User:The Grey Lady Library Ghost/sandbox

This article compares and contrasts two entries – from Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica – for first person shooter video games.

Wiki Summary
The Wikipedia article entitled "first person shooters" focuses solely on shooters games from the first person perspective. The oldest cited game of note is Maze War which started development in 1973. The article goes on to explain how first person shooters differ from other games that include shooting, combat and action and how they form their own distinct genre.

It also explains common elements to first person shooters in both level design and gameplay features. For example, power ups, linear level design, and multiplayer game modes. This is followed by a few paragraphs about the history of first person shooters from 1970 to the present and ends with links to information on first-person shooter game engines and a list of published first-person shooter games.

Other Encyclopaedia
The Encyclopaedia Britannica article is titled electronic shooter game and has information on both first person shooters and other types of shooting games. It notes the first prominent shooter game as being the 1962 Spacewar and it continues by listing prominent shooter titles and how they contributed to the genre and helped the game type evolve into what it is today. The entry finishes with table listing notable shooter games such as Half-Life and Bio Shock. It ends with a link to a page about augmented reality.

Compare and contrast
Both articles focus on drawing attention to the various titles that have been influential to the evolution of the shooter game genre. It is interesting to note they disagree on a fair number of the most noteworthy games. Most titles mentioned on both articles provide links to detailed information about those games. Both articles include screenshots of popular revolutionary games and attempt to explain how the concept of shooting gameplay became a defining factor of a whole genre.

I noticed that the Encyclopaedia Britannica article focuses more heavily in the first developments made in the shooter formula and has much less information about  more recent developments in shooters, while the Wiki article divided attention more equally over the time since shooters were first developed and is more current (up to date).

The primary contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica article is William L. Hosch. No sources for his research seem to be given on the page and the provided further reading consists of one liked page about augmented realty at the bottom and the previously noted links to further reading about the individual games mentioned.

The Wikipedia page also provides further reading on the individual games although I notice that unlike Encyclopedia Britannica all the links to games lead to full articles about them, instead of one or two sentences.

Assessment
Both articles tell similar stories of the evolution of shooters, from the popularization of the first game featuring a first person view combined with a gun as the primary weapon to the popularization of multiplayer modes within the genre that led to major hardware upgrades and innovation to meet the demands of the consumers for real time battles against large numbers of human opponents.

The most obvious difference between the articles is length. The Wikipedia article is at least twice as long and contains many more example games then Britannica. This might make one think that the Wikipedia article has more complete information, a quick read through the article suggests this may not be the case.

The language used in the Britannica article is more condensed, the word choice is more exact and it links to lump example games into lists without going into detail on each one. For example here are two quotes from the article taking about the same game. The first one is from Britannica the second is from Wikipedia.

“Successful variations on the FPS include the electronic adventure games Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and BioShock, which incorporate horror or survival elements, as well as more complex story lines.”

'“Valve's Half-Life was released in 1998, based upon Quake's graphics technology. Initially met with only mild anticipation, it went on to become an unprecedented commercial success. While previous first-person shooters had focused on visceral gameplay with comparatively weak plots, Half-Life had a strong narrative…”'

As you can see the Wikipedia article provides more small details about the game and doesn’t even get to discuss the sequel to Half-Life till later in the article. In this way the Britannica article provides more of an overview of the topic, useful for general information or a road map before moving forward to research a subsection of the topic from other sources without bogging you down with little details or going in-depth about every game.

One shortcoming I did notice is that neither article discusses the ongoing controversy about the playing of violent shooters inspiring real life violence. Information about this is available on the Wikipedia page for “shooter game” but no there is no mention of it on the page for first person shooters. I find this strange since first person shooters are often accused of being too violent or crass. For example one of the bestselling first person shooters of all time Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 caused a lot of controversy for depicting a massacre of unarmed civilians in an airport.

Beyond that the Wikipedia article also goes to great lengths to define how first person shooters stand out from other shooter games, while the Encyclopedia Britannica article lumps both into the same entry.

= Primary sources =

"electronic shooter game." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. .

"First-person shooter." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 25 Oct. 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.