How did FPS's become so popular?

[Eclectic Dreck]

Halo's mind-boggling success probably had something to do with it.

Spoiler: SNIP

SNIP

Spoiler

...*checks*

Damn, you're right. Three years earlier.

Rendered irrelevant by one simple fact: Doom was not widely played across the internet. The technology available for the game allowed for a Direct modem connection or some variation of a serial connection. Even Quake 1 didn't have the technology at launch for signifiant online play. It was the introduction of the Quakeworld client and a server browser (Where GameSpy got their start as far as I know).

Duke Nukem 3D featured, at a similar time, a 3rd party application that allowed people to play *reasonably* easily across the internet but it still required the use of a chat room to find a group to play with.

 

[findler]

Humans are violent in nature. First person shooters have always been popular though.

 

[T-Bone24]

Three words;

"Halo

CoD

Counter-strike"

That's six words if you expand the acronym, four if not.

Anywho, I believe the success of the FPS is generally down to the buying habits of the public. Look at the Romantic Comedy genre of film, sure, it's not all good but that's what sells. Companies will keep making FPS games until people stop buying them.

They're safe.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

All fair points and very true. However the OP asked how FPS games became popular, and Halo is the answer.

Yes there were Quake, Doom, Unreal, and many other games. But those were limited to the PC, and weren't too popular with people outside of PC players.

The FPS became popular with Doom truth be told. If you had a PC and you played games in the mid 90's you had played at least the Shareware version of Doom. Quake made the multiplayer segment of FPS a popular thing in general. Quake 2 expanded upon that dramatically, quickly followed by Half-Life.

Up until that point however, people weren't playing FPS games online on the consoles. In 1997, Rare demonstrated that you could make a reasonably fun FPS experience on a console (they were far from the first people to try, they just happened to be the ones that offered a successful interpretation first) with Goldeneye and the local multiplayer was quite popular (and is, almost certainly, the reason people still remember the game today). While there was a limited capacity to play online in the coming years, it wasn't until Halo 2 that the console players were given a reasonably intuitive way to do so with Xbox Live. By that particular point, the price of getting a new gaming ready PC was significantly more than the cost of getting a general purpose PC (and I will not even bother to listen to arguments to the contrary. In spite of popular perception to the contrary it is the perceived difference in price and complexity that ensures most will opt for a console versus a gaming PC) and the last major factor that made the PC inarguably better for gaming went away.

Thus, while Doom made the FPS popular and Quake made multiplayer itself popular, Halo 2 is more responsible than any other game I can think of in making FPS games on the consoles the dominating force.

This is not true of the PC. The most popular games on the PC are MMORPGs. Strategy Games also have a strong following (The only PC multiplayer game I regularly play is an RTS). FPS domination of this space is not nearly so strong. This implies that there is some other force at work on the consoles and I suspect it is one of control. Simply put, the other types of games that people tend to play in large numbers with other people are difficult to translate to the console. Sure there have been RTS games ported to consoles, and in spite of heroic efforts on the part of the unlucky developers they are poorly received. When an RTS game is developed with a console in mind, it tends to rely on such simplicity of interface and player action that few people consider the strategic element "deep" enough to make a multiplayer experience enjoyable.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Three words;

"Halo

CoD

Counter-strike"

That's six words if you expand the acronym, four if not.

Anywho, I believe the success of the FPS is generally down to the buying habits of the public. Look at the Romantic Comedy genre of film, sure, it's not all good but that's what sells. Companies will keep making FPS games until people stop buying them.

They're safe.

No, it is three words. Halo is one word. CoD, being an acronym, is also one word. That is, after all, the reason people use acronyms. Counter-Strike, by virtue of the hyphen, counts as a single word. As an example of the latter, single player is two words while single-player (often misspelled as singleplayer) is one.

Now, if he had written:
Halo
Call of Duty
Counter Strike

It would be six words.

 

[harv3034]

Blame Half Life for proving that shooters don't have to be SHIT.

Halo for sucessfuly bringing them to consoles.

And CoD for making the storys epic and ingrosing.
(and CoD 4 for starting the multi-player focus)

 

[hem dazon 90]

They're easy to pick up and play and are often fun. Same reason why the market was saturated by platformers in the years before.

 

[Fumbleumble]

How?

Because it's the lowest common denomenator of gameplay.. any idiot can do it.

Pick up gun.. shoot..

Simple 'concept' for simple masses.

In B4 "But there's strategy involved".. yeah? you're kidding youselves.

 

[Netrigan]

Every so often I decide to do a bit of research into things that "everyone knows" and I'm often amazed at how often "everyone is wrong."

Now, this is Wikipedia research, so standard Wiki Rules apply.

Half-Life 1 was released Nov. 1998. Six years later (Nov. 2004) it had sold eight million copies.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52849-2004Nov15.html?nav=rss_technology

By Dec. 2008, the figure had risen to 9.3 million... with HL2 (at the four year mark) had sold 6.5 million games (this does not include Steam downloads, which would have added an estimated 2 more million copies).
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21319

Halo: Combat Evolved at the four year mark (Nov. 2005) had sold over five million copies
http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=7139 (it's supposed to be in there somewhere).

Halo 3 had a really strong opening and in its first few months sold 8.1 million copies... I can find no sales figures beyond that.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6184291.html

Now, I'd admit that Halo 3 has almost certainly sold more copies than either of the Half-Life games, but those numbers aren't exactly displaying a wide sales split. The first Half-Life would appear to have out-sold the first Halo in similar time-frames.

So, I call bullshit on Halo bringing the FPS to the mainstream. If their 8 million fans constitute the mainstream, while Half-Life's 8 million fans constitute some fringe niche group, I do not see the frakkin' difference. It certainly brought the FPS to a different set of eyes (or else console fans wouldn't think that there was Goldeneye then there was Halo with nothing much of interest in between), but the PC gaming scene was servicing an audience of about the same size... especially when we consider the piracy involved in the scene.

 

[Netrigan]

An interesting list to look through. These are the best selling video game franchises of all time. Lord knows how accurate the figures are. Setting aside Call Of Duty (which is a freakin' force of nature), I think the PC and console franchises match up pretty well. Halo & Half-Life have both hit about the same highs. Franchises like Doom match up pretty well with Bioshock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game_franchises

I think this is just a case of console fans calling MAINSTREAM! and having more game journalists on their side who have no problem ignoring the rich history of PC gaming.

 

[Netrigan]

It's a shame I can't find non-Wiki sources for these quotes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_%28video_game%29

Doom was released as shareware, with people encouraged to distribute it further. They did so: in 1995, Doom was estimated to have been installed on more than 10 million computers. Although most users did not purchase the registered version, over one million copies have been sold

In late 1995, Doom was estimated to be installed on more computers worldwide than Microsoft's new operating system Windows 95, despite million-dollar advertising campaigns for the latter. The game's popularity prompted Bill Gates to briefly consider buying id Software, and led Microsoft to develop a Windows 95 port of Doom to promote the operating system as a gaming platform.

But not mainstream.

 

[Waffle_Man]

It's actually quite simple: Mechanics versus content. This doesn't just apply to FPSs, but Racing and sports games as well.

It's incredibly easy to make a Shooter "fun," or more accurately, it's easier to make games in other genres "not fun." All it really entails is putting together somewhat competent mechanics. Compare this with, say, an RPG, a platformer, or an adventure game, where the actually context of given actions are what makes a game enjoyable.

This is because other genres live or die by the sum of their parts, where as a shooter can at least somewhat atone for everything else with fun mechanics. This isn't to say that any genre is inherently better or capable of more depth, due mind you, but it does have an effect on what people are going to look for when they want a game that guarantees them (or appears to guarantee them) at least a small amount of enjoyment.

 

[Netrigan]

Although many have tried, no one truly nailed console FPS until Halo did it. With effective methods of focusing on what they can do with console controls and hardware, many companies jumped onto the bandwagon.

Halo cracked the console control problem. Their control scheme is a thing of beauty, perfectly suited for the console controller, even making grenades and melee combat essential parts of the FPS experience instead of something you can do but hardly ever do because it (usually) involves weapon switching.

But there's still three main phases to the rise of the FPS.

1) Standing on the shoulders of giants... have you noticed how little innovation has shown up in the FPS since Halo: Combat Evolved? That's because Halo was the last AAA game to add a major new feature with vehicles (and they weren't the first FPS to have them). The FPS was a near perfected gaming genre by the time Halo landed.

2) Halo cracked the console control problem. This is a big deal. Ain't going to deny it. Without it, console FPS would still be clumsy PC ports and likely wouldn't have taken root on consoles... this widened the market, even if the PC market was fairly wide to begin with.

3) Numerous AAA devs with plenty of FPS experience were primed to take advantage of the opening Halo made. Most notably Epic, whose Unreal Engine runs so many games these days. Lots of high quality games hit the market along side the blatant attempts to cash in on Halo's success... meaning the trend takes root because of multiple high-quality games hitting one after the other.

Take away any one of those elements and the FPS is just another genre on the console. Halo would not have been the same game if nothing of interest had happened between it and Goldeneye. Console FPS wouldn't be successful without the Halo control scheme. And it would have been a flash in the pan if there hadn't been high quality games from established PC devs being released at regular intervals.

 

[CarpathianMuffin]

Because a lot of people like multiplayer. FPS games have fantastic multiplayer. Because of my almost complete aversion to multiplayer, I don't care for most FPS games. They all play the same to me and my actions don't have any impact beyond dead guys and holes in walls. For some people that's fine, but not for me.

 

[ZiggyE]

Three words;

"Halo

CoD

Counter-strike"

That's six words if you expand the acronym, four if not.

Acronym remains unexpanded and counter-strike is hyphenated making it one word.

 

[T-Bone24]

Three words;

"Halo

CoD

Counter-strike"

That's six words if you expand the acronym, four if not.

Acronym remains unexpanded and counter-strike is hyphenated making it one word.

I've already had my surprise English tuition today thank you. At least this one wasn't quite so bitter.

So... thanks?

 

[Tharwen]

They're easy to play and produce. Almost all commercial game engines are designed for a first-person view. No-one expects anything special from them. They represent simple, measurable competition between people.

I've run out of reasons...

If you wanna get technical about it...

Spoiler

Two or more computers at the same time?

 

[CPUburrito]

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1