I can't register here at work so you will have to deal with the anonymous poster. Especially because I am joining the convo late. But I consider this one of the most important topics about game dev these days.
The guy's email, while holding some truths, was seriously unfair, as if it was one guy's fault we are stuck with such an unimaginative dev scene. I've been waiting for some new 'styles' of fps games to come out for going on 5 years now, and shamefully there has only been WW2 clone after WW2 clone, and some CS ones to boot. What makes it even more annoying is that no-one is really able to put their finger on why CS is still so popular as a gametype, there is nothing special about the gameplay, there is little to no teamwork or tactics (I played it professionally in the early beta's over here in Aus), and when compared to my favourites like Team Fortress it is no competition, when measured by Fun, Re-playability, Team work, tactics, weapon accuracy etc etc.. The only redeeming features of CS is the viceral feeling of shooting the weapons, and the quality of the graphics/models/textures for realism.
In reality though, using gamespy stats as a guide, Counter-strike is still owning all other games on the market. Still!!!! after it's humble beginings as really an AQ2 clone with hostages and small maps. My rough estimate would be some 70% of the online FPS community plays CS and CS alone. UT2k4 struggles for something like a 5% chunk.. and as I saw on the ut2007 e3 vid, claimed to be the most popular deathmatch game... which when compared to q3's stake is correct, but they are forgetting CS is essentially DM with rounds.
The big studios consistantly rely on the tried and true practise of remaking the same game with a new engine, like some kind of "Digitally Remastered" version of a movie. Constantly living in fear that if they change something too much then the game will lose it's already dwindling fanbase. To an avid gamer this is disturbing, forever damning us to be playing the same games in 20 years. Before CS was huge, there was a much more community based gaming population. In those days, from my hazy memory, people played mods alot more, experimenting with new ones and reporting back their reviews to readers. CS has evolved so far from it's original version, and in my opinion really got ruined when Gooseman bowed down to pressure from the cs.net forums about weapon recoil realism. Forever damning the game to random deaths from random bullets, increasing frustration and newb populations, while decreasing fun and skill. Back in the early beta's (2-4) the CS community was really quite small, with the people that had played the previous beta's owning all that came after. There was a huge chasm in skill level between the oldies and newbs, and this kept alot of people away because of the painful learning curve. Nowadays your bullets and your crosshair aren't friends anymore... maybe you will kill that guy, maybe you won't, but if you watch most CS fights people tend to die in the order that they join the firefight.
Now you might wonder why this random is going on about CS so much, well it's because I see the CS model as our salvation from repetitive games. Mods and mods alone are the only way to really start taking large chunks out of the CS player base. CS showed that if the game engine is good enough, with enough of a fanbase, word of mouth is all the publicity you will ever need. Hence why I am on the BU forum, recently converted from attempting to make mods for Q3, Ogre, Torque, HL2, among others. I am shamed it took me so long to give Unreal a chance, I had been such a diehard Q3 knucklehead I wrongly assumed UT was just another carbon copy. While the gameplay types are pretty vanilla, it's the engine of unreal that looks 2nd to none for making mods. Not just the engine, but also the tools already made that remove alot of the barriers standing in the way of us lowly "armchair game designer" scum. Mock us all you wan't but we are the only hope of making something fun and new because we don't take our paycheques from publishers and the rest of the suits that have never played a computer game in their lives.
So to end my meandering rant, keep up the good work UT team, and to the rest of you claiming there's no creativity left in games, load up Unrealed and get to work. Only gamers know what works and what doesn't in games. Fullstop.
renwald
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