Video Games

Video Games

Genre:

Platformer: Game in which the player jumps and avoids obstacles in order to complete levels. Example: Super Mario

Shooter: Usually 2D games that involve a player, usually a space ship, shooting enemies and dodging projectiles. Example: Space Invaders

FPS (First Person Shooter): Played through the eyes of the games protagonist in which the player blasts away at enemies, usually Russians. Example: Call Of Duty

Strategy: Where a player controls action on a playing field. The games require planning and well thought out moves in order to prosper. Example Civilisation

RPG(Role Playing Game): Games where the player completes tasks of a character usually with deep emmersion. They're usually set in a fantasy setting. Example: Skyrim

MMORPG(Massively Multiplayer Online RPG): RPG but played online with many other players all interacting with each other. Example: World Of Warcraft.

Simulation: Often highly realistic games where the player can practice real life activities such as flying planes of driving cars. Example: Train Simulator.

Puzzle: Games that require the player to complete puzzles in order to progress. This can be more traditional puzzle games such as Tetris or could be like modern puzzle games such as Portal 2 which requires the player to navigate through portals using momentum and gravity.

Sports: Games that attempt to simulate playing a sport. Example FIFA.

Adventure: Games that are often story focused and require a player to navigate a story and develop a character. Often gives players choices to make. Example: Diablo

Fighting: Often typical fighting games use a side cut 2D style. Often 2 or more players fight each other. This can be with 2 actual players or a player and an A.I. Example Mortal Kombat.

Open World: Games that allow a player to roam freely. Highly focused on exploration as well as allowing the player to complete side tasks. Example: Grand Theft Auto V

Sandbox: Often confused with open world games, sandbox games allow a player to build and create worlds or items to their desire. Many sandbox games have complex physics engines. Example Garry's Mod.

Rhythm: These require the player to match actions performed on screen either by correctly timing button presses to make music such as in Guitar Hero, or by using their own body to complete the actions such as in Just Dance.

Case Study: Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO)

Genre:
CS:GO is primarily a First Person Shooter (FPS). This means that all of the action takes place through the eyes of your player. The game is played solely online with other players and has an incredibly complex competitive mode that pits 5 vs 5 in tight maps for the win. The main part of the game is the shooting aspect however the game also heavily focuses on strategy. Where as most FPS games are simple and require little skill, CS:GO is completely different. The game has many factors that need to be learned and mastered by the player. For example every gun has its own unique bullet spray pattern that needs to be learnt in order to master the weapons full accuracy. This is harder than it sounds as it requires small precise mouse movements to get perfect. Team play and game knowledge are also key as in order to play well teammates must use microphones to communicate information and tactics.

Avatar:
The character that you play as bares very little importance to the game. Since there is no story mode the avatar simply exists as an in game representation of the player. Each team has their own player models that vary from terrorists in brown uniforms with sunglasses and rags over their faces to the counter terrorists with padded armour and gas masks.

World and Other Characters:
An NPC (Non-playable character) is an in-game character designed to either be a threat to the player or a story device. Since pretty much all of CS:GOs action is online with real people there are no real NPCs there to further any plot. Instead the only NPCs in the game are bots which are A.I programs coded to act like players, however they are most often far less intelligent. These bots serve as practice when playing offline or to replace a player if they leave a competitive before the end of the match.

The world of CS:GO is very basic. Rather than having a story or and deep levels all gameplay is played on maps which are more like simulated environments and arenas for the players to engage in. The maps most played are often created by the community. Some of these community maps such as Dust 2 have been accepted into the game by the developers as the coders have become officially involved in the game production hence why no credit is given. Other maps such as Cache were integrated into the game from the steam workshop, a virtual workshop where modders, map creators and skin artists can upload their work for individual players to download and play offline, which gives credit to the creators.

Controls:
The controls in CS:GO are fairly standard. The game is mostly played on PC. The standard PC shooter controls are W,A,S,D to move, R to reload, click to shoot, space to jump and E to use.

Goals:
The goal of the game is for you and your team to win against the enemy team. In competitive there are a maximum of 30 rounds each lasting up to 3 minutes, although often will last much less time, which means that games can last anywhere between 15 minutes, in extreme cases, or upwards of an hour and a half. In order for terrorists to win they must plant a bomb, usually in some form of weapon or missile storage, and make sure it explodes or eliminate all counter terrorists. For counter terrorists they must either eliminate all enemies before the bomb is planted, defuse the bomb once planted or stop the bomb from being planted until the timer runs down.

Upon release of the first counter strike there was much controversy about the players ability to play as a terrorist. However I believe that once again this is a case of the mass media demonising video games. Yes you can play as a terrorist however the meaning of the word terrorist is different here. Perhaps a better word would be militant as rather than attacking people you are destroying enemy munitions. Of course as usual the news would do anything to make video games seem evil.

Industry:

Ownership:
CS:GO is owned by Valve. Valve is one of the biggest producers and distributors of video games. Not only does valve gain money from CS:GO but it also owns Steam. Steam is the network in which almost all video games on PC are sold through. Valve gets a cut of every sale and so has made an extraordinary amount of money. Valve has also produced other notable games such as the Half-Life and Portal series.

Franchise:
CS:GO is the third major release in the Counter strike series. The first game (Counter Strike) was released in 1999 and was developed from a mod for the original Half-Life game. The developers were acquired by Valve and hired to develop the mod into a full game. The game then received its first true sequel in 2004 with CS: Source and then its most recent game CS:GO in 2012.

Future:
CS:GO is unlikely to receive a new sequel as Valve wouldn't risk losing the massive fan base of the current game. The game is still being bought however the main profit is derived from the cases.

Cases are loot boxes that cost £2 to unlock and give the player an in game item. Unlike most games these in game items have real world value. This is part of the draw as people can, however rarely, make profit from opening these cases. However most items will result in a loss.

These cases have come under fire for encouraging gambling in young people. Due to the context these cases don't apply to gambling laws and so can be opened by anyone.

Purpose:
The purpose of video games in general is to entertain the audience. However what makes a game varies between both genres and individual titles. For example puzzle games entertain the audience by challenging their problem solving skills or a strategy game gives the player the satisfaction when their plan works. CS:GO gives the player the thrills of high paced action as well as the challenge of creating strategy quickly with good reaction times.