DICE - modern setting getting stale, FPS needs innovating

DICE GM Karl Magnus Troedsson has said the FPS genre needs to innovate as many studios aren't taking "revolutionary," or at "least evolutionary," steps when it comes to tech as well as producing something other than a "modern setting."

Speaking with Edge, Troedsson said the core FPS shooter crowd has "extremely high demands on what the games are," and how they are developed.

"If [players] don't see some kind of new, if not revolutionary then at least evolutionary, step of rendering in every game they will start to lose interest," he said. "And I think that is what's happening. Because a lot of franchises out there don't take this seriously; to actually make sure that we don't just challenge ourselves on the gameplay aspect, or perhaps some other area like distribution method, but also how it [feels], how it looks and how it sounds.

"It might just be a rendering feature but in the end it adds up to the complete experience of what we're doing. I think we're going to start seeing people moving away from the modern setting, because every now and again settings or themes start to get stale and then everyone jumps over.

"At some point dinosaurs are the hottest thing and everyone is making games with dinosaurs, but there are trends. It used to be WWII, and recently it's been the modern era and people are now moving towards near future."

Troedsson feels that a developer can only make so many games "in one particular era," before it starts to get boring.

"I think it's our responsibility as game developers to always push ourselves when it comes to the experience of games," he said. "I'm not saying we're going to build an FPS that will make you cry, or anything like that [laughs]. But we want people to be amazed when they look at our games. And I think this is more important than becoming number one... we want to make the best game that we can, and we want that game to be the best one on the market.

"If gamers think that, then we've done our job. We're not there yet, but we're working on it."