In all the shooters starting with Wolfenstein you are killing nazis, aliens, monsters from hell etc not really humans or good ones anyway.

I liked shooting ducks with a light gun in duck hunt, doesn't mean I would harm a real duck. People like to blow off steam and killing imaginary things over and over blows off that steam so they don't go to work with a real gun and hurt people.

FPS are fast paced games, some people would die of boredom playing puzzle games.While I grew up with FPS I prefer RTS games because of the strategy involved.

Well it's all down to personal taste - I like single player fps games , rpgs, arcades, shmups but I don't like strategy and sports games... You need to be able to detach yourself from this fantasy violence, killing a virtual mob is not the same as real life - it's just a game mechanic. Of course there are people that don't like this virtual violence and want games that don't portrait it that much - I know several people that feel this way. It's all down to personal taste and preference just like movies, colors, clothes 😀 some are more popular than others and appeal to a wider range of people but that doesn't mean anything that's why there are so many choices out there.

It's a game.

If you have trouble separating fantasy from reality.. then yeah, I can see how it wouldn't be fun.

That being said.. .BRING ON THE FPSes. The more gibs, the better!

There is actually quite a bit of strategy in FPS games if you want to stay alive, especially if you are playing multiplayer.

The AI in a lot of newer FPS games is also way better than it used to be.

I like almost all genres of video games. It really just depends on the game itself on whether or not it is fun or not.

I have a question for you.. How can Asteroids be considered violent? All you are doing is breaking up bigger asteroids into smaller ones until they are gone so they don't hit your ship?

Jo22 wrote:

Hi everyone, this thread might be a bit provocative, but there's something that I honestly wondered for many years.:
Why are people so nuts about shooter games, especially games like Doom, Half-Life and such ?

It's not provocative, just... weird.

You can ask the same thing about any kind of game genre, or anything else for that matter.

Why do people like strategy games? Why do people like role-playing games? Why do people like point-n-click adventures?

Jo22 wrote:

I always had to overcome a mental barrier and once I did overcome it each time, Il had a bad gut feeling playing these games.
How do you or other players manage to withstand this ?

Not everyone has these feelings, so for many, there is nothing to overcome.

Personally, I never had problems with violent games (even depicting graphic violence against humans), but extremely violent and gory movies often make me feel uneasy. So I guess to my brain there exists a separation there, which may not exist for you.

Well, let's take this in two halves. First, there's the gameplay itself -- without ethical considerations.

When I first played Wolf3D, it was new and exciting and technically brilliant. I had some fun with Doom when it came out, as it was likewise impressive and fun to explore the new maps. I enjoyed Duke Nukem 3D, mostly because it was amusingly over-the-top and had some interesting maps. For reasons I can't really explain, I also really liked Rise of the Triad. Beyond that, I was pretty much over FPSes until I went to a LAN party and played Unreal Tournament. In mulitplayer, or even just against AI, it's just a lot of fast-paced fun. I especially like to turn on the anti-grav and quad-jump and just float around and try to snipe people going by. It brings out my competitive side and I.. um.. may have had to replace a keyboard after one of those LAN parties.....

Once everyone started getting into Counterstrike and Battlefield 1942, I was booooooorrrreeed. Although, I loved Rogue Spear and Ravenshield -- I still play those. Never got into Call of Duty or any of that. Meh.

When I'm by myself, I like RTS and role-playing games, platformers, puzzle and adventure games, and I'm always looking for something new and unique. My favorite (PC) games of all-time are the Myst series and all the usual Blizzard games (not into WoW or any other MMOs though.)

OK, so about the violence aspect of it.

Personally, I have this vague moral barrier I don't like to cross. I have zero problems with FPSes and tactical games. I just don't equate the willingness to "kill" a virtual character with an action that actually harms anyone. To me that's like worrying about health codes when you're playing make-believe Tea Party with a toddler. It isn't really about blowing off steam for me -- I don't get some kind of thrill from "getting to" harm someone in a virtual world. It's more like when Mario jumps on a Goomba's head, flattens it, then it disappears. There's no association with violence there for me.

That said, when you start getting to the point of all the Rockstar games where you're brutalizing people and glorifying hedonism, that's where I check out. I feel like that's feeding a darker side of humanity that we all have, but it's the ethical man's responsibility to keep it in check. I know this is kind of an arbitrary distinction that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, that's just where I've chosen to draw the line.

Jo22 wrote:

I never had fun at playing these.
killing virtual humans never made fun to me.
I always had to overcome a mental barrier and once I did overcome it each time, Il had a bad gut feeling playing these games.

Its because unconsciously you crave the real thing, virtual experience is just not enough ;P

because Carmack finally found a game design niche in their technology trailblazing and struck gold and kept at it, this proved to be popular and spawned many imitators and competitors and there's soon a saturation of FPSes to replace the saturation of flight simulators and space combat simulators (RIP) for the definitive "pc 3d genre" especially as a joystick/complete mt32 setup/feelies aren't essential to playing them. And then there was online lobby services that focused on these games and the scene really grew towards the end of the 90s then...

This might sound like i'm biased for FPS games but i'd rather have more JRPGs and fighting games in PC in that period. Why did it have to be only Knights of Xentar for the longest time 🙁 thanks a lot NEC.....

To be honest, I could take or leave the "shooter" part of a lot of them too. For me it's all about the chance to walk around and explore some fantastical environment; to have a somewhat immersive experience of being somewhere that doesn't or can't exist. My favorite FPSes of all time are the Descent and Unreal series for this reason, and when the "realistic" (gritty, brown) WW2 wank-fests took over they basically killed the genre for me.

As to the violence... I still fire up UT2004 botmatch or others like that every now and then, because it's fun and there's a ton of really interesting and creative maps to look around, but in games like that the violence is basically cartoonish (and the enemies respawn.) In Doom you're shooting zombie soldiers & cyborg spiders straight out of an '80s metalhead comic, and in Descent you're literally blowing up malfunctioning mining equipment. Even Rise of the Triad, which I do love & is probably the game that got me into the genre, plays more like a dumb comic book than a "simulator", and despite its clunky engine, manages to have some pretty cool scenery to check out.

I've also been known to fire up deathmatch maps and just turn off all the bots, spending a good chunk of time running around finding all the neat bits of design or trying to make crazy jumps to get out of bounds. 😜

I played Crysis for the first time last year and got up to the part where you have to pick up & strangle an enemy soldier with your bare hands... nope. No interest in playing further after that.

If anyone knows of good "walking simulator" games that have awesome sci-fi environments to poke around in & don't need to resort to being shooters, feel free to send them my way. I feel like this is an under-represented genre.

Not sure if matches the walking simulator definition, but The Witness is AWESOME. I think you'll like it.

leileilol wrote:

because Carmack finally found a game design niche in their technology trailblazing and struck gold and kept at it, this proved to be popular and spawned many imitators and competitors and there's soon a saturation of FPSes to replace the saturation of flight simulators and space combat simulators (RIP) for the definitive "pc 3d genre"

Carmack? Design? Carmack was their lead programmer, Romero the lead designer. Seeing how lackluster their games have been once they split, I'd suggest that without that early synergy of id Software, the FPS genre would not be the same.

dr_st wrote:

Carmack? Design? Carmack was their lead programmer, Romero the lead designer. Seeing how lackluster their games have been once they split, I'd suggest that without that early synergy of id Software, the FPS genre would not be the same.

Romero? Design? Romero was their lead "program easy shit I cant be bothered with" tool/script designer. Seeing how lackluster his everything have been once they split, he has been very lucky to somehow associate himself with id Software in the first place. There is a reason they fired him as soon as they ran out of Tom Hall Doom idea book concepts.

Jo22 wrote:

Why are people so nuts about shooter games, especially games like Doom, Half-Life and such ?

Because they are fun.

dr_st wrote:

You can ask the same thing about any kind of game genre, or anything else for that matter.

Yeah.... I bet someone would say that a rabit with a big gun is wierd too. Matter of fact, the generation that are now 70 to 80 years old, did say that all console and computer games, was wierd back in the 1980's and 1990's.

rasz_pl wrote:

Romero? Design? Romero was their lead "program easy shit I cant be bothered with" tool/script designer. Seeing how lackluster his everything have been once they split, he has been very lucky to somehow associate himself with id Software in the first place. There is a reason they fired him as soon as they ran out of Tom Hall Doom idea book concepts.

I think you should read 'Masters of Doom' if you haven't yet. It may change your perspective on things. 😀

Romero was the lead designer of the early id games, and he programmed the easy stuff. He did a lot of the levels too, and if you look at his levels in Doom, Doom II and Quake - they are consistently among the best.

He is nowhere near as good a programmer as Carmack (very few people are), but he didn't have to be. The magic of id was created by the synergy of the core team - John Carmack, Romero, Adrian Carmack, Tom Hall - and some of the great talents they had on board at one point or another. Someone has to program the engine. Someone has to design. Someone has to program the tools that people will be working with; yes, it's not as 'hard' or as 'cool' as doing all the clever math and graphics, but it is absolutely necessary if you want to have a game out, and Romero was doing that all along.

Id "fired" Romero because Carmack felt that Romero was dicking around too much and playing games and "being a rockstar" rather than working. In some ways it definitely seems true. But a lot of Romero's contribution could not be measured by the number of hours one sits at a computer coding away. For example, he pushed the side projects with Raven. Without Romero there'd be no Heretic and Hexen. But that's not something he got credit for, because it didn't go towards completing id's own games. The rest of Id chose Carmack over Romero, because super-talented programmers like Carmack are more rare than talented designers like Romero and his tech was at the core of id's business. Without Romero they still had something; without Carmack they would have nothing.

Romero failed after leaving id because of his hubris, and because he didn't understand project management, didn't understand that what you can do with a dedicated small core team does not scale to large corporations. His Daikatana failure was so massive, that he never bounced back from it. Carmack didn't outright fail, because he got to keep most of the core, and because he has always been more conservative.

But you know, as much as people refuse to see it, Daikatana, shitty as it is, is still a better game than Quake II, on which engine it was built. Quake III, despite the super technological advances, is not even a game but just a bunch of deathmatch levels with some bot AI. DOOM 3 (which I played through, and even enjoyed to a great extent) is nothing but a cheap-ass poorly-scripted horror movie where you get limited control over the main character. How long did it take id to put out a decent game after Carmack and Romero split? Did they ever? I'm not sure.

I think the gaming world lost out because Carmack and Romero failed to find a way to continue working together. Imagine if instead of having Quake II and Daikatana, we'd have Daikatana actually done right, with the polish of Quake II, and not 3 years behind schedule. Would have been much nicer, I think. Maybe we wouldn't have to wait for "Half-Life" to "redefine the genre".

I haven't played any FPS games where I felt like hurting people was the point. The fun part of Doom is being a bad ass on rails, slaying demons to sweet rock n' roll rifts. I don't think I ever thought about how the imps feel. it isn't part of the game play formula to empathize with the pixel art - they are just obstacles and targets on screen that I overcome. It's like throwing a ball. The mechanics of the motion are fun and satisfying within themselves. It's the same for FPS games. It's play. The doing part of the game is fun.

To each their own really. I used to like JRPG games a lot when I was a kid, now I can't hardly play them. I just get bored. Doesn't mean the games are bad, it just means I would have more fun playing something else.

Jo22 wrote:

Why are people so nuts about shooter games...?
...many (okay, all) of my male classmates were into killer games....

Projectile weapons and war were invented long before civil society and monogamous marriage. Until recently, most of the human males who were passing down their genes to the next generation were the males who were most successful at killing, exiling and enslaving. Propensity towards aggression is a trait that is hard-wired, an inheritance from our ancestors who had the necessary instincts to survive and reproduce. Most men can't ignore the hardware-accelerated dopamine rush that comes from dominating rivals in some kind of struggle, so, the best that we can do today is to use sports, action movies, FPS games, business, politics, religion, etc. to satisfy our primal urges.

Note: This opinion should not be misconstrued as an endorsement of male chauvinism. It's merely my understanding of ancient humans' lives ("solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short"), genetics and psychology.

Personally, I've never been interested in playing as "the bad dude" or contending with demons. My haughty ideals from my upbringing have always prevented me from enjoying those storylines, so I didn't play Duke Nukem 3D or DOOM like other teenage boys. However, I enjoyed playing Counter-Strike (as a counter-terrorist) for a year. FPS games stopped being fun when my friends flunked out of college because they were addicted to them. Later, a friend of mine died in Afghanistan in a real firefight, which really soured me on FPS games because they make me think about how he died. I still enjoy shooting in WWII flying games (as long as I'm playing for the right side), Mario Kart, space games and Worms games, but the realistic-looking modern-day FPS stuff is repulsive to me.

FPS games are easy to get into, while offering more degrees of freedom and exploration than side-scrolling platformers and horizontal shooters. In those early days of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, even exploring those corridors was quite a blast per se, let alone the shooting part.

Flight sims and space sims also offer freedom of exploration in 3D space, but they require harder learning curve than FPS. X-Wing and TIE Fighter still require you to memorize a lot of keyboard buttons, while Doom just let you explore and shoot immediately.

It is interesting to note that more complex FPS like Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri --despite their critical acclaim-- never achieved widespread popularity as much as Doom. So I guess it is quite reasonable to assume the popularity of FPS games is driven by their simplicity and immediacy.

Jo22 wrote:

Hi everyone, this thread might be a bit provocative, but there's something that I honestly wondered for many years.: Why are peo […]
Show full quote

Hi everyone, this thread might be a bit provocative, but there's something that I honestly wondered for many years.:
Why are people so nuts about shooter games, especially games like Doom, Half-Life and such ?

When I entered school, I noticed that many (okay, all) of my male classmates were into killer games.
At some point, I had to join them at a few privte LAN parties. However, I never had fun at playing these.

So may I ask why this genre did become so popular ?
I mean, I like playing some violent arcade games like Asteroids, but killing virtual humans never made fun to me.
I always had to overcome a mental barrier and once I did overcome it each time, Il had a bad gut feeling playing these games.
How do you or other players manage to withstand this ? 😕

Back in the 90's FPS were the best games for me cause coming from the 2D games of the 8bit consoles and the classic platform prospective, the in-person fps "2.5D/3D" point of view was such a big revolution for me that I felt "really" inside the game action. Same reason why I always preferred the inside-the-car point of view for racing games too.

I'm not really into the killing part so much as the storyline. If there's not a good story, I usually don't enjoy it. I tend to take a stealthy approach, and was never very good at games that require running and gunning. Some of my favorites were Return to Castle Wolfenstein and its sequels, Half-Life 1 and 2, Unreal, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake II, Medal of Honor, and F.E.A.R. Quake II is the weakest story of those listed, but for some reason it still really appealed to me. Nostalgia, great atmosphere and sound effects made up for the story, I guess. Duke3D was super fun for the first episode, but then it got old after that.