The Unofficial Official Design Document For Any Bestselling "Realistic" Shooter
Step 1: Get a Theme
It's an unwritten rule that FPS games can only be set in three different times:
1 - World War II
2 - Vietnam
3 - The (Near) Future
Any other setting is a breach of design ethics.
In the near future, the game must centre around America versus Unnamed Middle Eastern Nation. If you want to get really, really creative, replace the UMEN with Russia or China.
Step 2 - Create Some Maps
Maps can be set in three different locations only:
1 - Snowy mountains
2 - Bombed out Arabic street
3 - Bombed out Russian street
Any other locations aren't plausible enough.
Step 3 - Dim the Colour Palette
In real life, everything is either grey or brown. The more grey and brown you can fit into your game world, the more realistic it is. A sufficiently realistic game will be able to make even blood and explosions look a muddled shade of brown-grey colour.
Step 4 - Make Everything Hard to See
Everyone knows that walking out of your front door, you cannot see further than 15 feet in front of you due to vegetation, fog and swirling debris in the air.
To make your game really realistic, add loads of trees, plants, shrubs, bushes fog, fire, smoke and dust flying around in the air. You'll know your game is realistic enough when the people playing it are completely confused as to what is just down the road. Blades of grass on the hills in the distance should be easily mistaken for enemy sharpshooters.
When players start shooting at man-shaped trees shrouded in gloom and saying "What the heck? That cactus wasn't a Tank?" you know that your game is truly blessed with realism.
Step 5 - Make Death Inevitable And Instantaneous
War is Hell. You should educate players that this is the case by making almost every gun one-shot kill them and survival for more than 10 seconds utterly impossible.
In real life, it's common knowledge that a 9mm sidearm can punch through a three foot solid cinderblock wall and kill someone in one hit to their little toe. To make your game an accurate simulation, your firearms should be equally deadly, if not more so. Cover should be for aesthetics only - bullets and explosions should tear right through it in seconds.
To be really accurate, you should make sure players have no idea what in the holy fuck is killing them most of the time. This is best achieved by giving everyone and their dog the ability to drop artillery, silent helicopter attacks, heavy machinegun bursts and huge bombing runs from jet planes at the press of a button, anywhere they like.
Spawn points should also belch players out in front of tanks, high explosives and mines at every possible opportunity.
Step 6 - Add An Annoying Class/Ability/Weapon
Commonly known as "The Noob Cannon" or "The Noob Class" or "That Sodding Gun That All The Lamearses Use".
The high level of realism in your game may make it less attractive to "casual" gamers. To increase your mass market appeal, add a retardedly powerful bigass machinegun or rapid fire sniper rifle to your game. Hell, it's even realistic (sort-of)! Make such a gun extremely accurate, give it a massive clip and practically unlimited damage potential. You'll soon have players falling over themselves to buy the game.
Even better, make it a DLC item. Players will be shelling out their hard-earned in no time.
Some players will also be unable to work in a team. Hence you must make it easy for them to grief their teammates and/or whore kills without helping the team. A modified Sniper class is ideal for this kind of player, so be sure to include it in your game. Give it a cool name like "Recon Master" or something, to make sure all the kiddies use it.
Step 7 - Encourage The "Pro" Mentality
To really get your game up in the sales, make sure to design obnoxious achievements and add a "Humiliation" weapon. Monitor your forums, and delete any posts that aren't roughly like the following:
"Zo me an' mah clannn p0rned some pubb1e pub-serv0r bitzhesa last nite and i got Like a 50:1 K/D ratio LOL fear my pwnage LOL fuk yerrrrrrrrrr u all noobs bitczhessz LOL!!!1"
Step 8 - Let The Money And Good Reviews Pour In
Make an expansion pack that has 2 maps and 1 gun for £59.99 two weeks later. Swim in cash, repeat.
ALSO IN THIS SERIES!
How To Make A Game That Is Actually Realistic And Not "Pseudo-Realistic"
AND
How To Make A Game That Is Actually Fucking Fun To Play
