THQ: “Call of Duty stamped out creativity in FPS genre”

THQ’s global communications boss Huw Beynon believes that FPS aren’t what they used to be, and his studio hopes to rectify that with Metro: Last Light. According to Beynon, a lot of the creativity previously seen in FPS shooters has been “stamped out” by Activision’s tried-and-tested Call of Duty formula.

“I think it’s probably very true to say that there’s reaction to what used to be a small subset of the genre of a military shooter,” he said. “It’s ballooned and mushroom-clouded to almost define the genre and kind of stamp out memories of what I remember being great about first person shooters, whether that was Half-Life, System Shock, or GoldenEye—where a FPS didn’t necessarily have to involve military material, it just meant an invitation to a fantastic other world, which to me was always the point of video games in the first place.”

Beynon believes that gamers are losing interest in the idea of being as some kind of superhero soldier, and are eager for a fresh experience – he believes Metro delivers on this front. He did however have some kind words to say about Dishonored: ”I’ve hugely enjoyed [Dishonored] and I’m thrilled that they’ve had success with that—it’s probably the game that’s interested me most this year and am glad to see it get the critical and hopefully commercial success that it deserves.”

The elephant of the room is of course that THQ has just filed for bankruptcy, while Activision has Scrooge McDuck pools of money to swim around in. If gamers are sick of the Call of Duty formula, why do they sell so many copies? To be fair, Black Ops 2 did sell a bit less than Modern Warfare 3, maybe Beynon is on to something.