Writer James Lantz explores a trend that sees MMO-like elements integrated into genres like strategy and FPS, and examines how online play evolves players' goals and gameplay.
First-person shooter games have undergone a weird, subtle, and totally pervasive change in the last few years. Every big-budget FPS now cocoons the actual shooting part in an MMO shell.
It's hard to tell where this trend started, but it's been increasingly present in FPS games in recent years –- most notably in the Battlefield series and the Call of Duty games. The now combination MMO-FPS nature of these shooters brings up two major questions: what made this MMO-structure so quickly envelop every major FPS, and what effect does it ultimately have on the games that choose to use it?
