泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
FPS! FPS! I wanna play FPS!
Today I have a confession to make. I have a very serious Stereoblindness. As you probably know, it is the inability to see in 3D using stereo vision. Even though it is generally caused by differences between a signal received by the optic nerve and the body, people in the gaming industry usually make fun of them saying that it's too boorish.
The reason why I tell the truth is that I cannot play First-person shooter (FPS) video games despite a video game expert. After just 10-minutes playing, I feel sick and heavily dizzy.
There was an only one FPS that I had finished it. It is a legendary First-person shooter Xbox video game Halo: Combat Evolved which was released in 2001. In those days FPS-style console games had a very small market share compared to the PC platform. I believe that the biggest reason—of course, there would be other reasons—is that—unlike the combination of a keyboard and mouse on a personal computer—the Xbox controller, the input device, was not suitable for First-person shooter games which need fast controlling. This is why I could finish the game although it was still hard. Slow scene changes with analog sticks relatively didn't make me dizzy compared to use of the mouse. It could be good for a boorish person like me, on the flip-side, it's not good for gamers enjoying the uniqueness of FPS genre. If so, how could it be legendary FPS with numerous series after overcoming difficulties of input devices? I probably couldn't have finished the Halo without the fun of the game even if I didn't get dizzy easily. It changed battlefields from very closed, small spaces to the broad, flat regions. Halo has—of course, there was this kind of battle scenes in other games—the overwhelming majority of battle scenes using a cover in wide-open ground. Besides, it made up for shooting difficulties to overcome the disadvantage of input devices by improving accuracy with a time delay when an enemy shows up. It showed a lot of effort for player: a quick-turn button to make a player character turn round much more quickly; the arrangement of a varying number of enemies, not top and bottom but right and left to have an avatar easily kill enemy characters; adding vehicles for better shooting game.
The reason why I have described Halo in detail is to talk about 全民突击 (Jeonmindolgyeok)—called Hide and Fire in Japan and Rival Fire in North America—, the most popular mobile game in China recently. It's hard to say that Rival Fire is a typical First-person shooter when it comes to viewpoint, mobility, and shooting, etc. But the mobile game darted straight to the top when it was released in China since it had solved the problems of FPS genre on mobile devices. It's not quite easy. Recently some of quality Chinese video games are surprising the world. Now we don't guarantee anymore that domestic games are better than Chinese ones. A paradigm shift in any field of industry is arisen based on deep contemplation and hard work. Am I too greedy to expect that the new paradigm in the gaming industry would be formed here in Korea?
※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.
(http://www.khgames.co.kr)
Translation by Kim Ki-hui
