FPS is not the same as "shooter."

[TheComedown]

Surely you're trolling, "Halo Fanboy" screams troll pretty well. Anyway down to buisness.

The thing is, most people understand what is implied by "shooter".

When I say shooter, only five people on this site think of Ikaruga.

Yeah most people don't think of that one specific game. Look whatever the popular concensus is is irrelevant. Especially if we want to preserve the genres we've almost lossed over the years which isn't helped by their terminology being stolen.

So you're saying that because we don't nit pick at genre names.. whole genres are dying? This is ridiculous, definitions and meanings for words change all the time it doesn't suddenly make the initial thing it was describing vanish out of existence. Fag is a good example, sticks, smokes, gays. (there is another one, how many kids under 16 you recon know what gay initially meant?)

Why shouldn't we call FPS games shooters?
It's in the title, First Person Shooter and you shoot things in the games.

FPS is a subgenre of shooter. Calling a shooter is being unspecific.

Yup, video games need pretentious, horribly complicated nomenclature like the music industry. I mean I feel like a complete ass when I get my trance and electro mixed up....

Understanding the semantics of any area of expertise is the first step to actually understanding anything. If you want to be anti-intellectual then go ahead but I'm not going to say you don't look like an idiot.

Sorry what? Why cant I be unspecific? People ask me what type of music I like, I say metal or hardcore, I'm not going to list out things like grindcore/metalcore/deathcore etc etc, most people would look at me funny and say "what?" Most people dont know that shit, nor really want to know. How is that being anti-intellectual? that statement in itself is so mind numbingly stupid I dont really know what else to say.

 

[The Journey]

Pretentious =/= Intellectual

If it's a game where you 'shoot' things then it is, by definition, a 'shooter'. Feel free to refuse to use such "lowbrow", general terms if you want, but don't act as though you're somehow elevated by the desire to make unnecessary distinctions...

This gets my vote in terms not having OCD for game related acronyms and a ten foot pole up your arse.

unnecessary distinctions...

I seriously cannot fathom how you can think we don't need to sort Time Crisis and Contra into different genres. Quit talking about games if you can't understand something so obvious.

You sir, should insult others less and give more reasoned and well explained arguments. You are trolling, terribly if perhaps unconsciously, but I wouldn't count on it.

And seriously, Time Crisis. I don't even call it a shooter, it's an Arcade game because, mostly, it sits in the Arcades and if I actually owned it and felt the irresistible urge to correct people on my own interpretations of the content within I would have to shoot myself for being such a complete and utter fucktard.

 

[Unrulyhandbag]

You have no clue what Gun Shooting is (holding a gun-like controller) or Run n Gun (sidescroll shooter with your feet on the ground.)

Yes i do understand these meanings and you're being very rude simply because your thread did not go your way.
A game mechanic (i.e. the medium of play) is entirely different from a genre which is the culmination of aesthetic and atmosphere. Please know your terms before you approach threads. And your language. The escapist is a respectable website, not a flame arena.

Game genre's are defined SOLEY by their mechanics. Besides survival Horror but that's a bad term anyway.

Games aren't books their genres are never defined by aesthetics and to do so is decadent. And a genre is just a set of conventions it can apply to mechanics aesthetics or whatever. For video games it's obviously the former.

What? books are generally defined as fiction, none fiction, biography. Sub divisions are done thematically "this book is based on romance" those are aesthetics. You are being told which emotions are likely to be evoked by reading the book. A romance novel is not on the shelf as a "first person, time compressed social interaction story"

In what way is this decadent? How is defining something by it's emotional stimulus degrading the underpinning values of society?

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

You see what I don't get...those people who say Gears is FPS, it's like there is so much FPS on todays market that everygame that involves shooting is now an FPS...kinda silly.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

Despite myself I feel a little hurt by people thinking I'm trolling. I was trying to help people understand genres and why making FPS synonymous with shooters is foolish. If didn't use insults would I have been more well recieved? I've taken some of my writing style from insult heavy critisism that I enjoy reading but I'll try to tone it down in the future.

Who cares, there are two types of shooters:

Tactical ones - by extension competitive ones (CoD 4 on Hardcore for example)

Arcade Shooters - everything from pie tossing to Halo to Timeshit to Haze and all those railshooters. You know, games that are more lightfooted with no sort of real competition tied to them.

No arcade shooters are from actual arcades not defined by the nonsense dichotomy you've invented.

OT: As far as I'm concerned, 'Shooter' is just an apt description for an FPS as any other game where you hold down buttons until someone dies.

That definition is so shallow it's not even superficial. So free aiming, movement, inventory management and other mecahnics are meaningless?

Anyway an RPG is a game where you control the story. Most Computer RPGs are very shallow.

 

[jboking]

snip

I'm like 90% certain that the 'medium' is the video game itself. FPS, RPG, RTS, etc. are all genres within the medium of video games, not the medium themselves.

I suppose we are going into the realms of sub-mediums and sub-genres but the mode of play is the game. Without mode of play there is no game so the game itself is the FPS, RPG, RTS, etc. which is the medium.
Great point though.

hold up, I'm not certain that's right either. You see, the game itself, before you consider what the content of it is, is the medium. It is the form through which the information of the game (being the gameplay style - FPS, RPG, RTS, etc.) is transmitted or communicated to the player. I believe that the genre is very much a sub-medium.

but let's be honest...we're going to devolve into semantics here aren't we?

 

[TheComedown]

I just don't like ignorance.

You seem to be pretty ignorant towards ignorance on this issue.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

FPS games are, in fact, "shooters."

Saint Bernanrds are dogs.
So are labs, collies, pugs, and dachsunds.
Referring to any of them as "dog" is perfectly fine. It's just not specific.

It's one thing to unify terminology, and it's another thing to ignore the convenience and utility of "general headings" that can include more than one specific subgenre.

I acknowledge this. The problem is that the term "shooter" is treated as synonymous with FPS.

 

[ethaninja]

Why shouldn't we call FPS games shooters?
It's in the title, First Person Shooter and you shoot things in the games.

This guy pretty much summarise the whole reason people call FPS shooters.

Exactly. Unless it was some new porn called First Person Sex. Or unless someone was talking about Frames Per Second.

 

[ethaninja]

I just don't like ignorance.

You seem to be pretty ignorant towards ignorance on this issue.

His name is Halo Fanboy for crying out loud. It's like the ID for a Troll. I'm already starting to see flame on this thread

 

[Halo Fanboy]

snip

I'm like 90% certain that the 'medium' is the video game itself. FPS, RPG, RTS, etc. are all genres within the medium of video games, not the medium themselves.

snip

I think, and I could be totally wrong, that this phenomenon has a ton to do with the idea of increasing specificity.

If anything specificity (I'll take for granted that that is an actual word and not just a mispelling of specialization) has decreased. Which is why we're not seeing so many of the genres I mentioned in OP.

For your other response see what I said to dastardly.

 

[matt87_50]

you know what just occurred to me? counter strike is still the shit.

also, you think thats bad... what about 'Action Game'

wow, thats not vague at all, hardly any games have actions in them... there are those games with no actions in them! I think they're called 'movies' *resists urge to make MGS4 joke*

oh, and on that note, reducing names to acronyms is annoying too. most the time I don't know what people are talking about.

 

[Mr.Petey]

I think the concern about the OP is people using the term very loosely on a wide encompassing set of games and sub genres. What I'd like to point out is that a lot of well known "shooters" can be called as such because a name of a particular series i.e Call of Duty will be remembered as an FPS, so for the more famous ones, there is no real risk of misinterpretation. Yes COD is a shooter but we all KNOW it's an FPS so why give a drawn out explanation?

Obviously Deus Ex will always be more than a standard FPS game but it's nothing to loose sleep over if people generalise it as such as it only takes a couple of curious people to "find out what's so special about this supposed deep multi-ending and method 'FPS game' " that word of mouth will surely convince those around them that it's more than that and as I said, if people want to generalise and assume, thus ignoring the advice of their enlightened peers, then that is their loss.
Human nature will on the whole look at something at face value and label it. We all do it at some point in our lives and slap a label on it. It takes a little more to look beyond that label however, so the point of it being labelled and such can be moot to some of us who are wanting to expand our knowledge beyond the label. Christ I hope that made sense!

I have to agree with a lot of people and say this topic is a little bit too nitpicky really regarding the whole argument "No, it's more than a shooter! You can do this and that too!"
Life is too short to be correcting people in any sense in my honest opinion

 

[The Journey]

*Snip*

In what way is this decadent? How is defining something by it's emotional stimulus degrading the underpinning values of society?

I love you so much right now.

 

[Woodsey]

Yes, but most people aren't big enough numbnuts to not realise what is implied when you call something a shooter.

[small]zing![/small]

 

[Dublin Solo]

I acknowledge this. The problem is that the term "shooter" is treated as synonymous with FPS.

I have been here for quite a while. I read magazines, news, and attend conventions, meetings along with other programmers at my job.

Where did you get the impression that the two terms were treated as synonymous? The fact that some people could use the two words without distinction doesn't mean it's the case for everybody.

 

[L4hlborg]

I wouldn't call them media (plural for medium), since a FPS cannot be compared to a newspaper.

Now games are a medium. Horror, action and adventure are genres. WTF is between them? I sure don't know, but I wouldn't call them media.

Medium is not the same as media. It is the medium used to depict something. A book written in first person is not a first person fantasy, it is a fantasy. Don't even know how you could mix that up with a newspaper.

Medium = Method of depiction

1. An intervening substance through which something else is transmitted or carried on.
2. An agency by which something is accomplished, conveyed, or transferred

Sorry, bad example with the news. But yes, media is a plural form of medium. Look it up.

Now having a pile of mediums stacked on each other feels a bit inaccurate. Shouldn't they be sub mediums or something? I mean FPS's don't exist outside of gaming.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

Game genre's are defined SOLEY by their mechanics. Besides survival Horror but that's a bad term anyway.

Games aren't books their genres are never defined by aesthetics and to do so is decadent. And a genre is just a set of conventions it can apply to mechanics aesthetics or whatever. For video games it's obviously the former.

Put simply, no they're not. By saying a game's impact is based solely on its mode of play is limiting it to nothing. An FPS can only ever be an FPS. It cannot be a transcendant experience that explores the meaning of being human in war filled attrocity, it becomes merely a game where you shoot things in the first person.

Anyway, i've had enough of your trolling. Derp away.

You are paying me the ultimate disrespect when I toned myself down to respond to you.

Transcendence is an absurd term invented by the mystics and you try to apply it to video games. Transcendance can not happen to games or even anything for that matter. By calling something "merely a game" you make it clear that you don't give a shit about games. I love games which is why I want to be able to talk about the properly with terminology that allows both precisness and clarity. I sincerely wish you and other game-haters would leave these game related sites.

I wasn't angry in this entire topic till now.

 

[TheComedown]

I just don't like ignorance.

You seem to be pretty ignorant towards ignorance on this issue.

His name is Halo Fanboy for crying out loud. It's like the ID for a Troll. I'm already starting to see flame on this thread

Yeah.. Ok you didn't read my other post, and missed the joke in this one. I started my other post in this thread by stating "Surely you're trolling" The text following that was curiosity to see how far he could travel on already deeply flawed logic.

 

[Dublin Solo]

I sincerely wish you and other game-haters would leave these game related sites.

After you.

I wasn't angry in this entire topic till now.

Says the guy who had the nerve to call everybody "Numbnuts"