October 1, 2010 - Why Shoot?

So, gaming magazines have been my chosen bathroom reading materials all of my life. Whether it has been Game Informer, Xbox magazine, PSM, or Nintendo Power.

I work for Sacred Heart University, which was recently was featured in Gamepro's October 2010 issue (on store shelves now!) about colleges offering Game Design majors. Anyways, this blew me away because talking about college programs is not going to sell more magazines, but it certainly brought it to my attention. Diving deeper into the magazine led to their title feature  "The Shooter Issue". This feature talked all about the psychological reasoning behind gamer's love for shooters and focused in on 12 big name, upcoming or new releases.

This article is fantastic. As a IGN reader, I have always enjoyed a good "history of" or genre focused' feature. If you haven't checked out this magazine in a while, check it out. They do a good job and criticizing what is wrong with games and don't seem to jump on board right away with even the good stuff.

After reading this article, It got me thinking about why I play shooters and wondered what are some of the reasons other people enjoy this genre.

I am not a very competitive person myself and have never been considered a talented chooter gamer, but I have tried a great deal of them. I started getting into competitive multiplayer with shooters on two specific games, Goldeneye and Counterstrike.

Goldeneye for me was never about how good i was but more about how hard i could make it for my opponent to kill me. I got very good at doding bullets and smacks. This game also lent itself to some unique gaming experiences. One of the custom games my friends and I played was "base" in Complex. We set the game for 10 or 20 minutes and whoever was in control of the upper spot on the level (where the special weapon was), wins. That was a blast. I loved how you received "most deadly" or "most harmless" as was usually the case for me.

Counterstrike was a totally different experienc eentirely. My buddyand his brother played this a lot and suggested I get in on the action. I created my account as XxXTheTargetXxX. Why? Because I was piss poor at that game for months. But, with playing it so often came experience and a much better K/d ratio. At my peak I usually never lead the team with 33-5, but i put together a few 20-2 rounds that would make any team happy to have me.

I think it was the K/D ratio that hooked me. There aren;t many other games that tell you exactly how good/bad you are than a FPS.

So, those are the games that opened pandora's box for me and now i enjoy Reach, will buy Medal of Honor and have prestiged both COD:MF games.

What about you?