsible for what IGN says is, "the most significant leap in the RPG genre of this decade" with their game Mass Effect.

So why do developers create the same games over and over again? Simple answer: to make a bunch of money because most gamers are idiotic sheep. For those of us with a brain... we get to save money every month.