you
we've often been asked why the US
produces so many more first person
shooters than Japan in the past I've
always given the standard industry
answer the first person shooter
originated in the US with companies like
it and engine creators like epic based
in the States it simply always been
easier to recruit the talent needed and
get the support required to build a
first-person shooter here than anywhere
else but that answer has always left me
a little unsatisfied is the answer true
well yeah does it explain why we create
more first-person shooters in the US
than the rest of the world combined sure
but it doesn't answer the fundamental
question why did we invent the
first-person shooter in the first place
what caused game creators in the United
States to look to first-person shooting
while the game makers in other countries
we're looking elsewhere to find the
answer we have to go back to the
Nativity of the first-person shooter and
take a good hard look at the two great
game developing nations of the time
Japan in the United States because the
answer lies in how each culture sees
warfare conflict and the gun in the
hagakure yamamoto tsunetomo a samurai
turned monk quotes Lord Sun and Ori sang
in the midst of a single breath where
perversity cannot be held is the way of
the samurai Thomas Paine revolutionary
pamphleteer and inventor said in his
crisis series those who expect to reap
the blessings of freedom must like men
undergo the fatigues of supporting it
these quotes show us a contrast the
Marshall philosophy of Japan comes out
of Shinto and Buddhist traditions and so
is focused on spiritual attainment and
mastery this philosophy is the legacy of
a warrior culture which greatly predates
the advent of the gun and as itself
intimately tied with a spiritual life of
the nation the Marshall ideals of the
United States on the other hand are the
product of enlightenment philosophy and
thus focus on personal freedom the
nation itself was born by the gun in
support of just such principles but what
did these very and cultural outlooks
mean for gaming quite a lot really
because whether they realize it or not
the cultures in which these developers
grew up often influenced their games in
Japanese games the gun isn't so much a
gun as an extension of the self the gun
is a part of the person the suit or the
vehicle and as a representation of
internal force rather than a mere
firearm when an actual gun is given to a
person it's often a tool for survival
whose use indicates that everything else
has gone wrong of course there will
always be exceptions though
interestingly these exceptions usually
star American heroes rather than
Japanese ones this idea of the weapon is
an extension of the self of channeling
inner for
rather than relying on external power is
distinctly a Shinto and Buddhist
conceptualization it allows for concepts
like mega man's internalization of new
powers and his need to become a unified
whole before he can put the world back
to the way it was and restore peace it
even allows for games about martial
artists who can project fireballs due to
their mastery of their art what it
doesn't facilitate is the first-person
shooter for the FPS you need a different
conceptualization of the gun first you
need to see the gun as a symbol of
Independence you need to be able to view
the gun as a tool that enables its owner
to ensure that the expression of their
will is not unduly constrained here the
gun empowers the man rather than as a
part of the man
this is the American conceptualization
of the gun hammered home from our
revolutionary origins to our pioneer
expansion it's what lets us put the gun
in the hands of the player but have that
gun be infinitely replaceable in this
case an individual weapon is meaningless
all that has meaning is what that weapon
lets you do second for the FPS you need
the idea that anyone can be a warrior
that it's not limited by training or by
caste but rather simply by determination
and the weapons available even though
it's been almost 50 years since the last
US draft in the States we have the
heroic concept of the citizen soldier
the everyman who will rise up and fight
for his ideals needing only a weapon and
a cause this conceptualization of what
the true warrior is is what allowed us
developers to get rid of surrogate
heroes like Solid Snake and instead have
the player jump in and be the hero
acting directly from the heroes
perspective third we need a deeply
instilled idea of personal freedoms and
the value of individuality as a
justification for violence if you look
at early first-person shooters you never
see another person on your side most of
these games had human characters
available but never use them as anything
but enemies having actual teammates or
even writing rudimentary AI might have
been more than what developers wanted to
deal with at the time but they never
have you so much as talk to other
characters or see a captured prisoner
why because first-person shooters were
about the individual versus the world
they were the Rost expression of the
cowboy ideal of personal liberty
unfortunately many of the bad aspects of
first-person shooters come from the
perversion of these ideals personal
Liberty used as a shield for the
irresponsible lack of consideration for
others the ability to do violence as
justification for doing violence the
universal right to bear arms as an
excuse to not learn to respect weapons
before choosing to use them and so on
and so forth the list goes on we don't
really need to flesh it out
all we have to do is look at the
cultural context for these games to
reveal ways to make better first-person
shooters and how to avoid many of the
low points of the genre so why did the
u.s. begin building first-person
shooters before the rest of the world
because of the way we see conflict and
the cultural mythology we've built up
around the gun but if you look closely
even today you can see the effects of
these cultural ideals on first and third
person shooters I'll leave you guys to
find a good examples from the US but I'm
going to highly recommend checking out
vanquish we came really close to putting
it in our games you might not have tried
list not only is the gameplay
interesting but it's a fantastic modern
example of the shooter through another
cultural lens all of the powers are an
extension of the characters being
through a suit guns aren't really guns
but rather the conceptualization of guns
manifested out of the self through the
understanding of guns yeah and to top it
off they still felt the need to make the
protagonist American though that's
probably just for marketing reasons
anyway thanks for watching and I hope
that's given you guys something to chew
on while you shoot stuff see you next
week