I would play the hell out of this game

September 21, 2011 9:42 AM

"it's a hard sell to executives to suggest an FPS with no shooting, but this is definitely the sort of game we should be making, as an industry." Warco: an FPS where you hold a camera instead of a gun. Ars Technica has a writeup.
posted by rebent (41 comments total)

You know I was *Just* wondering if I should post this. Gah.

I think it's a fantastic take on the sleath mechanic, I'm for any war game where Blowing Everything UP is the last possible solution.
posted by The Whelk at 9:47 AM on September 21, 2011

Ok, cool. What kind of bullets does the camera shoot and how many hit points do they inflict?
posted by spicynuts at 9:47 AM on September 21, 2011 [6 favorites]

Pokémon Snap, the rated M for Mature edition.
posted by papercrane at 9:49 AM on September 21, 2011 [13 favorites]

It's an interesting idea, but is this just using voyeurism of others' destructive impulses morally preferable to playing out that impulse? (Also, and probably more relevant to its commercial prospects, will gameplay be as satisfying if a user's role is to watch other people shoot things?) but hey: PWN news? heh.
posted by ardgedee at 9:49 AM on September 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's no Pokemon Snap, I tells ya.
posted by Think_Long at 9:49 AM on September 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

FPS with no shooting: Portal.

Game sounds interesting, but could easily become preachy.
posted by DU at 9:50 AM on September 21, 2011 [4 favorites]

I look foward to the boss levels where you have to fight fight fight to get the gruesome photos of your side performing horrible war crimes pubished.
posted by The Whelk at 9:50 AM on September 21, 2011 [6 favorites]

Ok, cool. What kind of bullets does the camera shoot and how many hit points do they inflict?

The power to kill a yak from 200 yards away...
with mind bullets! That's telekinesis, Kyle.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 9:52 AM on September 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

Capturing footage is of course only level one. In level two, you have to force sheeple to watch the footage in order to wake them up.
posted by DU at 9:52 AM on September 21, 2011 [4 favorites]

the sheeple should get an alarm clock...
posted by rebent at 9:55 AM on September 21, 2011

Oh, I get it. Because you "shoot" photographs.
posted by Eideteker at 9:55 AM on September 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

It reminds me of Flag.
posted by zarq at 9:57 AM on September 21, 2011

So it's one of those terrible escort missions, except you are the one being escorted?
posted by Gary at 10:00 AM on September 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

If you replace war with fog and monsters in Chicago, it's been done before. Well, sort of anyway.
posted by Winnemac at 10:00 AM on September 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

At one point in the game, you play as a someone's who's job it is to Photoshop the pictures to suit your cause, how well can you mask and replace? Do you deliberity do a bad job to showcase this is happening or do you please your higher ups? MORALITY SYSTEM.
posted by The Whelk at 10:04 AM on September 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

That was part of "Beyond Good And Evil." You know, one of those games everyone said you should play. And you didnt?
posted by lumpenprole at 10:06 AM on September 21, 2011 [4 favorites]

When I was a young boy, I used to go hunting with my dad. I've often thought I'd go with him again if I could carry a camera instead of a gun.
posted by DigDoug at 10:08 AM on September 21, 2011

posted by DigDoug at 1:08 PM on September 21 [+] [!]

Don't you have tunnels and shit to worry about?
posted by spicynuts at 10:12 AM on September 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

I .....don't have an XBOB
posted by The Whelk at 10:13 AM on September 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Heh, the concept of a war journalist videogame has been brought up in several Bombcasts. I figured it was only a matter of time until somebody actually made one. And yes, there's many existing games that at least incorporate the mechanic.
posted by kmz at 10:19 AM on September 21, 2011

So, this is not Nethack played as a Tourist?
posted by Runes at 10:21 AM on September 21, 2011

FPS with no shooting: Portal.

You do plenty of shooting and breaking things in Portal. Maybe you meant FPS with no killing of humans?
posted by hellphish at 10:23 AM on September 21, 2011

I like the idea, but it seems like it would be really, really hard to make a good playable game based on this mechanic. Also, the AI involved is going to be a beast. You need reliable allies that will actually protect the player, and you need a reasonable system for scoring the videos the player produces - neither of these is an easily solved problem. Plus, for a game like this, the graphics must be good. Good luck on the budget you'll get for it.

So basically, while I don't think the idea involved is a bad one, I suspect the execution of it will in fact turn out to be very bad. I hope it won't, but I really don't have much confidence here.
posted by Mitrovarr at 10:26 AM on September 21, 2011

an FPS with no shooting

So it's all melee? I guess a camera could make a good club.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:28 AM on September 21, 2011

It's a good idea but they need to take it further. Put camera guys in games where the soldiers are players too, like the battlefield series. That would be much more interesting, and profitable.
posted by CautionToTheWind at 11:12 AM on September 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

When I was a young boy, I used to go hunting with my dad. I've often thought I'd go with him again if I could carry a camera instead of a gun.

This works well. I stopped hunting more than 20 years ago, but I still take great pleasure in tracking down animals and getting photos of them. The skill set required is very similar (and in some ways it is more challenging, because to get a really good photo, you actually have to get quite a bit closer with a camera than you do to make a kill with a gun.)

I guess a camera could make a good club.

One of my cameras is a magnesium bodied Canon 30D. It's built in such a way that you could beat a person into unconsciousness with it, and then use it to document the entire event.

...or so I've heard.
posted by quin at 11:20 AM on September 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

You do plenty of shooting and breaking things in Portal. Maybe you meant FPS with no killing of humans?

There's no shooting in the sense of "directly using a weapon" in Portal I. Well...maybe throwing boxes.
posted by DU at 11:33 AM on September 21, 2011

I always thought a paparazzi FPS could get a really good game. Trying to get tricky shots of reclusive celebs, avoid bodyguards, etc. Accumulate $ and cred points, shoot for better and better publications, buy new gear...
posted by gottabefunky at 1:03 PM on September 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

I can't see this being as being cathartic as MW3.
posted by dhdrum at 1:08 PM on September 21, 2011

Scoring videos would be an interesting challenge. I'm thinking it might not be too hard if the game noted certain big things happening during the mission: ammo dump blows up, humvee hits an IED and blows up, Garcia jumps on a grenade to save the rest of his squad. If you got those moments in their entirety and centered in the video frame, then a new high score is you!

But the plot of the game needs to go something like this: You're assigned to this platoon and no one there wants you. Really hostile at first. But then you cross the line as a journalist and actually get involved. You spot a sniper with your camera and warn the guys before he starts shooting. You put the camera down for a minute and run out into live fire to help pull a wounded soldier out of danger. You briefly take the gun of a fallen soldier and help out with the covering fire so the rest of the squad can retreat. That sort of thing. Then you're basically accepted as one of the team, almost as a fellow brother.

After this sort of thing takes up 30 percent of the game, the boom really gets dropped on you. Your friends, now your brothers, do something really bad. After the umpteenth ambush and IED, some of them snap. They shoot up a village. They coldly execute suspected teenaged rebels. They set homes on fire. They murder a girl they kidnapped earlier. Whatever. You get this on film. The brass finds out and their natural instinct is, of course, suppress all evidence. Your brothers in arms beg you to erase the evidence. A couple of soldiers, horrified at what their squad has done, beg you to somehow get the news out to the world.

And the game should reflect your choices. You give in and suppress the evidence, stay with the team, and, without discipline or real oversight, your brothers commit new and worse atrocities. Or you openly defy the brass and try to get the video to the outside world and have to avoid capture, while your former friends go after you and consider you a traitor. Or you pretend to erase the incriminating videos while trying to find devious ways to sneak it out to your editors or the open net.

Anyways, I hope the game is something like this. There needs to be a twist to make the camera wielding worthwhile and to make the player feel like they're making a difference, for good or for ill, and to reflect the difficulties of an embedded journalist trying to get the truth out to a public that would probably rather not hear it.
posted by honestcoyote at 1:14 PM on September 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Have none of you played Fatal Frame?!
posted by Brackish at 1:35 PM on September 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

THANK YOU Brackish.
posted by oflinkey at 2:11 PM on September 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

"it's a hard sell to executives to suggest an FPS with no shooting, but this is definitely the sort of game we should be making, as an industry."

How so? The prologue to Dead Rising, where you try and snap photos of the in-progress zombie apocalypse, is awesome and taking photos is a fun part of the game. Hell its so common these days its a trope.

I'd play the hell out of this.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:25 PM on September 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

There's also a game I always see in PS2 bargain bins where you're a helicopter cameraman and you need to snap a photo of a giant girl in a bikini. And there's a neat Flash game where you need to get UFO footage.

I wonder if this game has the Sexy! bonuses from Dead Rising, like when you take a photo of a sobbing woman (really).
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:27 PM on September 21, 2011

Fatal Frame was released in 2001, has had 3 sequels since, and has been acknowledged as one of the most "well received survival horror games to date".

You basically take photographs of ghosts to defeat them. Brilliant game, and very scary.

Japan: 10 years ahead of the curve, as usual...
posted by xdvesper at 4:50 PM on September 21, 2011

Yeah, what Brackish said. There's nothing new about this.
posted by bardic at 6:48 PM on September 21, 2011

this is not Nethack played as a Tourist?

I've always thought that Nethack should offer to develop your photos if you were carrying a camera at the end of the game.
posted by Zed at 8:28 PM on September 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Here's the thing about a photojournalism simulator:

1) it should simulate the tunnel vision you get when holding a camera in front of your face. (I may be especially unique in my tunnel vision experience because I'm left-eyed.)

2) the game should not pause while you review your shots.

3) the game should let you change lenses and simulate the unique look of each of the lenses.

4) the game should make it possible for you to shoot in automatic or manual modes.
posted by bugmuncher at 8:38 PM on September 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Whoo those graphics need some polish but otherwise, this game looks really fun! I think that's a pretty neat take on the usual war FPS, getting into combat situations as a non-combatant. I'm sad they didn't show how you edit your footage into a broadcast, though.
posted by drinkyclown at 9:31 PM on September 21, 2011

5) The game should let you get into drunken arguments about whose lens is better.

6) The game should let you photoshop images before sending them to AP.

7) The game should let you pick up impressionable uni students with lines like 'The things I've seen...nothing could ever numb the pain - except, maybe...'

8) The game should let you purchase a range of spactical / tacticool add-ons, like designer shemaghs.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 12:39 AM on September 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

Pfft. This is a total rip-off of Holling Vincoeur.
posted by team lowkey at 1:07 AM on September 22, 2011 [1 favorite]