On the Subject of Wide Screen

Salma Hayek

Admittedly this is somewhat overdue, but with the recent release of the Unreal Tournament 3 Beta/Demo I am once again seeing the hordes of ignorant little fools crawl out from under their uninformed, reactionary rocks.
The issue is widescreen and specifically Bioshock's notoriously divisive implementation. Of course by "divisive" I mean the division between people who have a solid grasp of camera geometry, and drooling half-wits who will believe any bullshit that a bunch of educationally sub-normal yahoos choose to spew onto web forums.
Quite simply, a wide screen monitor does not imply a wider field of view.
If you understood that assertion, there is little reason for you to continue reading. For anyone else, let me try and put it into simple terms that even you can grasp.
Firstly, a hypothetical situation. That means pretend, in case I had lost you already. Like when you pretend to have the faintest idea what's going on in the big scary world around you.
Imagine you have two monitors. One is a wide screen monitor and the other is a traditional shape. Imagine that if you took a tape measure and measured from one side of the screen to the other that both monitors are the same width. Yes, that's right, the wide screen monitor wouldn't be as tall, would it? Very clever. But that's beside the point. Now imagine that you're playing the same game on both monitors. Which monitor should let you have a wider field of view? Which monitor should let you see a wider view of the game world? Remember, the monitors are the same width. Consider that if the wide screen monitor offered a wider field of view, objects would appear smaller on that monitor. Think about it.
The number of people who instinctively believe that because they (or, more likely, their parents) bought a fancy pants wide screen monitor that they are for some unfathomable reason entitled to see more of the game world, is staggering. If they can't see more of the game world or if, god forbid, they actually see less because the picture is cropped vertically, then they think they are somehow being short-changed by the game designers.
A question to ask yourself: do you think that modern game developers use wide screen monitors? The correct answer is, of course, "yes". Because wide screen monitors are no longer exclusive or special, in the same way that you're not special for having one. So the game developers are seeing the exact same cropping and field of view that you are, and they are in a much better position to judge what is "correct" than you are, because it's their game. Just because you read that it's wrong on some forum, or because another game did it differently doesn't make it wrong. What the fuck do you know? Getting all indignant because you believe you know better than the game designers when in fact you are much too stupid to ever be capable of developing a game yourself.
Of course there are other whiny, smug little arses who like to point out that some people are sensitive to the field of view and that if it's too narrow it makes them motion sick, as if that's some sort of excuse. That is in fact entirely irrelevant, not only to the discussion of wide screen field of view, but to any discussion of field of view at all.
For now I will skip over the issue of self-righteous, elitist, self-styled FPS veterans whose argument is essentially "I have wasted more hours of my life playing FPS's than you so my opinion is correct". That is a subject that deserves special attention and will no doubt receive it in due course.
There really are people who refuse to buy what is in reality an excellent game, simply because they're too ignorant and closed-minded to understand the issue they're complaining about. An issue that isn't actually an issue at all, if only they weren't too stupid to realise. It's laughable.
Get a fucking grip.