Shroud’s Thoughts on FPS Games like VALORANT’s Lifespan

Cover Picture and thumbnail courtesy Unreality Mag, Gadgets 360
Other pictures courtesy Twitch

• FPS games are at a high point with several titles still going strong after two decades.
• The RTS genre is the one that is at the end of its life stages.

At the end of a recent Skyrim stream, Shroud took viewer questions. One of them asked about the lifespan of FPS Games and whether they are dying. Shroud said, “No, not at all, FPS games aren’t even close.” He continued, “FPS is at its high point right now and the highest it has ever been in terms of players.” When talking about VALORANT, Shroud said compared to other FPS games, Riot’s title could last more than a decade. 

His statement also makes sense when we look at how long some of the other top first-person shooters have been around. Games like Call of Duty, Halo, Counter-Strike and Rainbow Six have been around for approximately two decades with so many other popular titles like Borderlands, Half-Life, Bioshock gaining cult followings. The sheer diversity of the genre also helps in keeping it fresh. A glance at the top viewed games on Twitch show you how popular the FPS genre still is. Battle royale, the genre that has exploded in recent times, is mostly FPS-centered.

“Games that are on their end stages of life are RTS games,” Shroud said about the dying genre. During the 1990s, RTS was king. The genre’s predecessors existed as far back as the early 1980s, where games like Herzog Zwei went on to inspire a lot of prominent strategy developers and even laid down the groundwork for what would become MOBAs. 

RTSes fell victim to 3D. With fancy new tech and game engines emerging, RTS games struggled to make the leap into 3D. This wasn't helped by publishers putting more energy into consoles, where such games weren't nearly as comfortable a fit. The successes of the 2000s were exceptions, not the rule. The likes of Homeworld and Company of Heroes remain some of the most beloved RTS games of all time, but the genre was rapidly shrinking even then. The streamer also found it funny that some of his viewers didn’t know what RTS is, almost proving his point.