How To Make A "Realistic" FPS Game

Having played a lot of FPS games in my time and getting frustrated over all the same issues in every single one, I thought I'd write a nice little list for any developer that wishes to make one in the future :D

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

My favourite game of all time: System Shock 2

Sometimes, when I look at modern games, I actually sort of feel like we're taking backwards steps even for all the fancy graphics and gameplay mechanisms we now have.

These feelings usually come to me after booting up an ancient copy of System Shock 2 (from 1999 - almost 12 years ago!).

No matter what "modern" game I've been playing, Shock 2 always feels like a breath of fresh air. I've finished it at least 10 times and yet every playthrough it still feels like it could have been a new release.

The graphics are a little outdated now (though they have been given a large overhaul by the game's community, which remains very much alive to this day) but the game as a whole is fantastic.

The game was pretty much the first to use "audio logs" to tell a story, a concept many games have recreated - but never with the same competency. The story itself is really great and the progression through audio is at times genuinely horrifying.

Eric Brosius. the sound engineer who worked on the game, is a very, very skilled musician. The Shock 2 soundtrack is a mix of "conventionally" creepy tunes in certain levels, but also uneasy cyberpunk techno beats in others.

If you'd asked me to feel scared by a techno track, I would have laughed before Shock 2. Then you play it, and the frenzied, frantic nature of some of the tunes mingled with the feeling that something ex-human is always lurking round the corner, poised to rip you to pieces, creates a really powerful atmosphere.

Yes, atmosphere. Something else Shock 2 nailed better than any game I've played since.

Take the "Hybrid", the first (and most common) enemy you encounter in the game. Hybrids are humans recently infected by the alien parasites who have overwhelmed the spaceship on which the game is set.

They are typically musclebound crewmembers stripped to the waist aside from a bloodstained vest or jacket. Most of their hair is missing, they have an unnatural yellow tinge to their eyes, somewhat contorted facial features and a large worm burrowed into one side of their head and looped round into their chest.

Gross and disturbing? Yes. Their dialogue is their most horrifying feature however.

You'll be wandering along a dark, corpse-strewn corridor and then suddenly a faint moaning whisper will drift to your ears.

"We are...we are, we are...we are..."

Then you notice the figure standing aimlessly inside an office, twitching slightly and clutching a lead pipe. He reaches for his head and sways.

"What happened to...me?" He turns and sees you and his voice morphs into a pained bellow as his body moves without his will.

"They seeeeeeeeeeeeee you! Run! RUUUUUUUNNN!" And you do.

"I'm...sorry..." The Hybrid moans pitifully as he chases you, pipe raised. "Kill...me!" And then you shoot him, and with a gasping cry he crumples mercifully to the ground.

What game since has managed to make me feel revulsion, horror and yet sadness for an enemy? Even Bioshock (the "spiritual successor" to the Shock franchise) and it's Splicers don't come close.

I could continue on about how the character development paths are very open ended, how the combat is simple enough to be intuitive and yet far superior to Bioshock's clunky Plasmid obsession, how the game rewards exploration and has intelligent puzzles, how the mini-games for hacking and repairing are not frustrating...I could, but that would make this post far too long.

The gameplay feels right, the story is engaging, the atmosphere is very very creepy and the whole package together is really neat.

I will close simply by saying that if you're a gamer sick and tired of shallow and cloned modern games, you truly cannot go wrong with Shock 2.

Google it, look up any compatability fixes (mail me or comment if you need some help), love it!