https://www.cybersport.ru/games/articles/istoriya-poyavleniya-shuterov-ot-pervogo-lica-ot-laboratorii-nasa-do-podvala-dzhona-karmaka

First-person shooters are one of the oldest and most popular genres in the gaming industry. And although today some developers are sincerely trying to refresh the FPS, adding elements of either RPG or strategies, the bottom line of the “shooter” remains unchanged for almost 50 years. How did the history of this genre begin?

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Etymology. Why Doom was considered a genre and which game was first called FPS

Before starting to study the history of FPS, it should be clarified what exactly we mean by this genre, since there is no generally accepted video game terminology. The easiest way is to take the literal path: first-person shooter is a game, the main gameplay of which is first-person shooting.

This definition suits us, since it has the broadest coverage. In the early days of the game industry, there weren’t very many, so due to too strict restrictions, we might overlook important milestones in the history of the genre. Nevertheless, some consider this interpretation to be inconsistent with modern trends.

It is believed that an avatar in an FPS can only be a person – well, or a humanoid, a robot, a highly developed chicken. In general, anything except controlled vehicles, since in this case it is already a simulator – of an airplane, a tank, or something else. In addition, you can find definitions that require contenders for the FPS title to necessarily display weapons on the screen and use only their firearm variants. This is also understandable – in many RPGs there is a first-person view and shooting (spells, archery, etc.), but they are not often called shooters because of this.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | The game has a first-person view and the ability to shoot, but does that make it a shooter?

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | The game has a first-person view and the ability to shoot, but does that make it a shooter?

By itself, the combination “first-person” (“from the first person”) was used quite early, since it was already widely used. But in order to convey to the audience what awaits it in the box with the game, publishers had to look for additional words to define the genre.

In 1980, some Battlezone marketing brochures used the term “first-person combat”. This can be considered one of the first, albeit not the most accurate, uses of the term FPS. According to Professor of the University of Montreal Carl Terrien, the word “combat” in the text was used to associate with the Combat released in 1977 for the Atari 2600, in which, like in Battlezone, there were tank battles – only with a top view. He also noted that the circulation of the brochures was limited, which is why the term never caught on.

In one of the interviews, Atari game designer Chris Crawford said that even earlier the developers wanted to promote Battlezone under the description of “First-person firing squad” (“A game about a fighting squad / firing squad in the first person”). And in the design document for the pitching, the game was called “first-person Space Invaders” (“Space Invaders from the first person”).

Battlezone Brochure (1980) | Source: arcade-museum.com

In October 1991, Computer Gaming World magazine coined the more familiar term “first-person shoot ’em up” – this is how the reviewer described the game The Terminator. Initially, the definition was not very popular, but in 1996, after a review of Duke Nukem 3D by Computer and Video Games, it was firmly entrenched in the press for a while.

In addition, shooters were often called “Doom clones” – some publications even have the word “Doom” as the name of the genre. After this game, only GTA, XCOM and Dark Souls achieved the same recognition.

The term “first-person shooter” began to appear actively in the specialized press only in the second half of the 1990s. At the same time, journalists began to call shooters shooters even before the publishers reached it. For example, in the official brochures, Wolfenstein 3D and Duke Nukem 3D were “3D adventures” and “virtual reality experiences”. At that time, the phrases “3D” and “virtual reality” were very popular and made up the lion’s share of the marketing strategy of any game.

Wolfenstein 3D Brochure (1992) | Source: mobygames.com

One of the earliest references to the expression “first-person shooter” appeared in Computer Gaming World magazine in November 1994. At the same time, as in the case of Battlezone, it was not about a shooter in the modern sense (where the protagonist is a man with a weapon). Journalists called this term Quarantine: in it you had to drive a car and shoot enemies from it.

In 1996, IGN co-founder Tal Blevins, then at GameSpot, reviewed Terminator: Future Shock using the phrase “first-person shooter” to describe the game, making it clear that it was a lot of shooting. Gradually, she began to supplant the expressions “first-person perspective shoot ’em up” and “Doom-alike” from the media, and by the end of the 1990s, the term FPS finally took root as the name of the genre.

Maze War (1973) – first in all

Many (and not without reason) consider the living room of John Carmack to be the cradle of first-person shooters, where the future founders of id Software pored over their first games. But in fact, the FPS genre was born in one of the divisions of NASA – the Ames Research Center – when “Lords of Doom” was still walking under the table.

Maze War, created in the summer of 1973, is considered to be the ancestor of first-person shooters. At its core, its gameplay almost did not differ from any of the modern FPS – users explored the maze and shot enemies. At the same time, they looked at the playing field with “the eyes of a character”, or rather, with an eye – flying and shooting eyeballs served as avatars in Maze War. So you can also consider it one of the first virtual horror games.

Fun fact. Maze War isn’t the only link between aerospace exploration and the birth of the FPS genre. In addition to creating games, John Carmack – the chief programmer for Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake – was involved in the creation of spaceships.

They say that many great inventions were created because of the mortal sin of laziness – they say, people are ready to come up with anything to work less. Maze War owes much of its appearance to the gluttony of several students and schoolchildren.

Co-creator of the game Howard Palmer toldthat during their internship at the Ames Research Center, students were allowed to use computers for scientific work. However, resourceful young minds have adapted them for slightly different purposes.

For example, Don O’Brian used them to recreate a game from an arcade machine that was in a local diner Togo’s. The process wasn’t just about saving money: the diner owners gave a free sandwich to everyone who completed the game. So hungry students practiced at NASA to win a free lunch. Unfortunately, the submachine gun was removed before they reached mastery. Nevertheless, the example turned out to be contagious, and Palmer invited his friend from California Institute of Technology Steve Colley to write his own game.

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Maze Run (1979) – one of the variations of Maze War, – launched on two Xerox Alto

Not all of these titles can be proven – strictly speaking, none of them can. 50 years ago, none of the participants in the events thought about the historical value of what was happening. Collie was an intern at NASA from 1971 to 1974, and he is “almost certain” that Maze War was written in the summer of 1973. If this is true, then the first network shooter will have to recognize a completely different game – Empire, created in the spring of the same year.

Despite this, the fact that one game almost 50 years ago was able to combine so many elements that were rediscovered only in the 1990s is an incredible achievement.

Steve Colley, thanks to the knowledge of graphics modeling gained during the creation of Maze War, was invited to the team of the first rover program. He was in charge of the graphical interface. According to him, the program turned out to be good, but a suitable computer for it, able to fit on a Mars rover, appeared only 20 years later.

Howard Palmer worked on networking for NASA and the Department of Defense. He was supposed to take part in the creation of TCP / IP, but refused in favor of AI research. He later returned to networking, working at Netscape and Stanford University.

Greg Thompson has held leadership positions at various technology companies. He was the CTO of NCube, senior director of Cisco Systems and CTO of Huawei’s multimedia business.

Dave Lebling was one of the founders of Infocom. He has created many text quests. His most famous work is Zork and its sequels. Now he works for a military contractor.

Mark Horowitz founded Rambus, a memory chip company. He also works as a professor at Stanford University

Battlezone (1980) – arcade fun in the army

For all the innovativeness of Maze War, it had one significant drawback: it could only be played by NASA employees, and later by technical college students. The first publicly available FPS was Battlezone, released by Atari on arcade machines in 1980.

The title used vector graphics, which was used to create a pseudo-3D image. The main goal of the game is to drive a tank and destroy opponents: missiles, UFOs and other tanks.

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MIDI Maze – Pac-Man from the FPS world and misuse of ports

In 1983, Battlezone was ported to Atari’s home consoles, but the first truly home-based shooter was 1987’s MIDI Maze. It also turned out to be the first multiplayer FPS for consoles.

Technically, MIDI Maze is a Maze War that has stepped far ahead – the same maze and Deathmatch awaited the players in it. But instead of creepy eyeballs, emoticons became the main characters, so the game evoked strong associations with Pac-Man.

The most interesting thing about MIDI Maze is that for network play, it used a connection via the MIDI connector, which is usually intended for connecting audio equipment. With the help of it, up to 16 people could play a shooter at the same time. In addition, the developers managed to transfer the title to a portable Game Boy, retaining the multiplayer functionality, but limiting the number of players to four. According to rumors, craftsmen in those days knew how to connect more devices.

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3D levels and raycasting technology have revolutionized shooters, but even before Wolfenstein 3D. Before the cult shooter, id Software managed to release two more games using this technology – the tank simulator Hovertank 3D and the fantasy action game Catacomb 3-D, which were also first-person shooters in the broadest sense of the term. Raycasting was used by other developers, but the technology did not gain much popularity until Wolfenstein 3D.

It was raycasting that made it possible to realize the main feature of modern FPS – speed. The early games were quite slow: they ran on low-power systems that had their screens refreshed once a second. And even later games, which were significantly faster, were much slower than the 1990s shooters. The engine written by John Carmack seriously lightened the load on the system and thereby killed two birds with one stone – increased the dynamism of the gameplay and provided the game with voluminous locations.

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Source: gfycat.com

До сих пор требовательность к реакции и скорость абсолютно всех геймплейных процессов остаются ядром классических шутеров от первого лица, а личность героя, отображение оружия и само его наличие — это уже вторичные факторы. Появление многих новых геймплейных механик (вроде укрытий или снайперского оружия), а также периодические попытки объединить шутеры с RPG не сумели изменить суть FPS. Это показали Wolfenstein 3D, Doom и Quake 30 лет назад, это продолжают показывать Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Doom Eternal и Quake Champions сейчас.

Поэтому Wolfenstein 3D всё-таки следует считать первым шутером от первого лица в том смысле, в каком мы понимаем этот жанр сегодня. Она задала стандарты и негласные правила для FPS. Однако, провозглашая революцию в игровой индустрии, Wolfenstein 3D стояла на плечах других гигантов, и забывать о Maze War, созданной голодными студентами от безделья, ни в коем случае нельзя.

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