The objectives of these games are often intricately woven into complex and elaborate stories; however the methods used to venture through and ultimately win these games are usually the same. The general idea is to kill your way through large virtual landscapes without ending up killed yourself. The amount of damage a player can sustain varies from game to game. Some such as Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series offer more realistic environments where the possibility of dying from a signal shot to the head in very real. Other games present less realistic settings (as in the Max Payne series) where players can be repeatedly shot and injured for an unnatural period of time and even recover instantaneously from injury through the use of “medic kits” which are often placed throughout the games environment.
Many developers are now designing primarily for multiplayer gaming, with much less attention put into the single player mode. The multiplayer experience comes in two formats. The first being localized play, where multiple people play with, or against each other in either a split /shared screen capacity, or through a LAN connection. The second format coincides with the growth of the internet. Massive multiplayer online first-person shooter(s) (MMOFPS) is a sub-genre that merges FPS game play with large numbers of players over the internet. Thousands of players can share this virtual, online environment with each other, often forming into large teams to take part in organized competitions. Some of these tournaments even offer prize money. World War II Online, which was released in June of 2001, is considered by many to be the pioneer in this online medium. A whole new sub-culture in growing due in part to these online communities, where violent competition is the main component of their society.