New FPS title swaps a gun for a camera

A fascinating new war game in development at Australian studio Defiant Development will see gamers give up their guns and instead pick up their cameras.

Warco – short for ‘War Correspondent’ – tasks players with entering the battlefield completely unarmed aside from their camera. Once escaped from the conflict gamers must edit a video piece from the footage they captured.

The developer is working with filmmaker Robert Connolly and journalist Tony Maniaty.

"It’s been a great partnership, with Tony giving the game a great grounding in the real world issues of war journalism, Robert lending his structural and cinematic eye, and Defiant helping to channel that into something that’s interactive and engaging," Defiant’s Morgan Jaffit told Ars Technica.

"It offers a new perspective on a familiar theme, which enables us to use the tools and techniques of other FPS’ to build a completely different kind of narrative and experience. From a design perspective, that’s what excited me."

"It’s also about navigating through a morally grey world and making decisions that have human impact. It’s about finding the story you want to tell, as each of our environments is filled with different story elements you can film and combine in your own ways. It’s both a story telling engine and an action adventure with a new perspective."

However, as the case with any title that dares deviate from the established norm, Jaffit has admitted to some early troubles with publishers whom he hopes to get on board.

"It’s a hard sell to executives to suggest an FPS with no shooting, but this is definitely the sort of game we should be making, as an industry,” he added. "We’re optimistic that we’ll find a way to make the project work as a commercial reality."