First Person Shooter : The Complete history

 by Thomas Cannon

Wolfenstien 3D's cartoony graphics (Picture of B.J. 
after completing a floor in the game)

 Image: wolfenstein.wikia.com

       The first person shooter (AKA 3d Shooting) is a game genre, using the first person view (A view of the main character), and multiple targets that you can shoot. Generally, first person shooters are 3d, although some homebrew games are 2d. The genre got popular when ID software released Wolfenstein 3D for DOS, in 1992. The game is cartoony by today's standards, but it was the start of an era. Wolfenstien 3d features you as William "B.J." Blazkowicz, a WW2 soldier in a Nazi Prison camp. The goal of the game is to "Make it out alive or die with a blaze of glory". After Wolfenstien's popularity, ID software released Spear Of Destiny, a sequel to Wolfenstein with an improved engine. Spear of destiny was not as popular as Wolfenstein, but it created the engine that would power Doom (Also known as Doom 3D), created 1993. Unlike Wolfenstein, Doom was not on a level playing field, and the player could go up stairs and ramps. It was estimated that doom was installed on more computers than Windows 95, because it was so popular. Doom was not about Nazis or anything, it was just about just shooting anything that moved. Then, in 1996, Tomb Raider, and Quake were released. Tomb raider's main character was Lara Croft, while quake, like Doom, was mostly about the fun of blowing things up. Quake & Tomb Raider were some of the first First Person Shooters to feature full 3d models, textures, and true 3d, not just looking around on the X axis. In the early FPS, like Wolfenstein and Doom, a picture of the person or player in the corner, this showed the his/her (Most likely his) health. Quake & Tomb Raider minimized this. Quake had many mods, and some people enjoyed modding it, this lead to the creation of Team Fortress. Team Fortress was a mod for Quake, and allowed multiple classes (Engineer, Heavy, Spy, etc.) for people to play online multiplayer with teams. Team fortress classes let different classes have different weapons, for example, Engineers had a wrench that they could build sentry guns with, and the Heavy class had a mini gun. Team Fortress started team games, and added more guns to newer video games. In 1998, half life was released. Half life was about killing zombies. The player gained more weapons as they killed more zombies.
Then, in 1998, Jurassic Park : Trespasser was released. Trespasser introduced a new kind of epic-ness; rag doll physics. In older video games, when a character died, an animation of them falling over would be played. In rag doll physics, the bones of a character would be welded to invisible rigid bodies, the rigid bodies would bounce around, moving the bones, making it appear like the character had fallen limp. Rag doll physics was used in most of the games following Trespasser, including half life 2, Wolfenstein : return to the castle, Call of duty Modern Warfare, and many others. Finally, in 2003, what could be one of the most popular first person games of all time, the Call of Duty franchise started. Unlike it's predecessors, Call of Duty originally had a relatively large storyline, which expanded through each level of the game, however, the newer call of duties have less of a story. Sometimes, it is hard to figure out if a game is a FPS or not, for example, some games, with inventories/backpacks have multiple tools, including weapons, but with a lot of other junk to, like wrenches, and repair tools. Over all, if the game has over 50% guns, it's most likely a first person shooter. Over the years, the weapons have also increased. In call of duty, there are more than 20 guns, while in quake, there was only 8.

Other types of views:
         Third Person (Spectator (Following the player))
         Second Person (View from your enemies (As seen in Call Of Duty's Kill Cam))
Other types of shooting games:
3rd Person Shooter (3rd person view)
RPG shooter (Roll playing game. No real point, or way to win.)
MMO shooter (Multiplayer shooting game)