*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************
Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, was quoted in “A History of Violence: The Evolution of the First-Person Shooter Video Game, from ‘Maze War’ to ‘Overwatch’” for The Ringer.
Excerpt:
Predictable, kind of played out, but also disturbingly fun when you’re in a bad enough head space, the military FPS has become gaming’s classic rock. Fans expect a certain experience (realistic weapons, player models, and locations; a satisfying shooting mechanic; lots of explosions) from a military FPS. And those expectations limit the genre’s potential to innovate.
Not that fans really want innovation. When Activision recently announced that a remastered version of 2007’s Modern Warfare would be available only as a paid add-on to the franchise’s latest release, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare,fans of the series howled. Call of Duty heads prefer a remastered nine-year-old game to Infinite Warfare’s New Coke vibes (now with 80 percent more war inspace!).
“In some ways, what makes genre fiction good is [when] it’s the same as other genre fiction,” says Ian Bogost, a professor of interactive computing at Georgia Tech and a game designer and writer. “And I feel like that’s what the FPS is. It’s the ultimate genre fiction of games. The ultimately self-sustaining genre. You get these little twists and changes that respond to current trends.”
For the full article, read here.
