From the outside watcher point of view, FPSs appear extremely violent. Indeed, imagine a parent watching this kid shooting a girls head off in Unreal Tournament. OTOH, from the player’s point of view, all this violence is pretty much impersonal. It''s just another frag. K, team, here''s the briefing for the mission: Primary objective: increase the violence level from the players POV Secondary objective: decrease the perceived violence level from the outsider’s point of view Some ideas: 1) One of the reasons the so called violent games are not perceived like that by the player is that in the game world killing is the _right_ thing to do, even the _required_ thing to do. It''s not the player''s responsibility, it''s the games. There isn''t any moral questioning at all. Make violence _wrong_ in the game world too. Punish the player for taking violent action and reward them for avoiding the most violent situations. Of course, you''ll be able and tell the parent that you do this because you are responsible and want to teach the kid a lesson. Of course, more subtle game mechanics will still require a certain degree of violence. The advantage is that the player suddenly has the choice to break the rules, to do something _bad_ for a change. A good example of this is the hostages in CounterStrike. The game punishes the players that kill hostages. Every counter-terrorist hates them, as they cost them their lives more than once. Every CT learns that if there''s a terrorist hiding behind a hostage, he must SHOOT through the hostage. Getting killed costs more money the next round than the penalty for killing a hostage or two anyway. 2) Make the NPCs have a number of ''emotional modes'', and make those modes apparent through different moves and/or voice acting. Then add more interactive options to a NPC that allow the player to change this emotional mode of a NPC through different actions. Make these emotional modes useful (scaring a bank director into opening a safe, etc.) Emotional modes may be: - combat (the NPC is confident and ready for fight) - surrender (the NPC obeys orders from the player) - terrified (the NPC has completely lost it) Actions may be: - drawing a gun / pointing it at a NPC - missfiring a weapon - screaming / threatening - non-lethal hits - punches, or just bashing with a weapon - wounding the NPC or one of his friends.

Are you sure you really want the player to experience a more violent game? An adrenaline rush is one thing, bloodlust is completely different.

I was playing the demo for Serious Sam a few days ago. My dad walked in (as I was in the work room where my computer resides.) Taking a look at the game he scoffs, "one of those games?!" Oddly, I felt kind of embaressed at that point for playing something where blood and giblets fly astrew nearly every second. I immediately explained to him that I was goint to make everything "bleed" flowers instead (seriously, I would have,) but that feature must be in the full version. His expression remained the same.

I sat there thinking for a moment (isn''t Pause such a nice feature ?) ; "isn''t this the type of game that people played on Ataris, Intellivions, Collecos, and the sort way back when?" Berserk and Robotron came right to mind. Really, the only things different, aside from a few in-level switches and doors, are the graphical and auditory (gr?) representations. Are they any more or less fun if the enemy explodes in to pixels, chunk of flesh, or flowers?

i''m not a big fan of the genre, but isn''t the point of an FPS violence (i.e. shoot everyone else to get frags)?

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

quote:
Original post by SonicSilcion

Are you sure you really want the player to experience a more violent game? An adrenaline rush is one thing, bloodlust is completely different.

FPSs are trying to be more violent since the beggining. I''d say wanting to make a more violent FPS qualifies as a justified target, wouldn''t you?

quote:
Original post by Hase

Sounds good from the point of realism, but it will make the actual violence worse (if that´s what you wanted), as shooting an enemy who as already surrendered and is lying on the floor crying is far, far more personal and emotionally involving than shooting a faceless badguy.

Hmm, now I''m starting to feel guilty. But, the player would also feel guilty after doing something like this, even if he had his motives of revenge, based on either story or the game. And, as long as the game reacts to actions like this one in a logic way (other soldiers can hear the wounded one crying then the shot then the silence, and become enraged and fight to the last man).

quote:
Plus, I don´t want to make games for kids who have to tell their parents that the games they are playing aren´t bad. I want to make games. Period. The assumption usually is that the customer is an adult. If not, then specific changes have to be made to acommodate that. Inhowfar that´s useful I don´t know, as kids play everything anyways, but I do believe that not all games are for everybody.

Yes, you''re right. OK, then let''s find ways to make a FPS more violent just for the sake of it.

Another idea: I''ve noticed that if for some reason the player _must_ kill an enemy in a certain time frame or with a single shot, the violence level tends to rise:
-very hard X Wing mission where I had to protect some corvettes from tie bomber waves coming from different directions, and I had to shoot down the bombers really fast and run towards the next wave.
- the shotgun factor: If you shoot and miss, you''re most likely dead (CounterStrike at least, Quake more or less). (this applies to other slowly reloading weapons, sniper rifles and so forth)

You can''t begin too imagine.
MUHAHAHA....ermm
lol

"There''s so much too do, and a lot of you are wasting time.
This is ART dagnammit! get creative or get buried."

Doesn''t sound like a good idea to me.

Why would we want more violence? We don''t play it so much for the violence, but the challenge of the entire thing. Sure, some blood and guts is cool, and gets a good adrenaline rush, but let''s not push it.

WHen I played Soldier of Fortune, I discovered that you can mutilate bodies extremely easily and realistically. I turned all cold, the adrenaline rush disappeared, and I couldn''t sit in the game for more than half an hour.

Realism is cool, but once people are dead, let''s jsut leave them there. Take Half-Life. You can mutilate bodies, but it isn''t exactly realistic. Hit them with a crowbar a few times and they explode. Interesting to do but not really any real violence. Also, having to dela with the military and monsters means there''s no real emotion involved. Like you said, it''s just another frag. If people are injured, they limp around, but are quite ready to fight, even though they are a lot worse and usually more concerned with their leg(AI in that game is amazing).

You seem just sick and generally mentally not quite right. Not wrong, just not quite right.

Mass war is probably the best way to go, not some sort of game where you have this person cringing under you. Then you turn into like an Evil Terminator type of guy. You just blast them apart and feel sort of smug. With mass killing, no real thing stays in your mind and the entire situation becomes surreal, which is again the point of the thing. Shooting lot''s of people who look essentially the same is the same sort of thing. THey make no impression on your mind. ANd besides, games like that will just train the truly mentally disturbed to kill without any emotion. Completely desensitized.

Games are for fun and a temporary adrenaline rush, not all out bloodlust.


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The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.

wouldnt that kill off all the fun. Plus, the games arent only for kids u know.