Game Design :: FPS Games

FPS games, or First Person Shooters come in a few main varieties.  These can really be grouped into 3 main categories.  This first focuses on "arena-style" multiplayer, where the game is designed mainly for multiplayer combat between players in a set area (or arena) with a variety of places to hide, a lot of weapons and/or armor to grab that will respawn, and perhaps even some tunnels, halls, or buildings to run through.  I call it arena-style because the maps are not really maps.  You can't leave a relatively small area.  The idea is that you just run around shooting everyone until you die, then respawn and repeat.  The person with the highest kill count is the winner.  This type of game usually also offers bots (computer controlled players) who can take the place of humans if you don't have enough players to make it fun.  The second main category focuses on multiplayer as well, but focuses more on teamwork.  The games often are often either military or specialty police force games where your team works together against the enemy team.  The maps are usually much larger and varied, offering more tactical and strategic planning.  In some, you have to take and control certain things on the map.  In others, it's just a matter of killing the enemy over and over.  The third main category includes games that focus on the single player game.  These games usually include some form of story to connect the maps so it makes sense to the player.  They also tend to have even larger maps than the team combat category.  The focus on these is usually to complete a set goal or goals on each map usually without dying.

In general, all FPS games really need good graphics to be among the top selling games.  Some older "classics" can get by with their outdated graphics.  DOOM, for example, still has a large following even though the graphics are extremely outdated.  However, if you are making a new game, you don't fit into the "classics" category and simply aren't going to do very well if the game doesn't have really good graphics.  There is a fine line to draw here, though.  For an FPS game, you want graphics to be the best possible, but at the same time, you don't want to lose out on a large share of the gamer population who doesn't have a computer that can handle those graphics.  It's best to offer a large selection of graphical options for players so you can give cutting edge graphics to those that can handle them and still offer options that allow a player on a 5 year old computer to easily play the game without bad framerates.  FPS games are at the top of the genre list for games that absolutely need really good graphics to do well.  Most other genres can get by just fine with lower quality graphics, but not FPS games.

Beyond graphics, you really need to have great sound in the game.  Guns that sound realistic, surround sound that easily lets the player know where gunfire is coming from, fire that sounds like fire if you're close to it, etc.  FPS games are meant to be a realistic experience and sound is almost as important as the graphics.  One thing with sound that I see forgotten in many FPS games is the effect of echoes from gunshots.  If you fire a gun, you don't just hear a single sound.  At least, not if you aren't in a wide open area.  If you have buildings or trees or mountains or any other objects nearby, you are going to get echoes and you'll hear that gunshot multiple times before dying out.  When you're firing a lot of shots, that can be harder to hear and I think that's why many games don't bother putting it in there, but when you fire a single shot and that echo is missing, it is quite noticeable.  Including it can really help to make the game more realistic for players.  And a more realistic FPS game will usually do better.

Beyond the general items that all FPS games need, we'll look at each of the 3 categories individually.  For the arena-style multiplayer games, how the maps are set up is vital.  Each map has to include many places to hide or create ambushes.  There should be open areas and tight areas (such as inside buildings, where turning a corner can put you in someone's sights).  There should be a variety of heights the player can be, from the main ground level to one or two stories up either by being in buildings or towers or ledges or even just hills.  You need a variety of places to hide and ambush people to keep the game interesting.  You also need to have a lot of weapon and armor spawns throughout the map for players to grab as they run out.  From personal experience, I strongly recommend having these spawn points be completely random in what they spawn.  I have played some of these games, where there is one spawn point in the entire map that offers the best weapon and every player immediately makes a mad dash for that spawn point as soon as the game starts.  It takes the fun out of the game when you force players to react in one specific way.  If all spawns are random, then players don't have to pick a single path every time they play the game.  It gives them more freedom and makes the game more fun to play repeatedly.

Team multiplayer games need to really focus on the team aspect and not just have a team.  There needs to be specific ways that the team works together.  If the game just puts players together without offering a way for them to really help each other rather than just all running out to shoot the enemies, it loses a lot of the appeal of a team game.  Instead, consider offering ways to reward players for staying together (at least in groups of 2 or 3) to work together.  This could include just bonus to damage or could include more strategic options, such as a player acting as a spotter who can let teammates target enemies or defenses more easily, or who can warn their team about ambushes, or just offer air support to a given location where their team needs help.  The ways you build the team play can vary greatly and can be anywhere from a bare minimum to very complex.  As long as it's well-designed, it will greatly improve the appeal of any team-focused multiplayer FPS game.  The main goal is to keep the team from "scattering" and doing their own thing.

Single player FPS games need a bit more than mulitplayer focused ones.  First, you need at least a mediocre story or plot to hold the game together.  Obviously, a better story makes for a better game, but FPS games can get by with only a minimal story.  Second, you need some decent objectives other than just "kill everything," though that's still definitely a main part of the game.  It also helps to have a good variety throughout the game rather than everything looking the same from start to finish.  Historical games often run into a problem with this, where you're always fighting in the same kind of old stone buildings in Germany or something similar.  To a point, you're stuck with that, but at the same time, you can often manage to add variety even when your environment that the game focuses on doesn't have much variety in it.  The main thing is that you want to keep players from feeling like they are on the same level/map/area when they finish the game as they were when they started.  It can also be helpful to offer multiple ways to complete the objectives in the single player game, such as offering stealth as an option at certain points, or offering other ways to complete the objects rather than just a heads-on attack approach that is usually seen in FPS games.

FPS games are similar to the hack-and-slash Action-RPG games in that you are mostly just doing the same thing over and over in the game and so the game needs to do its best to offer variety so the game doesn't get tedious and boring after playing it for awhile.  Offer more variety, have great graphics and realistic sound effects, and you're going to have a good FPS game.  Throw in some extras, like being able to damage the environment (breaking windows, shooting out tires, blowing vehicles or buildings up, leaving damage to the landscape if using bombs, mortars, grenades, etc., and so on.  The more you can offer players to keep the game interesting and prevent tediousness will help to make the game stand out above other similar games.  If the game strays from the typical Earth setting and puts you on some alien planet or way in the future or something similar, then consider also offering some really unique weapons.  It doesn't hurt to even have a few weapons that aren't all that useful, but will make the player laugh like some of the weapons/modes in Rise of the Triad.  If you're sticking the player into an environment where everything is alien to what we know as real, it doesn't hurt to make the weapons really unusual as well.  It helps to make things feel "right" in the game.