What's wrong with scifi games?

#1 The important question is not what can be done in sci fi shooters, but what can be done in shooters. Sci fi is just a cosmetic dress that could equally have WW2, modern day, or any other period or theme applied. Innovation should stem from the hard gameplay rules, not the visual theatre.

#2 @Lorka, you've got a great point there but i'm not exactly sure hard gameplay rules are where the next innovation will come from.

@David, if you wanna make something that will totally wow people you need to come up with something original. Originality isn't always something completely different, usually it's just sticking together two things that haven't been stuck together before. However if you just wanna make a scifi fps to "satisfy an itch" (which i also kinda wanna do too) then nobody's stopping you.

#3 There is plenty room to grow in this nich. People want it fresh.. and good. Not same old.

Look at hollywood... Star Wars makes the most money yet none of the people in Hollywood want to make more good quality Sci Fi saga's? Why They too busy trying to sell you whatever they think you want etc.
Not to drift.

#4 In my own opinion, the problem is simply that all sci fi worlds that are showed in media are alike.
they all seem looking like something already existing, so if you want to do something really interresting in sci-fi (and worse, in heroic fantasy) you have to innovate. You have to put something new in sci fi.

#5 It's a question that's always bothered me. If Sci-Fi allows for unlimited possibilities, why are so many things the same?

As it happens, the game I'm developing is a Sci-Fi game.. it's not a FPS though, but you take on a role of an alien coming to Earth. I've not seen many games where you play the Alien... as the good guy anyway.

I'd say, instead of looking at the Big Blue Book of Aliens, make something up. Look at the Sci-Fi shows and movies that are memorable and see why they are so different from the rest.

For me it's (in no order)

Fifth Element
Babylon 5
Forbidden Planet (old but memorable)
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Stargate.

not a complete list by any account but each of these movies/shows has something unique which I remember.

Fifth Element had a very colourful view of the future when everyone else is doing it the Blade Runner way.
Babylon 5 had a vast deep story with many factions and twists instead of Star Trek bitesized stories.
Forbidden Planet had an invisible monster created from a scientists mind made real by a great machine.
Hitchhikers guide threw away the rule book, started again and wrote Don't Panic in big friendly letters on the cover ;)
Stargate had an interesting idea of intersellar travel and a new spin on a real world period of history.

#6 Thanks for all of the replies! I've got another question, that can hopefully build on the first question.

What made Halo "game of the year"? I'm not trying to copy Halo, but I'm just wondering what aspects set it apart from the rest of the scifi games.

#7 Co-op play was the single coolest thing about Halo, IMO.

My next favorite thing about Halo wasn't the sci-fi skin or the story or the characters. I found all of that to be rather blah, trivial, and derivative. Rather, I liked that I had to choose between a limited number of weapons. There was a certain strategy to it. And I liked getting vehicles places that made my life so much easier. I found multiplayer Halo to be of limited fun, though. That bias came from years of multiplayer action on the PC where things seemed much faster and more frenetic. Halo seemed sluggish in comparison. Though for a console shooter, multiplayer really rocked in it. But that was more because so many had gotten it wrong, it took Halo to finally give some semblance of a right.

A lot of people loved Halo's multiplayer. I found it sluggish and boring. I also have a special cell in hell where I will torture the one who came up with the split-screen idea. It ruins any concept of strategy at a glance and most often replaces strategy with boring and uninspired level design so that the other players cannot tell at a glance exactly where they are.

I also liked the shield mechanic. That was a welcome strategic element as well.

But personally, I enjoyed Goldeneye and Perfect Dark much, much, much more than Halo.

#8 Blade Runner Directors cut is probably the best Sci-Fi movie I've seen. It portrayed the future as a dirty, broken place full of leftovers from the current society in an Urban Cyberpunk environment.

Halo was *only* game of the year because it was given away free with every Xbox sold in the first 1 1/2 years.
Project Snowblind is a good sci-fi shooter, It doesn't focus on Otherworldly aliens so much as future politics and Civil War. That's also what makes Deus Ex so appealing, it's the Cyberpunk, not the Sci-Fi.
Deep-Space 9 was also good. It was different from TNG by focusing on the Dominion War and an immenant, transparrent invasion of a seemingly insignificant planet Bajor, but strategically placed outside of the only artifically stable worhole in existance, leading sraight to the Gamma quaderant of the galexy.
I didn't like Stargate or Enterprise style Sci-Fi, the Story-Arc thing just doesn't work with any Sci-Fi, but I guess it got popular with Desperate Housewives and LOST... and... ALias... and... well, Fox, universal and paramount. You need it in one, long episode, not short 'Tune in next week' type things. Thats why SIN episodes is a bad idea in practice.

"I've not seen many games where you play the Alien" I've seen a couple. Star Trek Borg, Halo 2, Morrowind, Kill All Humans, Area 51, Psychonauts, Stupid Invaders, Jedi Academy... It's been done a few times down the track.

#9 They are boring :P

#10 I think there is three ways to get good originality in this kind of genre :

1) Think, think about ideas, think a lot, then BREAK IT ALL!!! ........... ok now lets try to make a new puzzle with all that trash...

2) Take a fact, a physic fact, a paradoxe, an historic act, etc, somthing that is a fact. Then decline a world that is the consequence of this fact. It can be not linked to humanity, or it can be.
The problem with this method is that the starting fact must be a little original to make the concequences original. If you want to decline a world made after an astero

#11 My opinion - you could just go with coming up with something totally new, some insane feature that no-one has seen before. People will ike that. But if you want an end-all FPS -

The key is in the storyline. You could make the most basic FPS in the world, but if you play it out in an awesome, innovative, unique storyline, people will love it. Then, of course, you can pull a hl2 and do both at the same time.

#12 Most FPS games are plane old boring. Riddick was one that had great story and was pretty innovative in what you could do as a FPS character and how it was executed. Stealth, hand to hand fighting, seamless 3rd and first person camera transitions for navigating obstacle scenery, smooth transitions between cut scenes and gameplay. Lots of neat stuff, good dialogue and voice acting. Believable with good graphics. Player casts proper shadows when in FPS and can see his body.

Just lots of cool stuff really. Put Doom 3 which came out a week later on PC to shame, after playing riddick on Xbox.

Far Cry is pretty good, and sort of scifi. Wide open spaces, decent AI that was fun to play with, and lush graphics, fun story and for the time, neat physics.

FEAR, annoying samey look and feel, but really good AI, and fantastic particle effects, combined, that made everything seem much cooler than it really was.

#13 I was going to start a thread similar to this, about what makes games good/fun to play, not necessarily scifi fps games, but I think some of whats mentioned here could be applied to other game genres anyway.

I was trying out a few games that were considered 'bad'...I purchased Pariah recently as part of that experiment, as well as a few demos of other games (Mortyr, Commandos Strike Force, Timeshift, Stalin Subway, Vivisector). This was also to see what to avoid in the game I'm working on...

In single player experiences, AI is an issue to keep in mind. I don't think that they have to all be super-intelligent squad tactic users...more specifically they should have personality and behavior fitting to the type of enemy. I thought that Halo did this pretty well. The differences in how the classes of enemies responded to attacks worked well I think. Half Life 2, with its different Zombies and headcrabs is also a good example.

One aspect that I think gets more ovelooked than given neccesary consideration is art direction. I consider this to be the overall look and feel of the world you are making, and how it fits incontext with a story. You don't have to have a 20-page backtory necessarily, but your world should feel like something other that "futuristic world". This also includes lighting, color scheme, and other technical enhancements that can set the "mood". I guess that the simplest way to explain this is to not ignore the setting of the game. Deus Ex and World of Warcraft did this very well IMO (games with an established franchise can do well in this in general I'd say, but not guaranteed).

As far as gameplay mechanics go, it depends on what style of gameplay you are doing, and playing that up. If its more or a stealth game, weapons and equipment that work to that end and work well are needed, as well as an environment that supports the style. If you're killing evil robot mutant undead nazis, weapons that make them die in horrible ways is the way to go. For an FPS, weapons are such an important part of the game that they need a personality to some level. You don't need 50 types of guns that just have different rates of fire, but a solid set that is effective and does what they are supposed to do well. Tribes 1 and 2 are good examples.

#14 Many good comments. For me it comes down to serveral of the above to make a good game. I purchase many games, not because they are top sellers and such, but because they stand out from all the other similar games. I give a recent example.

I just picked up Star Wars: Empire at War. Some of you may have it. Not saying this idea is new, mainly an RTS. But it does have some unique features compared to other games currently out. Multiple systems connected, each with unique maps, and the ability to play in space and on the planets. Again not unique, I have several similar games, Star Wars: Rebellion, better than Empires, but old. Imperium Galacticum, looks old now also, and Star General. All are similar in overall play, but at the time unique from my available choices in the store.

Creative new twists to the same game is nice also. I recently bought Destroy all Humans for the XBOX. Simpe game, and a bit boring, but playing from the alien side was a creative idea. The whole game had good graphics that were tailored for the game. Set in a 50's era, evertything fit, even new cut seems and billboard ads were appropriate.

Which brings the last part. Storyline..... If it is good, it will engage the gamer. I have actually played out games to see the story unfold. Especially true with the older console games like Zelda and such. Why else woudl you bother spending hours killing simple enemies so you could advance levels to move on. The story IMO. Without that the game would have gone to the wayside like so many others that only got a few hours of play.

Ok, the last section reminds me of another more important aspect than any other, and I don't think it was mentioned earlier.

User Interface. I have seem many neat games that just don't have a friendly interface, or are too complex to play out of the box. I have no problems reading a manual to play a game good, but I should be able to atleast get in and get my ass kicked without reading a book.

We are all use to certain interface features of a game so changes are not always welcome. For example. I have played FPS games we the weapons are the number keys on the top. This is the same with most. Makes since. But every so often you get the game that is not too different mechanicly, but you have to find the magic to switch weapons. May be a lame example, but I think you knwo what i mean. If you play enough games I am sure you have encountered it.

#15 One game is very much like the other. Their needs to be something fresh.

#16 I'd agree wtih storyline needs to be engrossing.

also just because its a FPS doesnt mean it needs to just kill everything. Add other game elements.

#17 I agree that much of the science fiction available has stagnated somewhat. I think a great twist would be to take a piece of history and put a sci-fi twist on it. Sure, I know that this has been done before, but I find it gives a great social commentary as well as sets up some great possibilities.

Here's an example, set your story in a timeline where aliens have already landed, taken over the planet, and now we are at the point where humans are an accepted minority, just regaining their rights after an extended period of slavery. The aliens, having slowly learned of human culture over the past several hundred years have grown more accepting of our ways. Now the aliens are rebelling against their homeworld, with humans as allies. Two races fighting the homeworld for independence.

It would somewhat mimic the colonization of the United States and subsequent rebellion, as well as the abolition of slavery. Better yet, base your own story on something from another culture completely. One way or the other you will have a solid emotional and "real" seeming story base.

#18 I believe that it is all in the mind of the developer.

maybe i should have worded that better. :p

what im trying to say is that developers sometimes stay away from being completely
original because of fear of how gamers are going to accept it. companies want to stay on the
safe side so that their game will sell. maybe that is the reason of shortage in original game ideas
in commercial products.

BUT.....

this is the indie zone and we like completely original ideas so keep em commin'!!! :)

#19 As long as you make it unqie, and you show that its going to be unqie from the very start, then cool.
but as for "remakes" of old games and suchs, with nothing new added etc. it gets abit boring in my opinion.

#20 In my mind, there is a balance.

On one side, you have the story. On the other, the character. More specifically, the character progression.

The total of a game's absolute value should always be equal to 100%. If the story is 50%, the character progression should be 50%. The reason for this is that when a player is into a game, a story can keep them riveted from start to finish. In heavily story-oriented games, the character tends to progress with the story (eg in Final Fantasy, you could power level, yes, but if you went directly from one story objective to the next, you would often end up leveling just enough so that you weren't always dying, but weren't overly dominating either).

However, in games where story takes a back seat (Morrowind, for example), then as you go around the countryside doing random things, the main thing that will keep your attention is to see your character grow and progress. I beat things with my big shiny stick, so my blade skill goes up. Then I level. Morrowind still had a story, but it was subtle, much as in real life (everybody has some purpose, but they either haven't found it, or they are neglecting it). If you didn't want to go fight Dagoth Ur, then you didn't have to. Granted, you would never finish the game, but you know.

So before my raving continues, I will suffice to say, you either need to keep the player engrossed with the story, or the player's progression (which also adds a feeling of achievement). You keep playing Final Fantasy VII because you really want to know what will happen to Cloud, and where he came from. You keep playing Oblivion because you really do want to be Archmage of the Mages Guild, Listener for the Dark Brotherhood, Master Thief for the Thieves Guild, and Big Stupid Good-Swordy Hitter for the Fighters' Guild. You keep playing Halo because...why DO I keep playing Halo? The story is par for the course and the levels feel like regurgitated versions of the same 3 tilesets.

So there you go. I hope this helped somewhat. You have a desire to know what you can improve upon, and that's a plus for you already.