14 DAY TRIAL // Personalization in video games has been quite important ever since technologies and platforms evolved to allow players to have at least some decision over how their game or their characters look like. From having a different armor model or a different car color, customization has tackled all sorts of things.
In first-person shooters, however, this trend towards letting players do whatever they want hasn't exactly been used all that much.
In the upcoming Titanfall, for example, players will only be able to personalize their loadouts, choosing different weapons and abilities. Besides that, however, they're stuck with standard-looking character or gun skins.
On the other hand, other titles have begun to be more receptive to the desires of their fans. One example is the Call of Duty series which, with recent installments like Ghosts or Black Ops 2, has offered Personalization DLC packs.
These include new gun skins, but also custom reticles, player cards, or backgrounds and are sold via microtransactions from the in-game store.
Valve already used this desire for personalization to great success in the Team Fortress 2 third-person shooter through the already famous hats, and is once again employing it in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive first-person shooter.
As opposed to Call of Duty, Valve is offering a lot of these personalized weapons for free, although some of the rarer and best-looking ones are included in various cases that can only be opened after you buy a key from Valve itself.
What's more, just like with Team Fortress 2, it's allowing the community to create skins and will reward the best ones with a portion of its profits.
Overall, if Titanfall wants to keep players invested in the experience, developer Respawn should probably try to think of ways to promote personalization. I'm not talking about crazy colors on Titans, for example, but some great ideas could pop up and enhance the online shooter.