Gamers crying out for a story-driven shooter, says 2K

There is room in the crowded military shooter market for a narrative-driven experience, Spec Ops: The Line executive producer Denby Grace has told VideoGamer.com.

“It feels like the right time to release a game like this,” declared Grace in a Spec Ops presentation. We asked him what he meant by this?

“It feels like the right time, we’re starting to see a few articles coming out from the press [about] people just being tired with what’s out there right now. The games that are out right now are pretty bloody good. We’re big fans of them, we play them – of course we do. But at the same time people are saying they’re tired of single-player, and narrative experience, being ignored in these games. It’s a little bit of a missed opportunity.

“I don’t know if the honeymoon period on these games is over. I think they’ll always be there. But definitely they have a different focus to what we have.”

Grace said it is “Battlefield, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Homefront. The current crop of military shooters,” which aren’t tapping into the audience which wants better narrative.

“The timing seems really good. It seems to us that there’s not a lot out in this space – narrative-driven military shooter – and people are starting to cry out for it, a little bit. And that to us is, like… well, we’re kind of rubbing our hands in glee. We’ve found something that consumers will want.”

Grace says that much of the team’s inspiration comes from Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness” and “also things like Full Metal Jacket and Platoon”.

“You can draw comparisons with what those [film-makers] did to war movies back in the ’70s and ’80s. They [film makers] changed the stories they were telling about war. War movies before that were quite simplistic; they were still great – Kelly’s Heroes, John Wayne war movies, stuff like that. But what these films did is they started telling personal stories about the soldiers in combat, and about war can actually afflict someone, change someone, and really f*** with someone.”

Grace concluded: “I don’t mean the honeymoon period in commercial expectation. They’re gonna sell a gazillion units, or whatever the number that ends up being. So I don’t mean commercially. But I think critically, people are starting to ask for more – or if not something more, ask for something different.”

Spec Ops: The Line is scheduled for release in 2012. Read about our latest impressions of the game by heading over to the hot off the press Spec Ops: The Line preview.

Grace says that people are becoming bored of the soulless military shooter, but a quick look at review scores for this year’s Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 suggests otherwise. Activision’s record-breaking monster is ranked as the 12th best game of 2011 for Xbox 360 according to Metacritic, two places higher than the narrative-driven LA Noire.