Arena Shooter

"Look over your shoulder, ready to run
Like a good little bitch, from a smokin' gun"

A multiplayer-based subgenre of the First-Person Shooter genre, the Arena-Based Shooter subgenre (known colloquially as Arena Shooter) is billed as being focused on "skill" rather than "perks", an allusion to the scoring system not granting in-game unbalancing bonuses for kill streaks, kill combos or just scoring, with "skill" being the actual ability to score frags, in comparison to other multiplayer shooters that contain such Comeback Mechanics.

The origins of the subgenre can be found in Doom in 1993. The game has a synchronic multiplayer mode where players battled until the one with the highest amount of points (or the one who reached the score limit) was declared the winner. This is the basis for the "Deathmatch" mode, which itself later became the basis for every other gamemode. Later games introduced a team-based variant (usually called "Team Deathmatch") where players were grouped in teams and the team that reached the score limit or made the highest amount of frags was declared the winner. Both Duke Nukem 3D and especially Quake later introduced and popularized Z-axis gameplay or "vertical" gameplay, with the latter game also popularizing Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer as the standard for AFPS, ditching the synchronic model used up to then. While almost every other FPS released in The '90s would come with a multiplayer mode in an attempt to catch new players and increase the replayability of their games, the subgenre would finally explode (and the e-Sports scene blossom as a consequence) with the advent of two games released with two days of difference that would create the (then) biggest videogame feud for quite some time: Epic Games's Unreal Tournament and id Software's Quake III: Arena, released in 1999. These games, alongside the Half-Life mod Counter-Strike (which isn't exactly an Arena Shooter, but which still caused an impact that in no way should be underestimated) popularized online gaming.

In an Arena Shooter, all players in a match start with the same Starter Equipment. Also, more powerful weapons, health/armor items, ammo boxes and powerups are scattered across the level, requiring players to travel through the maps and collect them to get better firepower and other advantages over their enemies. Note that this doesn't apply to key game objectives such as control points or the flags in Capture the Flag. As for the levels, they don't tend to have big, game-changing features outside of the usual level hazards such as lava/slime pits and death pits/the void. However, some games play with features such as death traps and area-wide or level-wide environmental hazards such as fog. Movement physics also plays an important role in these games, where players aren't restrained to just walk/run, sidestep, turn, jump and crouch, but also can do stunts like double jumps, wall jumps, weapon-based jumping, Video Game Dashing and other special moves. Expect game physics to be abused for the sake of competition, leading to Casual-Competitive Conflict.

For replayability purposes, these games contain an integrated AI designed to mimic human players, as otherwise, you need to be online at all times just to play them. Because the nuances of playing against human players are usually difficult to translate into game code, this AI is often quite basic, being able to move, shoot at opponents, jump, and almost nothing else. Some games, in the higher difficulty levels, even give the AI Secret A.I. Moves, allowing them to use features the human players can't. Seldom the AI is programmed to take advantage of the actual Jump Physics, or use Rocket Jump. Standalone games of the genre (and some of which aren't standalone) contain two singleplayer-based modes:

• A Single Player Gauntlet which uses the game's multiplayer maps, with a very barebones Excuse Plot that is usually a Tournament Arc, if they feature such a mode, as well as an "Instant Action", "Skirmish" or "Practice" mode that allows the players to set their offline matches with the rules they pick. No Plot? No Problem! is also found in these games, especially in the FLOSS games. Very rarely there's a more developed plot.
• A Botmatch mode (usually called "Instant Action", "Practice Session" or "Skirmish") for offline play in any of the maps of the game, with the players being able to customize the rules to their liking. Note that this mode may also be present in games that include an AFPS-based component.

A specific subgenre (which nonetheless can also be found in proper Arena Shooters) is the "Vehicular Arena Shooter", effectively Arena Shooters that includes vehicles in open maps. Also note that, much like the other FPS subgenres, while the Arena Shooter genre is mainly composed of First-Person Shooter games (hence the abbreviation AFPS, as in "Arena-Based First-Person Shooter"), Third-Person Arena Shooters aren't exactly unheard of, though they're rarer than their first-person counterparts.

Online-wise, these games tend to be of the Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer class, which means players don't need to wait until a round or match ends (except in some round-based gamemodes) to join a match. There are also (usually) no matchmaking features involved so that all players can join any match regardless of skill level. This carries a problem, though, as newbies are usually trounced by seasoned players without any way to make a comeback. On the plus side, they also tend to avoid becoming Misbegotten Multiplayer Mode due to the simplicity of its design philosophy (which is why their Tutorial Levels tend to be quite basic), though they also tend to fall into Follow the Leader territory due to the genre not having much space for innovation and evolution.

Once a mainstay of the Tournament Play scene, due to Tough Act to Follow regarding UT and Q3A, the Arena Shooter genre didn't reach the same impact since then. With the release of the source code of the first three games in the Quake series between 2002 and 2005 allowing the rise of freeware FPS (most of which were Quake III Arena clones), the multiplayer Shooter scene going down the class-based/realistic path, and the lack of proper commercial Arena Shooter releases, the scene never managed to reach that peak. The sheer steepness of the learning curve (not helped by Tutorial Levels not teaching advanced moves to new players), as well as the rise and popularity of other subgenres of multiplayer FPS led to the subgenre dwindling in popularity by the time The New '10s rolled around, with the commercial underperforming of 2007's Unreal Tournament III being the final nail in the coffin. Attempts have been made since (especially with the short-lived Unreal Tournament 4^note announced in 2014 as a free-to-play game, defunct at the end of 2022 when Epic Games removed the entire Unreal series from all storefronts and 2017's Quake Champions), but they always fumbled, even when more "classic" or "arcadey" shooters did manage to make something of a comeback.

These games tend to be located in the "Classic" end of the Fackler Scale of FPS Realism, and differentiate themselves from games in other genres in the following ways:

• Tactical Shooter, due to favoring movement and acrobatics over realism, and having simpler controls.
• Looter Shooter, due to the existence of a finite number of weapons and items without variation.
• Hero Shooter, due to all characters being different only on the cosmetic side, and having the same starting loadouts and abilities.
• Battle Royale Game, due to its number of players per match being quite reduced (2-16) in comparison with BRG's humongous numbers (50-100), as well as spawn points being predefined, randomized, and instant-use (except in round-based matches or matches with "wave" rules), rather than, well, being able to pick up a spawn point and dropping from a bus onto it.

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Common tropes associated with Arena Shooters in general

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Realism is heavily downplayed or non-existent, with balancing and the so-called "fun factor" taking place up front.
  • While in other games and genres, a single explosive can decimate anything, even the user, in these games projectile damage is reduced to a slap in the wrist. Only BFGs are exempt from the rule by their very nature as superweapons. This also allows Rocket Jump to exist in these games as an alternate way to travel through the maps. This, however, doesn't prevent careless projectile fire management to kill its user, with the usual consequence being a point deducted from their score on the scoreboard.
  • Rapid-fire bullet-based weapons such as machine guns and chainguns don't need much ammo in real life to decimate a person. In these games, you need a lot of concentrated fire on a single point to down another player.
  • The very existence of damage-absorbing energy shields. And, for that matter, energy-based weapons in general. Applied Phlebotinum as an in-universe explanation abounds.
• Armor Points: In the games' HUDs, armor is represented with a number.
• Arrange Mode: Their Single Player Gauntlet modes tend to contain special rules aside from the score and time limits such as a "vampire" mode that siphons health from the opponents and adds them to your own, Regenerating Health, game speed, (re)spawn protection against spawn campers, and a single-weapon rule where all players must use a single weapon throughout the match. These options are also available for online multiplayer matches and Botmatch Practice modes.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Some maps in these games take place in outer space, where breathing shouldn't be possible. Some arenas especially allow their combatants to play in the very outer space itself. This doesn't prevent characters from getting outside and killing each other. Falling outside of the arena still kills the players, though.
• Blatant Item Placement: This subgenre specializes in multiplayer gaming, so it's expected that item/weapon placement obeys strategic reasons rather than logical reasons.
• Body Armor as Hit Points: Armor items in these games can absorb up to 100% of the damage, depending on what's picked up.
• Bottomless Magazines: Expect these games to lack a reloading mechanic. Weapons are fired until the player decides to switch to another weapon, or until their ammo is emptied.
• Capture the Flag: One of the most common gametypes, alongside regular Deathmatch, featured in these games. While some games have a rule variation, the basic concept (pick the enemy flag and bring it to your base) remains the same.
• Charged Attack: In these games, due to their focus on skill also giving a focus on speed, this kind of attack becomes Difficult, but Awesome, as landing a charged shot at the right moment is difficult.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Levels featuring lava/molten metal pools are known to not cause anything to players standing nearby it. Getting into them, on the other hand...
• Critical Existence Failure: Players typically act like normal regardless of whether their health is between 1% and 100%. Once losing that last point, though...
• Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: When playing these games online, you can join matches in progress rather than waiting for the next match to start.
• Excuse Plot: Don't expect these games to have a big plot explaining why players are fighting in an arena.
  • No Plot? No Problem!: The other alternative some of these games take when it comes to storytelling.
• Guns Akimbo: Certain weapons can be dual-wielded. Sometimes as a power-up.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: These games tend to have big arsenals (with the usual average being between 9 and 11 weapons between Starter Equipment, BFG and everything in between), and players are expected to pick up and carry every weapon at the same time.
• Multiplayer Difficulty Spike: Because of the reliance in Jump Physics (some of which are of the Good Bad Bugs variety) and how hard sometimes programming the appropriate behavior into the AI is, expect the difficulty spike between these games' Harder Than Hard modes and the actual Metagame to be quite pronounced.
• One-Hit Kill: In addition to the existence of superweapons, some games feature an "Instagib" gamemode, where all items (except key objectives) are removed from the map, and all players have only a weapon in their inventory: an infinite-ammo high-powered rifle (usually a Sniper Rifle) with the ability to obliterate the enemy with a single shot. Usually, said weapon isn't available outside of the dedicated gamemodes.
• Real-Time Weapon Change: While discouraged in Tournament Play (where straight bindings or weapon macros are more favored), there's the option to cycle between previous and next weapons as well as individually pick up an already owned weapon.
• Rule of Cool and Rule of Fun are the priority over realism, as mentioned above.
• Single Player Gauntlet: These games' dedicated single-player mode often features the game's maps sorted linearly, and the player must overcome them to be the ultimate champion.
• Standard FPS Guns: Every conceivable weapon archetype will be present in the game, alongside other weapon types that may not fit any of the archetypes.
  • BFG: Usually called "Superweapon", maps that feature this weapon will place it in a high-risk area.
  • Emergency Weapon: Players usually spawn with a weak weapon with either infinite ammo, or a close range weapon.
  • Gatling Good: Gatling weapons and machineguns are present in all of their variations, if not as part of the Starter Equipment.
  • Grenade Launcher: As a pickupable weapon.
  • Lightning Gun: There's at least one weapon based on lightning/coils/electricity/thunder. It's either a Sniper Rifle replacement or a stream-based weapon.
  • Short-Range Shotgun: Expect these kinds of weapons as the go-to weapon for close-range combat. Sometimes as part of the Starter Equipment.
  • Sniper Pistol: Usually an Emergency Weapon with very low damage output (even with Quad Damage) will be quite accurate.
  • Starter Equipment: In addition to the Emergency Weapon, some games allow players to spawn with a weak ranged gun whose ammo can be collected through the level.
• Video Game Items and Inventory:
  • Gradual Regeneration: Appears in the maps as a power-up that slowly heals the player to a certain extent.
  • Healing Potion: Small health items that restore a slight amount of HP can be found in these games.
  • Invincibility Power-Up: Allows players to travel through certain level hazards usually holding a powerful item. Can cover all hazards or specific ones, but never death pits or the void. As a countermeasure, expect it to be a Timed Power-Up.
  • Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: Certain powerups are incompatible with each other and can't be stacked.
  • Quad Damage: Found as an item, usually on areas normally unreachable on foot, or surrounded by a level hazard or trap. Grants extra damage at the cost of being a Timed Power-Up.
  • Sprint Shoes: As a temporary Power-Up.
  • Stat Overflow: At least one item or mechanic allows players to temporarily increase their health beyond the set cap. Expect next-to-no Cap Raisers for balance reasons.
  • Timed Power-Up: If there's a Power-Up, chances are, it's going to be of this variety.
  • Universal Ammunition: Some of these games are known to have some weapons which share the ammo between them.
• Video Game Physics: Expect them to be abused quite a lot, especially in Tournament Play. Developers may also add techniques that allow players to travel through maps faster or reach otherwise unreachable areas. Notable staples include:
  • Air-Aided Acrobatics: Jumping pads and launching pads are present throughout the levels of these games.
  • Boom, Headshot!: Hits to the head with certain weapons are more devastating. Some games even include announcements for them.
  • Falling Damage: Expect hard falls to cause big damage. Some items can help mitigate this, though.
  • Floating Platforms: Expect them to be a feature of space/void-themed arenas.
  • Jump Physics: Double jumps, wall jumps, rocket jumping, Video Game Dashing and other special moves are par for the course in these games.

Common tropes associated with Vehicular Arena Shooters

• Anti-Vehicle: If there's vehicles, there's a weapon specialized in taking them down. And said weapon is only effective against vehicles.
• Bottomless Fuel Tanks: Expect vehicles to never run out of fuel.
• Dual Mode Unit: There's at least one vehicle with multiple driving modes.
• Fragile Speedster: There's at least one vehicle class which can only be manned by a single person. It tends to contain a weak gun and can't take many hits (being downed even by infantry guns), but it's quite fast in exchange. Usually used to reach objectives faster.
• Mighty Glacier: As a corollary of Fragile Speedster, there's another vehicle that's quite slow, but can take more hits. And usually hits like a train.
• Multiform Balance: In vehicles with multiple driving modes, there's the "regular" mode, a mode where it increases its speed in exchange for some other attribute, and another where it decreases its speed but buffs another attribute.
• Vehicular Combat: In AFPS with vehicles, there are dedicated gamemodes designed for vehicle-based play, with the vehicles complementing the games' mechanics. Vehicles aren't used outside of these dedicated modes (most of the time).

Standalone Arena Shooters

• Alien Arena
• Nexuiz - AFPS running under the Quake source port DarkPlaces. Had its own form of Rocket Jump with the "laser jump", which made small damage and had a greater knockback. Removed the caps on health and armor at the cost of quick decay/regeneration the higher the numbers.
  • Xonotic - Spiritual Successor of the above, streamlined the gameplay and distilled the available weapon roster and gametypes.
• OpenArena - Quake III: Arena clone (gameplay-wise; asset-wise is another story) that integrated the features of its Expansion Pack into the main game and added several new gametypes to the mix.
• Quake series:
  • Quake III: Arena - Streamlined and refined Deathmatch of the previous entries to its purest elements, becoming in the process the very basis for a lot of multiplayer-based games. A browser version eventually evolved into a standalone game called Quake Live, as well as several console-based versions (Revolution for PS2, Arena Arcade for Xbox Live) that didn't take. Being also the most famous game of the genre with the "Arena" word in the name, it also named the genre.
  • Quake Champions - Mixes the genre with elements of the Hero Shooter genre such as character-specific stats and abilities.
• Reflex
• Toxikk
• Turok: Rage Wars
• Unreal series:
  • Unreal Tournament - Introduced the Translocator as an alternative travelling form. Introduced the Redeemer as a BFG, and the Impact Hammer replacing the Dispersion Pistol as a melee Emergency Weapon. Streamlined and rearranged the Unreal weaponry. It had a regular contender for best multiplayer map and best Capture the Flag map in "Facing Worlds".
  • Unreal Tournament 2003 - Extended the physics-based jumps by adding the Double Jump, Dodge Jump and Wall Jump maneuvers, and all of its combinations, as well as Limit Breaks in the form of Adrenaline combos. Made important changes in the weapon roster such as removing the Ripper and replacing the Impact Hammer and Sniper Rifle with a Shield Gun and a Lightning Gun.
  • Unreal Tournament 2004 - Introduced vehicles in two dedicated gamemodes (Assault and Onslaught), with a third gamemode (Vehicle CTF) available via third-party maps. Refined the movement by downplaying the "floatiness" factor of the combination jumps. Added several new weapons, usually locked behind mutators and the vehicle-based gamemodes.
  • Unreal Tournament III - Also features vehicle-based gamemodes, in this case, Warfare and Vehicle CTF. Refined the physics-based jumps and removed the Dodge-Jump. Added the Hoverboard as an alternative movement option in vehicle maps replacing the Translocator. A later update introduced another vehicle-based mode (Greed, but only when played in VCTF maps). Unfortunately, due to commercial underperforming, it's considered the Genre-Killer for the AFPS scene.
  • Unreal Tournament 4 - Further refined the movement by replacing the Double Jump with wall-running and crouch-sliding. Extended the weapon roster. A previously free-to-play game that went down when Epic removed the whole series from the storefronts.
  • Unreal Championship - It has the same refinements as 2003, but also adds weapon affinities and character-specific stats, with a later game going further in this direction.
• Warsow - Features Quake-like gameplay with a dedicated button for physics-based jumps.
• World Of Padman

Games with an Arena Shooter component

• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - The "Old-School Free for All" playlist incorporates Arena Shooter mechanics into the game's standard Deathmatch, albeit still with a Limited Loadout.
• Deus Ex - Features a Deathmatch mode with a few of the single player game's Immersive Sim and RPG Elements.
• Doom series:
  • Doom - Introduced and popularized Deathmatch. All the maps of the game can be played in Deathmatch mode.
  • Doom II - All the maps of the game can be played in Deathmatch mode.
  • Doom (2016) - There's a dedicated multiplayer mode with dedicated maps and several gametypes.
• Duke Nukem 3D - All the maps of the game can be played in Deathm... er, "Dukematch" mode.
• DUSK - Has a multiplayer component, Duskworld, which is an AFPS.
• Half-Life series:
  • Half-Life - There's a dedicated multiplayer mode with dedicated multiplayer maps. There's also the Deathmatch Classic mod, which basically ports Quake's multiplayer mode to the GoldSrc Game Engine.
  • Half-Life 2 - The official HL2 Deathmatch add-on allows fighting in dedicated maps.
• Quake series:
  • Quake - Introduced (via glitches) physics-based and weapon-based jumps ("trickjumps") to the genre. Popularized Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer as the standard for all games that came late. Introduced the Capture the Flag gamemode via the Threewave CTF mod. Introduced many features (both for players and serveradmins) via the official Quakeworld source port. All the maps of the single-player portion of the game can be played in multiplayer, and there are 8 multiplayer-exclusive maps grouped under a "Deathmatch Episode". Notable AI mods include Omicron and Reaper Bot, which were created by Mr. Elusive and Steve Polge, future AI programmers for Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament respectively. The 2021 remastered edition of the game added AI bots for offline deathmatch; only the maps from the MachineGames episodes are bereft from being played in Deathmatch mode; later updates added a "Horde" mode and integrated Threewave CTF into the game.
  • Quake II - It had its own form of jumping in "crate jumping" while retaining most of the jumps introduced in the original game, as well as different "hand" options for weapons (in addition to the centred weapon, it had left, right and hidden, all of which had advantages and disadvantages). Also, all the maps of the single-player portion of the game can be played in multiplayer, and a later update added 8 deathmatch-exclusive maps. Notable AI mods include the Eraser Bot and Gladiator Bot, the latter of which was created by the aforementioned Mr. Elusive. The 2023 remastered edition of the game added AI bots for offline deathmatch; but the only maps that can be played via console are the Deathmatch and CTF dedicated maps (single-player maps can still be played from console, though).
  • Quake IV - Bases its multiplayer portion in III, but with refinements and a new physics-based mechanic (crouch-sliding). It also allowed projectiles to be teleported. It contains a dedicated multiplayer mode with dedicated maps and several gametypes.
• Serious Sam series:
  • Serious Sam: The First Encounter - There's a dedicated multiplayer mode with dedicated maps and several gametypes.
  • Serious Sam: The Second Encounter - There's a dedicated multiplayer mode with dedicated maps and several gametypes.
  • Serious Sam II - There's a dedicated multiplayer mode with dedicated maps and several gametypes.
  • Serious Sam 3: BFE - There's a dedicated multiplayer mode with dedicated maps and several gametypes.
• SiN - There's a dedicated multiplayer mode with dedicated maps and several gametypes.
• Star Trek: Elite Force - Naturally, being built in idTech 3, the game includes Holomatch as a component with the usual Deathmatch and Capture-the-Flag. The Expansion Pack added more characters, maps, and game modes such as a Team Fortress 1-esque Specialist mode and Assimilation (a Borg-themed Infection mode).
• Star Wars:
  • Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast - Built in idTech 3 and thus has an arena component but with Lightsabers! Also featuring several different deathmatch and team-based modes.
  • Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy - Same as above.
• Unreal - In addition to its known contributions to the genre (vast open maps and Secondary Fire) it introduced the "dodging" and "lift jumping" maneuvers that became staples of the series, as well as the "Botmatch" mode^note While many other games had AI-based Game Mods, this was the first commercial game that included human-like AI opponents from the get-go, without the need of a mod, effectively Deathmatch played offline with AI human-like opponents. Had 10 multiplayer-specific maps, with 6 more added via a separate "Bonus Pack".

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