love yang

there's a lot of cool ideas and good analysis in here. i definitely think that counterstrike was the first time i realized there was a massive split between what i wanted from a multiplayer FPS and what a lot of other people wanted. i don't even really consider the arena shooter subgenre i love so much to really be an FPS in anything but a technical sense anymore, because the market and culture surrounding FPS games as a whole has been so dominated by demands for more immersion, realism, simulation, and of course a whole lot of bootlicking military propaganda.

i don't necessarily agree with his conclusions though. i think all the reasons he cites are good reason to discard the idea of FPS games representing a genre of game altogether. the way i see it, it's not that the genre has fallen out of favor or popularity, it's that it expanded to the point where so many different design choices and priorities have made talking about it as a unified category not really make sense anymore. Arma, Quake Champions, Gone Home, Serious Sam, Overwatch, and Portal are all very different kinds of games. they just happen to share a control scheme and camera perspective.