Video Games Encyclopedia

A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character. This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre’s inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world, and this type of game helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in the field of graphics processing units. Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years.
Although earlier games predate it by 20 years, Wolfenstein 3D (1992) was the highest-profile archetype upon which most subsequent first-person shooters were based. One such game, considered the progenitor of the genre’s mainstream acceptance and popularity, was Doom (1993), often cited as the most influential game in this category; for years, the term “Doom clone” was used to designate this type of game, due to Doom’s enormous success. Another common name for the genre in its early days was “corridor shooter”, since processing limitations of that era’s computer hardware meant that most of the action had to take place in enclosed areas, such as corridors and small rooms.
During the 1990s, the genre was one of the main cornerstones for technological advancements of computer graphics, starting with the release of Quake in 1996. Quake was one of the first real-time 3D rendered video games in history, and quickly became one of the most acclaimed shooter games of all time. Graphics accelerator hardware became essential to improve performances and add new effects such as full texture mapping, dynamic lighting and particle processing to the 3D engines that powered the games of that period, such as the iconic id Tech 2, the first iteration of the Unreal Engine, or the more versatile Build. Other seminal games were released during the years, with Marathon enhancing the narrative and puzzle elements, Duke Nukem 3D introducing voice acting, complete interactivity with the environment, and city-life settings to the genre, and games like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six and Counter-Strike starting to adopt a realistic and tactical approach aimed at simulating real life counter-terrorism situations. GoldenEye 007, released in 1997, was a landmark first-person shooter for home consoles, while the critical and commercial success of later titles like Perfect Dark, Medal of Honor and the Halo series helped to heighten the appeal of this genre for the consoles market, straightening the road to the current tendency to release most titles as cross-platform, like many games in the Far Cry and Call of Duty series.

Reference: Wikipedia