First-person shooters are flagging because developers aren't trying hard enough to push them forward visually, according to DICE general manager Karl Magnus Troedsson. An Edge interview with Troedsson outlined what the Battlefield 3 developer believes is wrong with the genre, from not enough innovation in graphics and audio to overplayed settings and themes.
"If [FPS 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. And I think that is what's happening," Troedsson said. Many franchises don't take that challenge seriously, he said, and that could contribute to genre exhaustion.
The next generation of consoles could help in the short term, but Troedsson worries that many studios will only shift away from the current glut of modern shooters to near-future settings. "You know, at some point dinosaurs are the hottest thing and everyone is making games with dinosaurs, but there are trends. It used to be [World War II], and recently it's been the modern era and people are now moving towards near future." This is not true innovation and will only lead to the same problem of setting exhaustion down the line, he said.
It is the responsibility of developers to always push forward the experience of games, he said. DICE's Frostbite 2.0 engine will power the Danger Close-developed Medal of Honor: Warfighter when it's released in October.
