Fundamentals of Shooter Game Design

3D Shooters

3D shooting games such as those in the Halo and Call of Duty series have become so successful that to a great many younger gamers they are the epitome of the entire medium. Never mind that other kinds of action games are more popular than shooters on console machines, and strategy games are more popular on home computers (Entertainment Software Association, 2013); 3D infantry combat shooters are at the cutting edge of what game hardware can do, so they have the most dramatic graphics and get the most press. Figure 2 indicates just how far 3D shooters have come, from Maze War, an early first-person shooter for the Xerox Star workstation, to the recently released Titanfall.

Maze War

Titanfall

Figure 2 Maze War and Titanfall

3D shooters ...