The loss of sense of scale gaming or the Call of Duty-ing of our gaming subculture

TLDR: FPS multiplayer is moving away from innovation and just sticking to CoD-like deathmatch, which wasn't inherently where CoD came from in the past.

With Battlefield 3 soon to be released in October, I wanted to take time to reflect on the lineage of vehicle-based multiplayer gameplay. Back in 1999, if you were playing any PC games chances are you remember a little game called Codename Eagle.

Codename Eagle

This was DICE's first attempt at an online multiplayer game with an emphasis on vehicle based combat. Though I didn't get a chance to play the game when it initially came out, I played it a couple years afterward based on recommendations of Battlefield 1942 lineage. Suffice it to say, it really seemed more like a beta-test of 1942 than a real game. Buggy and the controls were not good. Around the same time as Codename Eagle, team-based multiplayer was alive and well with the Counterstrike 1.6 mod. In fact, most multiplayer games of the late 90s early 2000s were based upon deathmatch and team deathmatch modes i.e. Quake & Unreal Tournament; with a little CTF thrown in for good measure. Most of these games were fought on smaller scale maps with an emphasis on fast-paced, close-quarters gameplay. Of them, Counterstrike became the staple by which others were judged by. It could also be argued Counterstrike was the first game to successfully implement objective-based rounds (Terrorists vs Counter-Terrorists). But going back to vehicle-based multiplayer: around 2001, Operation Flashpoint Cold War Crisis was released.

OpFlash still ugly in it's day.

This, like Codename Eagle before it, allowed you to control several vehicles in singleplayer and multiplayer including coop. Flashpoint also introduced players to a huge sense of overall scale in their gaming environment with the original island measuring over 100 sq miles. But unlike Codename Eagle, Flashpoint had a high learning curve to it, it was after all an infantry simulator first and foremost. So while a great game in it's own right, it's popularity remained only for the hardest of hardcore. The following year riding the high of an E3 2002 trailer comprised of "live ingame action" EA released Battlefield 1942.

The original trailer, trust me it was amazing back then.

Here was a game that revolutionized the multiplayer arena. All vehicles, ships and gun placements were player-controlled, 64 players were available on most maps with the maps retaining a great sense of scale, it introduced conquest: a multiplayer mode that simulated an ongoing battle by relying on a respawn ticket pool affected by the amount of captured flags. Now you didn't have to just kill another person to win the game, your whole team had to pull together for a common goal. This was a breath of fresh air for me and others like me that grew tired of the frag or be fragged games of the time. Those were fun for a while, but innovation felt like it was the only way to move forward the FPS genre. Battlefield 1942 enjoyed many years of popularity involving two expansion packs: Road to Rome and Secret Weapons of WWII.

More to come...