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GENRE FOCUS: FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS
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Shoot to thrill The first person shooter is one of the world’s most popular video game genres, with the likes of Halo and Call of Duty dominating the charts. Christopher Dring investigates the sector and talks to the experts on the past, present and future of the FPS...
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, the first person shooter is one of gaming’s oldest genres. It first arrived in 1974 when Steve Colley – a future NASA engineer – created Maze War, a game that boasted network play, wireframe graphics and the ability to turn and move in two directions. But it took almost 20 years before the FPS reached the mainstream, with id Software’s 1992 hit Wolfenstein 3D. The Nazi-based blaster is seen as the daddy of the modern day first person shooter and laid the groundwork for 1993’s smash hit Doom. At the time the FPS’ home was on the PC, with fans insistent that the genre simply couldn’t work without a mouse and keyboard. And then in 1997 British developer Rare launched GoldenEye, the N64 game that went on to sell eight million units worldwide. “The final product was a more traditional FPS than we’d first planned – it’s well-documented that the original design was all on-rails,” says Rare’s head of studio Mark Betteridge “As the work progressed we realised that it made sense to shift development in that direction, both as a game and as a potential asset for Nintendo. It turned out to be a great tool for attracting a
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different type of gamer to the N64. Up to that point the consoles had never been able to field many serious competitors to the PC FPS market.” In the years that followed GoldenEye the FPS grew to become one of the world’s most successful genres. Today Halo and Call of Duty are two of the biggest franchises in games, while four of the top five most played titles on Xbox Live are first person shooters.
When making Call of Duty we look at every genre such as racers and RPGs - and include elements of all of them. Robert Bowling, Infinity Ward So what has been the secret to the category’s continued success? Valve’s marketing boss Doug Lombardi explains: “When done correctly, it’s hard to argue that there is another genre that allows you to feel like ‘I did that.’ “Using our own games as examples, Portal was a puzzle game that managed to make you feel smart and emotionally attached to a crate with a heart painted on the side of it. Meanwhile Left 4 Dead allows you to feel like you’re part of a team, and there are distinct outcomes based upon your teamplay.”
Valve is a great example of how the first person shooter remains such a dominant force in gaming. The developer is responsible for some of the most innovative shooters on the market, from its first game (1998’s Half-Life), past Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Portal and last year’s zombie-infested Left 4 Dead. And the firm says that trying something new is key to growing the genre. “For Valve, innovation has been everything,” adds Lombardi. “That was Half-Life’s mission statement – innovate. Since then we’ve managed to take a pretty different approach to every game – from taking a little multiplayer-only MOD called Counter-Strike to retail in 2000 to doing an FPS puzzler in 2007 with Portal to our latest attempts to bring new things to the genre through co-op play in Left 4 Dead.”
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COMBAT EVOLVED The first person shooters of today are vastly different to the experiences pioneered by Doom in the ‘90s. Over the years the humble FPS has come to incorporate rival genres into its framework, introducing puzzles, racing sections and even RPG elements into the final product.