History of FPS Games: From Wolfenstein 3D to Modern Shooters
The history and design of first-person shooters, from Maze War and Battlezone through Doom and Half-Life to Overwatch, PUBG and Valorant.
The FPS (first-person shooter) is a genre in which the player sees the world through the character's eyes and fights with guns or other weapons. Today it sits at the center of esports and blockbuster franchises, but it began as experimental programs at research labs and universities.
In this post we walk through what an FPS is and where it came from, the turning point id Software created in the 1990s, the 2000s when the genre expanded into storytelling and consoles, how it became a fixture of online competition, and the recent wave of hero shooters and battle royales. We also summarize landmark titles in a table and look at the genre's key design elements.
What Is an FPS?
In an FPS, the screen is the character's field of view, usually with hands and a weapon visible at the bottom. The player moves and aims at the same time to take down enemies and complete objectives. Shooters where the camera sits behind the character are classified separately as third-person shooters (TPS).
The fun of an FPS comes from three main sources: the satisfaction of aiming precisely and landing hits, the judgment involved in reading a space and moving through it, and the competition of testing your skill against other people. The genre's history shows how these three elements grew alongside advances in technology.
Origins: From Maze War to Battlezone
First-person shooting games first appeared in the 1970s. Maze War (1973) was made by high school students taking part in a NASA research program; players searched a maze for other players and shot them. Spasim (1974), built on the PLATO system, let multiple people fight together in first-person outer space.
The first first-person shooter to achieve major commercial success was Atari's 1980 arcade game Battlezone, in which you drove a tank and shot enemies on a 3D screen drawn with lines. MIDI Maze (1987) for the Atari ST connected multiple computers through their MIDI ports so players could enjoy deathmatches. Up to this point, hardware limits kept these games simple and far from what we now call an FPS.
id Software's Turning Point: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake
The genre's basic template was created by id Software, a small American company.
Wolfenstein 3D (1992), distributed through Apogee Software, used fast raycasting to deliver smooth first-person visuals on the PC. Players fought enemies in a maze-like castle and hunted for secret areas and treasure. Its shareware model—giving away part of the game for free and selling the rest—also became widely known.
Doom (1993) popularized the genre with varying floor heights, more detailed textures and lighting, and network deathmatch. Modding culture, in which users built and shared their own maps, grew enormously thanks to Doom. For a while, similar games were even called "Doom clones."
Quake (1996) brought fully 3D polygon graphics and internet multiplayer. Controls that used the mouse to look around and the keyboard to move became standard, and LAN party culture—people bringing their computers to play together—spread. 3D Realms' Duke Nukem 3D (1996) was also popular around the same time.
FPS Expands into Story and Consoles
From the late 1990s, FPS games began to move beyond "just shooting."
- Half-Life (1998, Valve): Told its story without cutscenes, never leaving the first-person view. Scripted events and environmental storytelling heightened immersion, and it became the benchmark for FPS narrative.
- GoldenEye 007 (1997, Rare): Showed the potential of console FPS with split-screen multiplayer on the Nintendo 64.
- Halo: Combat Evolved (2001, Bungie): Launched alongside the Xbox and made console FPS mainstream with gamepad-friendly controls, a two-weapon limit and regenerating shields. Its sequel Halo 2 (2004) brought Xbox Live online multiplayer to a wide audience.
Crytek's Far Cry (2004) and Crysis (2007) showcased designs that let players tackle objectives in many ways across wide-open spaces, while BioShock (2007) stood out for its distinctive world and presentation.
Online Competition and Blockbuster Franchises
1999 was a pivotal year for multiplayer FPS. id Software's Quake III Arena and Epic Games' Unreal Tournament focused on fast, balanced competitive play, and Counter-Strike, which began as a Half-Life mod, established round-based team play in which terrorists and counter-terrorists fight over objectives. Counter-Strike also became hugely popular in Korean PC bangs (internet cafés).
In 2003, Infinity Ward—founded by some of the developers behind Medal of Honor—released Call of Duty. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) combined a modern warfare setting with progression-based multiplayer, in which experience unlocks weapons and abilities, creating a structure many shooters went on to copy. The Battlefield series took a different direction with large-scale battles on big maps with vehicles.
Hero Shooters and Battle Royales
From the mid-2010s, the FPS broadened again along two major branches.
The first is the hero shooter. Valve's Team Fortress 2 (2007) laid the groundwork by giving each class a distinctive character, and Blizzard's Overwatch (2016) was a huge success that established it as a subgenre. Riot Games' Valorant (2020) combined Counter-Strike-style tactical play with character-specific abilities.
The second is the battle royale. Many players drop onto a large map, gather gear, and fight inside a steadily shrinking zone until only one player (or team) remains. Starting from mods by Brendan Greene ("PlayerUnknown"), PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (2017, Bluehole, now Krafton) became a massive hit, followed the same year by Epic Games' free-to-play Fortnite Battle Royale and in 2019 by Respawn Entertainment's Apex Legends.
Landmark Titles at a Glance
| Year | Game | Developer | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1973 | Maze War | NASA research program participants | Prototype of the first-person shooter |
| 1980 | Battlezone | Atari | First first-person shooter to achieve mainstream success |
| 1992 | Wolfenstein 3D | id Software | Template for the modern FPS |
| 1993 | Doom | id Software | Popularized the genre; mods and deathmatch |
| 1996 | Quake | id Software | Full 3D and internet multiplayer |
| 1998 | Half-Life | Valve | Storytelling entirely in first person |
| 1999 | Counter-Strike | Mod team (later Valve) | Round-based tactical team play |
| 2001 | Halo: Combat Evolved | Bungie | Brought console FPS into the mainstream |
| 2007 | Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare | Infinity Ward | Established progression-based multiplayer |
| 2016 | Overwatch | Blizzard | Popularized the hero shooter |
| 2017 | PUBG | Bluehole | Sparked the battle royale craze |
| 2020 | Valorant | Riot Games | Combined tactical shooting with character abilities |
Key Elements of FPS Design
These are elements that come up often when designing an FPS:
- Game feel: Values such as mouse sensitivity, recoil, bullet spread and aim assist that create the "feel" of shooting. The same weapon can make for a completely different game depending on these numbers.
- Map design: Placing open sightlines, cover, multiple routes and elevation changes controls where fights happen and how they flow. In competitive games, fairness between the two sides is especially important.
- Health and healing: Classic FPS games had you pick up health items placed on the map; from the 2000s onward, regenerating health after briefly taking cover became common. The healing system greatly affects whether players play aggressively or cautiously.
- Role division: Splitting roles across classes or heroes creates teamwork, but makes balancing harder.
- Networking: In online play, technology that compensates for latency between server and client decides whether a shot hits or misses.
FPS Today
Many FPS games today are live-service games that keep adding content through seasons and battle passes, rather than one-time purchases. Free-to-play with cosmetic sales is also common. Long-running series like Call of Duty continue, while Counter-Strike and Valorant have become leading esports titles.
On the technology side, VR is showing a new direction. Valve's Half-Life: Alyx (2020) is regarded as a major FPS built exclusively for VR. FPS controls and perspective are now also widely used in horror, puzzle and exploration games—the first-person view itself has become a universal language of games.
In the more than 30 years since Wolfenstein 3D, graphics and business models have changed dramatically, but the core—aiming precisely, reading the space, and competing against opponents—remains the same as it was at the start.