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WHY WE LIKE THE GAMES WE LIKE - by Mr Biffo

8/11/2016

15 Comments

 
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I really like first-person shoot 'em ups. I always have. The first time I recall playing what could be viewed as a FPS was Sega's Killer Shark - a mechanical arcade game, in which the player aimed a harpoon gun at an illuminated Jaws wannabe. 

From there, I moved onto Battlezone - a game quite unlike any other, and I remember how it struck a chord with me. How utterly immersed I was in its world. It didn't matter that the graphics were simplistic wire frames; once I had my face nuzzling its viewport, I was immersed. I was part of the world.

Playing at home on my Spectrum, the first FPS I remember was Seiddab Attack - a little-known title, which placed the player in the role of tank driver, fighting off wave after wave of alien invader. So far so familiar. What set Seiddab Attack apart, aside from its name - spell "Seiddab" backwards - were its visuals. The view from your tank was a 3D representation of a city at night, the tower blocks rendered solely through the clever use of yellow dots.

From there, I would always gravitate to the FPS genre. Castle Master. MIDI Maze. Wolfenstein 3D. Doom. Even lesser-known games that arrived in the wake of Doom - Hexen, Heretic, Descent, Outlaws - I lapped them up like a demented cat. It didn't matter how basic the visuals were; I was somehow always able to see beyond them, to what they were trying to convey. I bought into them. 

But why? What is it about the FPS that really chimes with me? It's something I've been pondering in recent months, in the wake of entitled gamers laying into the gaming media. It was sparked by a link on Twitter to my recent Deus Ex: Mankind Divided review, where I was accused of being deliberately controversial to get hits. I wasn't - and were I looking for guaranteed hits on this site, I'm certainly going about it the wrong way.

But it just got me wondering about why I like the games I like, why my taste goes against the grain, and why some people get so pissed off when others don't share their opinions. 
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SIMPLES
At the most simple level, arguing about review scores is utterly pointless because we all have our own opinions. But why do we have different opinions? Where do they come from? Why don't we all have the same opinion, and like the same things?

On the latter point, I did some reading, and discovered the theory that there might be a solid evolutionary reason for all of us liking different games. In short, it's about survival of the species. Evolution doesn't know what might be thrown at us - disease, famine, war, alien invasion - so rather than put all its eggs in one basket, the gene pool diversifies.

It means that one area of humanity which might not be so good at, say, fighting famine, might have acquired skills along the way that would make them good at conquering a pandemic.

There's also the small matter of the fact that our minds - the grab-bag of cognitive functions which include consciousness, perception, judgement, memory and thinking - are malleable. Every time something happens to us, it gets dropped into that bag, and shapes all of those functions.

​Scientists don't even really understand what the mind is. They know that different parts of it light up, depending on different external stimuli. But our opinions, our tastes, are formed from a myriad of different elements that are unique to each of us. There's no untangling that knot in a person's head, no matter how much you might shout at it on social media.

BACON
Our taste in games, as in anything, can also be influenced by external sources. Societal pressures, or a will to conform.

Again, this is evolutionary; nobody wants to be the member of the tribe who has to go and live on a mountain by themselves. There's strength in numbers, and going against the grain, speaking out against prevailing opinions of the group, risks isolation. It's often safer to convince ourselves that we share our opinions with our peers.

You don't want to be the one who doesn't have the hot new game, because that separates you. Exploiting this is often behind hype and marketing, or any given political campaign. "Stronger together" gets right to the core of what we are. Immanuel Kant - ha ha - called it the "consensus of taste", a shared feeling between a group or community.

However, this doesn't discount the power of individual experience. This not only shapes our taste, but our perception of our taste. The adage "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are" is one of the most powerful truths there is.

Arguing against someone's subjective opinion - and, frankly, it simply isn't possible to have any other sort of opinion - is a) Pointless, and b) Fighting a losing battle. We are a sum of our opinions, judgements and tastes, and insisting that someone is wrong for having them is to insist that they are in some way fundamentally wrong. Nobody likes to hear that.

And this might also be where the perceived sense of entitlement in certain areas of the gaming community comes from. A reviewer stating that a game is bad or good could be perceived by those with a weaker sense of self as an attack on who they are.

By denying their perception of the quality of a game, or other thing, by not liking it themselves, a reviewer could be perceived as an aggressor who needs to be taken down to remove the threat to the the individual's sense of self.
​
Throw into that the "consensus of taste" among certain online communities - and the sense of safety that brings with it, particularly for those, again, with a weak sense of self - and it's pretty clear why gaming can often be such a battleground.

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THE WHY OF I
Which brings me full circle to why I like first-person shooters. For me, it's because I get to be somewhere else, be someone else. It's not even the shooting element that I like; it's the removal of self. Third-person games never have quite the same effect on me as a really good FPS, where the character I'm being doesn't have a pre-determined face on-screen to remind me that it isn't me.

It's a long-held theory of mine that video games attract those with a weaker sense of identity than other forms of entertainment, precisely because that fantasy of video games can take a person outside of a body, or an identity, that they struggle with. That's by no means a criticism of any of these individuals, more an observation - not least of myself.

I'm a very different person to the teenager I used to be, but when I was bullied at school - when my personality, and how I looked, was called into question by my peers and classmates - video games were my retreat. They were a place where I could be someone other than a me that I didn't understand. My own experience of myself was called into question by others, who seemed so confident that they knew who I was better than I did. At times, it became too uncomfortable to be myself. 

I was fortunate enough that my life went in a direction where I certainly conquered those demons - though their foul sulphur stink still drifts around my ankles from time to time - but not everyone is so lucky. And I'm of the opinion - and remember: that opinion is as subjective as any other - that a lot of gamers feel that same sense of uncertainty, and that this is why they lash out so aggressively.

Getting arsey about the opinions of reviewers? Completely pointless... but human nevertheless.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
VIRTUAL REALITY WILL BE THE DEATH OF US - BY MR BIFFO
​
ME, MYSELF AND I, AND US AND THEM - BY MR BIFFO
LADBROKES AND ME - BY MR BIFFO​


15 Comments
combat_honey
8/11/2016 12:17:58 pm

"For me, it's because I get to be somewhere else, be someone else. It's not even the shooting element that I like; it's the removal of self. Third-person games never have quite the same effect on me as a really good FPS, where the character I'm being doesn't have a pre-determined face on-screen to remind me that it isn't me."

It's the same for me. My initial interest in a game tends to depend mostly on the view perspective - the further away from the eyes of the player character, the less interested I am. Which is probably why I've never got into RTS or sports games and am very, very excited about VR.

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MrPSB
8/11/2016 12:20:50 pm

Well you're wrong, because I like it when a game tells me a story, even if it's a shitty one. So stick that in your opinion pipe, you fanny.

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Barrybarrybarrybarry
8/11/2016 01:13:01 pm

I just pretend to like weird stuff to be contrary.

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Ste Pickford
8/11/2016 01:37:21 pm

I've often tried to puzzle out why I don't usually like FPS games. My conclusion isn't as personality based as yours, but a bit more mechanical.

For me, after a lot of reflection, I think what I dislike is the focus of the gameplay around a tiny cross in the centre of the screen. The nuts and bolts of the any FPS game is lining up that tiny cross with something else that's usually close to the centre of the screen as well - the more accurately you can line it up the better. It's a bit like threading a needle. You're usually rewarded if you can accurately aim at targets further away, so the goal is always to line up the cross with the smallest possible targets, and because of how perspective works, if a target is further away in 3D, smaller and smaller movements are required at the player's end to move that cross smaller and smaller increments to line up accurately. In the end, mastery of the game is often based in incredibly tiny movements of the joystick, while focusing on a tiny / far away point in the centre of the screen.

The same can be true of some really fast driving games, where again all your focus is on the smallest cars on the horizon, and really tiny movements of the joystick to steer past them.

That's just not the kind of gameplay I enjoy.

I can even remember pre-video game physical arcade machines where you had to line up a cross hair at a target, and I never enjoyed playing them.

I like games where the importance of every part of the screen is a bit more even. In a 3rd person 3D game I might be running to the left, to the right, I'm looking up for falling rocks, down to avoid lave pits etc. Even more so in side-on 2D games.

I have enjoyed FPS games where aiming isn't such a big deal, or which have auto aim, and the focus of the gameplay isn't about lining up that crosshair with something in the distance.

I often feel that I'm missing out as some of the highest budget games, some of the games that people rave about as being the best, and that I feel I really need to try, because they are too focused on aiming a crosshair in 3D at distant targets for me to ever be able to enjoy.

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Bruce Flagpole
8/11/2016 04:03:50 pm

I'm not a big fan of FPS either, and i think you may have hit the aiming reticule on the target for me with this one too.
For me my enjoyment of FPS peaked with Goldeneye...Team Fortress 2 is probably the only one since that to get significant play time, and that is as much down to the charm and playing online with mates.
but yeah, there's something in the basic mechanics of the FPS that just don't sit well with me....which leads to each and every one feeling 'the same'....plus now if I do try to play one I'm really shit at them which just makes them even more frustrating!

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David W
8/11/2016 05:38:56 pm

You might enjoy the TimeSplitters series. The controls feel something like GoldenEye, with fairly generous auto-aiming, but much smoother. It's also packed with character (monkeys!)

Spiney O'Sullivan
8/11/2016 06:44:24 pm

Sadly any hope of a Timesplitters died when it was decreed that all shooters needed linear stages, regenerating health, only two switchable weapons and a plot that takes itself too seriously despite making you play as an invincible gruff-voiced military meat-mountain who just needs a quick breather to recover from being shot in the kidneys and getting his visor all smeared with jam.

And worst of all, that 4-player couch-based multiplayer was pretty much dead.

Chris
8/11/2016 01:38:52 pm

I like less mainstream stuff. I also prefer being away from big groups of people. I think there might be something in this.

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Ham
8/11/2016 01:42:49 pm

I stopped caring about review scores during the last console generation as heaps of stuff was receiving good scores but i found very few of these highly regarded titles enjoyable (walking dead/batmans/mass effect spring to mind). I've actually come to realise I generally like anything repetitive, skill based with tight controls, preferably where I can challenge someone else either online or paste my mates when they come over, which is strange as I'm a very uncompetitive person in the rest of my life. I also love strategy games that give you time to think of your future moves/strat over the foreseeable few hours of play, again very unlike myself IRL. I mostly turn up and see what happens when I get there

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RG
8/11/2016 02:53:46 pm

I really liked Mafia 3. Loved it to bits, but it even though nobody else did. It's like they made the game just for me. I finished it last night - polished the last icon off the map and now I'm sad as I don't know what to play next...

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Keith
8/11/2016 04:01:15 pm

"weaker sense of identity than other forms of entertainment"

this is interesting, because the times I get more into video games, are times that I'm a bit directionless, or don't have a strong sense of who I want to be/what I want to do. It's probably the only hobby of mine that expands to fill space where gaps appear, rather than being something I always actively do within a busy schedule

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Lofty from EastEnders
8/11/2016 06:33:36 pm

I like to engage in a bit of first-person shooting all over Michelle, if that's okay with everyone else.

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Scott C
8/11/2016 09:39:20 pm

I also enjoy my games in first person view; I know that you are not a fan of racing games, but similarly to shooting people in the face/balls, I really cannot fathom "gamers" who prefer to play racing games in a third person view looking down on the car, like they are having some sort of out-of-body experience. Not only is it harder to actually tell when the car is sliding, it is also massively less immersive as an experience.

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colincidence link
9/11/2016 09:29:15 pm

In which Biffitiser's musings on divergent evolution and gaming as aptitude training becomes his first Black Mirror script.

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Chris
13/11/2016 09:44:53 pm

I like boobs.

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