Red Orchestra Dev: CoD Has Ruined A Generation Of Gamers

[Steven Bogos]

Red Orchestra Dev: CoD Has Ruined A Generation Of Gamers

Tripwire president John Gibson says he is "discouraged" by the state of multiplayer shooters on the PC.

"I just thought, 'I give up. Call of Duty has ruined this whole generation of gamers,'" John Gibson, president of Tripwire Interactive said to PC gamer [http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/13/call-of-duty-red-orchestra-2-interview/] in an extensive interview about the state of the PC FPS. Tripwire is best know for the Red Orchestra franchise, and Gibson talked at length about his frustrations with trying to sell Red Orchestra 2 to the Call of Duty crowd. He does praise singleplayer shooters such as Fallout, saying that they are "finally coming out from under the shadow of the Hollywood movie, overblown 'I'm on a rail' linear shooter," but is "discouraged" by the state of multiplayer shooters on the PC.

"When I was developing Action Mode [for Red Orchestra 2], I got a group of people that I know that are pretty hardcore Call of Duty players. And my goal was to create something that was accessible enough for them to enjoy the game-not turn it into Call of Duty, but try to make something that I thought was casual enough but with the Red Orchestra gameplay style that they would enjoy," says Gibson. He said that his frustrations with the Call of Duty players eventually led to him giving up on them entirely.

"I'm really discouraged by the current state of multiplayer shooters. I think that, and I hate to mention names, because it sounds like 'I'm just jealous of their success,' but I'm really, I feel like Call of Duty has almost ruined a generation of FPS players. I know that's a bold statement, but I won't just throw stones without backing it up."

When asked what the Call of Duty players specifically complained about, Gibson said "Almost every [complaint] boiled down to 'it doesn't feel like Call of Duty.'" He spoke of the "randomness" of games like Call of Duty and how they "compress the skill gap." He says that it is OK to compress it to a degree, so that the elite players aren't constantly dominating newbies, but Call of Duty takes it too far. "You might as well just sit down at a slot machine and have a thing that pops up and says 'I got a kill!' They've taken individual skill out of the equation so much."

Gibson says that the idea of making players feel awesome despite their personal skill has made it incredibly difficult for more hardcore, skill based games like Red Orchestra 2 to flourish. "They get enough kills in Call of Duty to feel like they're awesome, but they never really had to develop their FPS skills beyond that." He says that when these players come in to a game like Red Orchestra 2 and aren't immediately successful like they have been in Call of Duty, they instantly assume that the problem must lie with the game, not the player.

"It's frustrating for me as a designer to see players come in and they're literally like 'In Call of Duty it takes 0.15 seconds to go into ironsights. In Red Orchestra 2 it takes 0.17 seconds to go into ironsights. I hate this.'"

Source: PC Gamer [http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/13/call-of-duty-red-orchestra-2-interview/]

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[Korten12]

Yet... Games like Natural Selection 2, CS:GO, Arma 2 (without DayZ and probably Arma 3), and various others have been popular despite not being anything like CoD. Sure they don't have the same finanical success but still...

Hell their own Killing Floor is massively popular and that's very multiplayer centric. I mean I know it's a "zombie" shooter but still...

 

[major_chaos]

Oh what a load of pretentious wank. I'm used to the CoD players are all morons nonsense from forum goers but its just sad to hear it from an actual dev. As someone who enjoys CoD at times (not that much mind you, I traded in BLOPS2 for some credit to buy Dead Space 3) what turned me away from buying RO2 wasn't that "its not CoD" or some nonsense abut iron sights, it was that it seemed a bit too much like real WW2 city fighting: Slow, and likely to end suddenly with a instantly fatal bullet from someone you never saw.

 

[Costia]

This reminds of another story the escapist did:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115296-AMY-Doesnt-Suck-Its-Just-Hard

I don't personally play ArmA, but from what I have heard it is a hard game and still quite successful.

 

[Jumwa]

He just makes me wanna try out Call of Duty, honestly.

I've wanted to get Red Orchestra 2, but the rational part of my brain tells me not to, because I'm just way too much of a casual these days to enjoy it.

 

[teebeeohh]

did he just call fallout a shooter? because of he did he really should turn in his hardcore member card.

 

[Albino Boo]

I think Tripwire are misdiagnosing the problem here. I have 615 hours logged on RO2 and the problems the game has is the same problem as you find in all team based muiltplayer fps. The key is the ratio of players willing to attack/defend objectives versus the number that are only concerned about K/D. In R02 too many players spawn and plink at targets with an MP40 and never stand on the point. There is also the attitude, carried over from RO1, that anyone using an automatic weapon is a noob and because you don't repeatedly stand in the same spot and duel with a rifle makes you a bad player. The idea that you might move and flank and score more kills never occurs to them. So the issue, in part, comes down to map design, I know they are using historical places for RO2 but that doesn't stop moving objectives about to incentivise the player to go there. The other thing that tripwire could do is look at is the scoring system, if you don't record the K/D stat, how many players would try to maximise it? If you reward having a high win/loose stat, more players would concentrate on maxing that. For the record my k/d is 1.67 and win/loose is 2.89, so I practice what I preach.

 

[anian]

I'm no CoD supporter/fanboy etc., but their map design is reeeeeeally good. And the action is not so much flinch trigger based, as say CS:GO...CoD games just have really good gameplay.
And playtesting with people who's comment in the end is "It's not like CoD", is idiotic and may indicate what your problem is.

 

[hazabaza1]

Oh, fuck off you pretentious git.
The reason Red Orchestra didn't sell well is because it's a fairly unknown shooter based in a time we've all moved passed that played and ran like shit, and also doesn't focus enough on supporting objective based play.

There's still a bunch of "hardcore" shooters out there, this guy needs to stop making excuses as to why his game didn't sell well.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Well I disagree that this is the reason why RO:2 didn't do well but I don't disagree that a good few of the people that play games nowadays don't care for challenge. I wouldn't say CoD is to blame just that it is so popular so many people play it so a lot of people that play it don't have the right mind set. Some people think that if I am good at 1 FPS/RTS/genre I must be good at them all. They then don't take the time to learn a game's nuances and then quit.

 

[Lieju]

So, you get a bunch of people who are big fans of some game, and then are surprised they complain your game is different from what they're used to?

Of course if you're used to some specific game-series, you're then going to be frustrated if you have to deal with something you're not good at.

Were these people who generally just played COD? I mean, I know people who don't really play much video-games (and certainly would not identify as 'gamers'), but they play a lot of COD multiplayer.
Sure, it may suck and be frustrating there's a big audience that's not interested in diversity, but if there were no COD, would those people be playing a great selection of very different games of different genres?

I wouldn't say CoD is to blame just that it is so popular so many people play it so a lot of people that play it don't have the right mind set. Some people think that if I am good at 1 FPS/RTS/genre I must be good at them all. They then don't take the time to learn a game's nuances and then quit.

Yes, a lot of those people don't have enough experience with different kinds of shooters and overall games, so they can't tell if the game is bad or just different from what they're used to.

I think the answer is to think who your target audience is, and aim to design your game so that it's easy to approach by people who aren't familiar with a lot of shooters.
It doesn't mean you should simplify it, but unless you're targeting an audience that already knows how to approach the game, you need to make it so they can get into it, and tell if they're failing because it's because they're doing something wrong and know how to improve.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Oh, fuck off you pretentious git.
The reason Red Orchestra didn't sell well is because it's a fairly unknown shooter based in a time we've all moved passed that played and ran like shit, and also doesn't focus enough on supporting objective based play.

There's still a bunch of "hardcore" shooters out there, this guy needs to stop making excuses as to why his game didn't sell well.

Saved me from having to say it. Comments like this...

"It's frustrating for me as a designer to see players come in and they're literally like 'In Call of Duty it takes 0.15 seconds to go into ironsights. In Red Orchestra 2 it takes 0.17 seconds to go into ironsights. I hate this.'"

... are just ridiculous.

 

[Dogstile]

Eh, I wanted RO2 to be good. I really did but by the time I got it, it just wasn't. The tanks are crappy, the playerbase sucks and nobody is willing to take points. At least in COD people try. In RO the penalty for dying really discourages anyone taking risks.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

It's because it does well what 'most' fps players clamour for; fast paced and responsive gunplay that makes you feel like a badass. It's done what Doom and Quake did back in the day.

 

[lancar]

Honestly, I can see where he's coming from.

Not because COD might not be a superior FPS, because it probably is in a way, but because this very same situation reminds me so much of World of Warcrafts dominance in the MMO market.
So many other mmos have died trying to cater to WoW's audience it's not even funny, and the ones that're actually doing somewhat well are because they're trying to do something different from WoW. Ultimately, that's the only reliable way to tempt customers away from the status quo.
Being a developer trying to break away shares from the shooter market must be frustrating as hell for the very same reason, and so his reaction is very understandable. It's not easy when your vision of quality doesn't match the expectations of your audience.

But of course, he's going to have to try something else in order for his studio to survive. That's just the way of things. Humans are creatures of habit, and the FPS crowd has been conditioned to expect COD and not much else. If someone has eaten green apples for a long time and learned to love that, you're probably not going to have much success selling them red ones at the same price. Try an orange instead. Variety is the spice of life, after all

Also, nothing lasts forever. Sooner of later, CODs dominance will be broken. Either by player apathy, or because something better comes along.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I wouldn't say CoD is to blame just that it is so popular so many people play it so a lot of people that play it don't have the right mind set. Some people think that if I am good at 1 FPS/RTS/genre I must be good at them all. They then don't take the time to learn a game's nuances and then quit.

Yes, a lot of those people don't have enough experience with different kinds of shooters and overall games, so they can't tell if the game is bad or just different from what they're used to.

I think the answer is to think who your target audience is, and aim to design your game so that it's easy to approach by people who aren't familiar with a lot of shooters.
It doesn't mean you should simplify it, but unless you're targeting an audience that already knows how to approach the game, you need to make it so they can get into it, and tell if they're failing because it's because they're doing something wrong and know how to improve.

I suppose I'd agree with that as it seems like a reasonable approach as to why people act like this. I don't know people who only play 1 game well so I can't really comment on their other gaming habits.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Know your market... people flock to these "no work all reward" games for that very reason, meanwhile you are making the opposite game, yes you market will be niche, very niche.

But hey at least the millions of CoD fans crying out in pain over this statement is good marketing.