Picking up and experimenting with new guns may be part of the fun in your typical first-person shooter, but Doom’s co-creator thinks there can be too much of a good thing. In a recent interview with The Guardian, John Romero discussed what he thinks is one of the shooter genre’s biggest problems at the moment: there are too many weapons. “I would rather spend more time with a gun and make sure the gun’s design is really deep – that there’s a lot of cool stuff you learn about it.”
This abundance of loot – which reflects how blockbuster games generally have become Netflix-style services, defined by an unrelenting roll-out of “content” – means you spend as much time comparing guns in menus as savouring their capabilities. It encourages you to think of each gun as essentially disposable, like an obsolete make of smartphone. “The more weapons you throw in there, the more you’re playing an inventory game.”