How did FPS's become so popular?

[Whitenail]

Easy to make, ever popular and a little ingenuity goes a long way in an fps (experiencing the halls of Rapture are a grand thing, but do you think the game would've done as well or been as remembered if it were in third person or from a fixed shot?).

Personally I enjoy fps'es, I got my start in gaming thanks to the old school fps'es of my older brother and some of my favourite games have been them.

 

[lord_beo]

the reason games like doom, quake and duke3D became so popular was very simple, it easy to play, it's fun to play and you can switch you brain of for about 2 hours while playing, it's only later on that real story got attached to it and even in halo and half life(1) the story is secondary, it's the brainless shooting that people enjoy and that people will keep enjoying

 

[Kermi]

Because games viewed from the first person perspective by nature have a better chance of being immersive, and the more connected you are with the action the more exciting it is.
Enough bullshit about simplicity, or being overrated, or blaming everything on Halo or Half-Life.
They're exciting games. Simple.

 

[Netrigan]

the reason games like doom, quake and duke3D became so popular was very simple, it easy to play, it's fun to play and you can switch you brain of for about 2 hours while playing, it's only later on that real story got attached to it and even in halo and half life(1) the story is secondary, it's the brainless shooting that people enjoy and that people will keep enjoying

Proper story attached to the FPS: 1995's Dark Forces, featuring the usual bang-up job from LucasArts.

And by the time Half-Life hit, it was increasingly common for a FPS to receive praise for its good story. Half-Life's claim to fame is that they presented 100% of the story in-game instead of mostly in cut-scenes which was the way games operated up until then.

If the OP is asking why a shooter got popular... that's not much of a mystery. Shooters always do well and the FPS ended up being one of the best approaches to the 3D shooter, as there's absolutely no camera angle problems that plagued most early (and a lot of current) third person shooters.

Although I still think the question is along the lines of "how did this genre come from no where to dominate the consoles so quickly?", to which the answer is "you got invaded by an already popular and polished game genre that had dominated the PC gaming scene for the previous 8 years".

 

[Crises^]

id say the competative nature of fps's i played css for like 5 years its the leagues and cups and trying to beat other teams and get better that drags alot of people in

 

[Irridium]

Sorry, I assumed he was just talking about post 2000's.

The attitude that drives every PC gamer up the walls

Seriously, it's amazing how easy it is to get a rise out of us PC gamers by ignoring everything not on a console. I was reading some articles earlier about the most important games in various genres and while all the genres were open to console and PC titles, the FPS category was oddly console specific. Totally pissed me off.

Love it or hate it, PC gaming created the genre. It's like discussing the history of rock 'n roll and ignoring everything that came before Elvis. Yup, Elvis (Halo) brought it to the mainstream in a way black musicians (PC gaming) never accomplished, but it's a crucial part of the history that shouldn't be dismissed because it wasn't quite as popular.

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.

 

[Netrigan]

Halo is part of the answer.

But there were already loads of AAA FPS games already released and in the pipeline. Halo was the spearhead of a well supplied, battle-hardened invasion force. From a console perspective, the rise of the FPS is dramatic and a bit unexpected. From a PC POV it was the continuation of a decade old highly successful trend.

There's scores of million plus selling PC FPS. A very large number of devs were working this already popular and lucrative market. Halo opened it up to consolers.

 

[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.