The history of first-person shooters encompassed the genre's roots as simulated space action and shooter games in the late 20th century, further refined through new innovations in the following years such as more advanced 3D technology, narrative story-telling, popularity of console gaming, and online capabilities. First-person shooter is one of the most popular and highest-selling genres in video games,Cifaldi, Frank, Analysts: FPS 'Most Attractive' Genre for Publishers, GamaSutra, February 21, 2006, Accessed February 23, 2009 and its evolution not only influenced its games, but also titles from other genres.
Origins: 1970s–1980s
The earliest two documented first-person shooter video games are Maze War and Spasim. Maze War was originally developed in 1973 by Greg Thompson, Steve Colley and Howard Palmer, high-school students in a NASA work-study program trying to develop a program to help visualize fluid dynamics for spacecraft designs. The work became a maze game presented to the player in the first-person, and later included support for a second player and the ability to shoot the other player to win the game. Thompson took the game's code with him to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where with help from Dave Lebling to create an eight-player version that could be played over ARPANET, computer-run players using artificial intelligence, customizable maps, online scoreboards and a spectator mode. Spasim had a documented debut at the University of Illinois in 1974 on the PLATO mainframe system. The game was a rudimentary space flight simulator for up to 32 players, featuring a first-person perspective.Garmon, Jay, Geek Trivia: First shots fired , TechRepublic, May 24, 2005, Accessed February 16, 2009 Both games were distinct from modern first-person shooters, involving simple tile-based movement where the player could only move from square to square and turn in 90-degree increments. Such games spawned others that used similar visuals to display the player as part of a maze (such as Akalabeth: World of Doom in 1979), and were loosely called "rat's eye view" games, since they gave the appearance of a rat running through a maze. Another crucial early game that influenced first-person shooters was Wayout. It featured the player trying to escape a maze, using ray casting to render the environment, simulating visually how each wall segment would be rendered relative to the player's position and facing angle. This allowed more freeform movement compared to the grid-based and cardinal Maze War and Spasim.
A slightly more sophisticated first-person shooting mainframe game was Panther (1975), a tank simulator for the PLATO system. Atari's first-person tank shooter arcade video game Battlezone (1980), modeled closely after PLATO Panther, was released for arcades and presented using a vector graphics display, with the game designed by Ed Rotberg. It is considered to be the first successful first-person shooter video game, making it a milestone for the genre. It was primarily inspired by Atari's top-down arcade shooter game Tank (1974). The original arcade cabinet also employed a periscope viewfinder similar to submarine shooting arcade games such as Midway's video game Sea Wolf (1976) and Sega's electro-mechanical game Periscope (1966). Battlezone became the first successful mass-market game featuring a first-person viewpoint and wireframe 3D graphics, with a version later released for home computers in 1983.Shahrani, Sam, Educational Feature: A History and Analysis of Level Design in 3D Computer Games - Pt. 1 , GamaSutra, April 26, 2006, Accessed March 7, 2009
Early first-person shooters: 1987–1992
MIDI Maze, a first-person shooter released in 1987 for the Atari ST,MIDI Maze: Atari ST , IGN, Accessed September 2, 2012 featured maze-based gameplay and character designs similar to Pac-Man, but displayed in a first-person perspective. (Translation ) Later ported to various systems—including the Game Boy and Super NES under the title Faceball 2000—it featured the first network multiplayer deathmatches, using a MIDI interface. Despite the inconvenience of connecting numerous machines together, it gained a cult following; 1UP.com called it the "first multi-player 3D shooter on a mainstream system" and the first "major LAN action game".Parish, Jeremy, The Essential 50: Faceball 2000, 1UP, Accessed April 24, 2009, Archived from the original on February 28, 2016, at the Wayback Machine In 1986, MacroMind released a version of the game for the Apple Macintosh titled Maze Wars+, which was playable on the AppleTalk local network by up to 30 players. The game featured five different character avatars, including an eyeball similar to that found in the Xerox version of the game, four different types of robot players, additional maze features such as teleporters, and walls made of lines rather than blocks.
Id Software's Hovertank 3D pioneered ray casting technology in May 1991 to enable faster gameplay than 1980s vehicle simulators, though it was preceded by 3 years by the FPS The Colony in doing so and Catacomb 3-D introduced another advance, texture mapping, in November 1991. The second game to use texture mapping was Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, a March 1992 action role-playing game by Looking Glass Technologies that featured a first-person viewpoint and an advanced graphics engine. In October 1990, id developer John Romero learned about texture mapping from a phone call to Paul Neurath. Romero described the texture mapping technique to id programmer John Carmack, who remarked, "I can do that.", and would feel motivated by Looking Glass's example to do the same in Catacomb 3-D. Catacomb 3-D also introduced the display of the protagonist's hand and weapon (in this case, magical spells) on the screen, whereas previously aspects of the player's avatar were not visible. The experience of developing Ultima Underworld would make it possible for Looking Glass to create the Thief and System Shock series years later.
Rise in popularity: 1992–1993
Wolfenstein 3D was the first episodic FPS game developed by id Software, as a successor to the successful 1980s 2D infiltration video-games Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein from Muse Software, and published by Apogee Software on 5 May 1992. These were games in which the player had to explore mazes while battling Nazis to find keys required to unlock doors to reach each floor's exit - all while searching every wall for secret areas filled with treasures for a higher score until each episode's last floor's boss. It was an instant success, fueled by its first episode's distribution and spread as shareware, with the second and the third available after registration, and the three last prequel episodes available as a separate mission pack. The game was popular enough that it has since been credited with single-handedly popularizing the concept of first-person-shooter as a genre of video-games.Cifaldi, Frank, The Gamasutra Quantum Leap Awards: First-Person Shooters, GamaSutra, September 1, 2006, Accessed February 16, 2009 It was built on John Carmack's ray casting technology already experimented into id's previous games Hovertank One and Catacomb 3D to create a new standard for first-person-shooter video-games widely emulated, improved, and still applied to this day. Tom Hall originally designed it to be a first-person infiltration game including stealth, hiding dead bodies, disguises and alarms, following the legacy of its predecessors. The game engine does include these original features; however John Romero and John Carmack wanted a simple shooter, and Hall had to fight hard to even include the secret areas. Despite its violent themes, Wolfenstein largely escaped the controversy generated by the later Doom, although it was banned from Germany due to the use of Nazi iconography which is a sensitive topic there, where Wolfenstein has been forbidden until 2022.When Two Tribes Go to War: A History of Video Game Controversy , GameSpot, Accessed February 24, 2009 Further, Nintendo's anti-violence policy required id Software to remove blood, gore, and all Nazi iconography as well as replace the enemy attack dogs with giant rats to allow it to be released on SNES. id Software released a map editor to let players create and share online their own home-made maps for the game, which started the players' modding communities, which further blossomed with Doom. During Doom's development, id Software quickly developed a short extension for Wolfenstein 3D titled Spear of Destiny released on 19 September 1992 to tease the players with the Hell to come in Doom as Spear of Destiny concluded into Hell, then two years later, Doom 2 included two secret levels featuring Wolfenstein in Hell while re-using Spear of Destiny's Hell final level's music to close the loop.