What Is an Arena Shooter Game?

Some video game genres enjoy extreme popularity for a time, then fall into relative obscurity later on.

But what actually is an arena shooter?

What Is an Arena Shooter?

What Is Arena Shooter Featured

An arena shooter is a throw in of multiplayer shooter game that has a few key attributes.

These are:

Arena shooters are typically first-person, but they can be third-person in some cases, too.

Read more:First-Person Games vs. Third-Person Games: What Are the Differences?

There are other elements typical to arena shooters, but these aren’t present in every single title.

We’ll look at some of these as we dive into the above more closely.

Once you die, you lose all the benefits that you’ve picked up.

You must start again from the base kit, so dying is a huge setback in arena shooters.

This is important, as arena shooters usually offer a variety of weapons that are useful in different situations.

Rarely is any weapon made obsolete by another one.

These elements contrast with many modern shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield.

There aren’t predetermined spots where new items spawn for you to pick up.

Because you might move rapidly and have many options for getting around, gunfights become more interesting.

But it’s not simply how fast your character runs that affects this.

Arena shooters also offer complex movement options for players willing to master advanced mechanics.

Another element that contributes to the importance of movement is a longer time-to-kill than other shooters.

Finally, arena shooters tend to feature fewer hitscan weapons than other shooters.

They instead have a variety of projectile-based weapons.

Projectile weapons, on the other hand, take time to reach their destination.

Compare a sniper rifle (hitscan) to a crossbow (projectile), for instance.

True to the name, the stages are “arenas” designed to facilitate combat.

Because of the pickup-based system, arena shooters also provide opportunity for skilled players to control valuable items.

They can also take out other players who want to grab the goodies.

In all, arena shooters allow players to use a wide variety of skills to defeat their opponents.

Arena shooters were at their peak in the late 1990s and 2000s.

After the mid-2000s, however, arena shooters died out in popularity.

Why did this happen?

In short, multiplayer expectations changed.

Chief among these was its RPG-style progression system.

The game rewarded players with experience points for playing and completing objectives.

Using a weapon unlocked attachments to make it even better.

Nowadays, the majority of online shooters have some level of progression to work towards like this.

Even if you’re not winning matches, you’re at least working towards unlocking something new.