First first-person shooter (FPS) videogame

The first ever first-person shooter (FPS) videogame was Maze War, developed by Steve Colley, Greg Thompson and Howard Palmer (all USA) in 1973, on the Imlac PDS-1's at the NASA Ames Research Center in California. It was eventually developed and innovated upon until it was released on DOS in 1992.

The game was initially designed as a technical showcase in which the player explored a 3D maze, showing off the vector graphics capabilities of the Imlac PDS-1 minicomputer. According to Steve Colley, this simple exploration game soon became boring, and so either Thompson or Palmer suggested the idea of putting additional players within the same maze, and from there it somehow developed into shooting at one another.

This required networking the Imlac computers, which were prior to this independent of one another. At this time it was just between two people, but Greg Thompson took a copy with him in 1974 to MIT, where he was going to study, and it was incorporated into the early ARPANET. An 8-player setup, AI controlled opponents, an overhead display monitor of the matches, and a level editor all soon followed. At one point in the mid-1970s, it is claimed that around half of all the data traffic on the ARPANET was related to Maze War games between students at MIT and Stanford University.

In 1976, multiple storeys were introduced to levels and the AI skill level became modifiable, due to the program having a dedicated machine for it. In 1977, a new version of the game was rewritten for Xerox's range of machines, which led to it becoming playable remotely via the Xerox Alto's ethernet network. Some programmers at PARC cheated by modifying their code so that they could see the positions of other players on the field map. This led to the authors of the code encrypting it to prevent this happening further. In 1986, it became the first game that could definitively be played across the internet (if 1983's SGI Dogfight's use of broadcast packets invalidates its chances).

Maze War's design and gameplay was enormously influential, providing the foundation for early dungeon crawlers like Wizardry and Phantasy Star.

The Origins of First-Person Shooters

The first first-person shooter (FPS) was Maze War, which was developed by school students Steve Colley, Greg Thompson and Howard Palmer (all USA) in 1973, for the Imlac PDS-1. Maze War was created at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, and was developed and iterated upon until it was released on DOS in 1992. Wolfenstein 3D was also released that year, with Doom following soon after in 1993, both of which had a huge influence on FPS games specifically as well as videogames in general – as well as spawning hugely successful franchises.

None of these games would have been possible without advances in technology. Early experiments with games on computers included an implementation of Tic-tac-toe for the Canadian National Exhibition in 1950, or the implementation of the game Nim at the 1951 Festival of Britain. But these both used a display lit from behind by a static lightbulb. What’s now recognised as the first ever videogame came in 1952, when Christoper Strachey (UK) programmed Strachey’s Draughts for the Ferranti Mark 1 computer.

Strachey’s Draughts worked on the Ferranti Mark 1’s Williams Tube display, an early electronic screen. In 1958 the US SAGE air defense system used the first vector graphic displays, using vector graphics to create images from geographic shapes. This was what allowed Colley, Thompson and Palmer to bring a maze to life.

Exploring Maze War: The First FPS Game

Maze War was made while its creators were at a school/study programme, working with Imlac PDS-1 minicomputers, some of the only computers that had vector graphic displays at that time. Colley wanted the computer to be able to determine which parts of a 3D shape would not be visible to the viewer, and not draw the vertices in question on the screen, creating a 3D object that looked solid rather than resembling a wire frame. He eventually developed a program that could rotate a 3D cube on screen

Palmer suggested Colley us this program to create a maze, which he did, allowing the player to move around viewing the walls from a first-person perspective, with the goal being to reach the exit. Palmer and Thompson expanded this prototype so that two players could play at once using two linked PDS-1 computers, and then – crucially for Maze War’s status as the first FPS videogame - the ability to shoot one another.

By the end of 1973, all three men had gone to college (Colley to the California Institute of Technology, Palmer to Harvard, and Thompson to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). While at MIT, Thompson and a co-worker, Dave Lebling, expanded Maze War and converted it to run on other systems, even allowing for multiplayer with students in other colleges.

Core Gameplay Mechanics of Maze War

The first FPS videogame is called Maze War because in it, players move around a flat maze, arranged as a grid with walls of equal height. Players can move forwards or backwards with one key press moving them to the next grid position. They can also turn left or right, or look behind them, all in increments of 90 degrees. Later the ability to ‘peek’ around a corner was implemented, which move’s the player’s point of view as if they had moved forward and turned left or right.

Initially there was no shooting involved, with the goal being to navigate the maze and find the exit. Because of this, the game is referred to as both Maze and Maze War. After the game was expanded to allow two people to play against each other, the ability to shoot was added. This sends a bullet moving at speed out from a player; if it his another the shooter gets 10 points, and the person shot loses 5. Other players are represented by the letters of their username.

Lasting Impact of Maze War on Gaming

There had previously been debate as to whether Maze War or Spasim, a 1974 fight simulation game, was the first FPS, as there was little or no documentation of the development of Maze War, although it is now accepted that Maze War can be dated to the summer of 1973.

Although Maze War was the first FPS videogame, like many of the other ‘first’ videogames it had limited reach, running on specialist computers in colleges. This meant it was not widely available to the public, so its direct influence on modern video games or the FPS genre was sadly limited – although several key early FPS games also take place in a maze.

Key FPS Milestones

There were other games that, after the release of Maze War, had a more direct influence on how the FPS genre evolved:

1. Wayout (1982) - Wayout isn’t an FPS, but it was influential on the genre. Another maze game, Wayout was first made for Atari 8-bit computers, and had a full 360 degree perspective and movement.
2. Catacomb 3D (1991) - the third in idSoftware’s Catacomb series of FPS games, this was the first 3D entry, and introduced texture mapping onto 3D objects and a 3D representation of the player character’s hand in front of them on screen.
3. Wolfenstein 3D (1992) - another landmark idSoftware game, this iterated on the technology of previous 3D maze FPS games, but was more notable for being fast and violent, rather than more family friendly.
4. DOOM (1993) - idSoftware’s sci-fi shooter DOOM became a landmark of video game design in general and was hugely influential on the FPS genre in particular. DOOM’s engine was another advancement in technology, able to add features like stairs and graphical effects like flickering lights.
5. GoldenEye 007 (1997) - this FPS was based on the 1995 James Bond movie of the same name, though it came out nearly two years after the film. It was a smash hit on the Nintendo64 for its high quality and novel features such as a zoom scope on the sniper rifle and sold over 8 million units.
6. Medal of Honor (1999) - this PlayStation game was developed by DreamWorks Interactive and published by Electronic Arts, and began a trend for World War II FPS games that was picked up by the extremely successful Call of Duty series.
7. HALO: Combat Evolved (2001) - Bungie Inc.’s launch title for Microsoft’s new Xbox console, HALO set a new benchmark for FPS multiplayer, alongside a sci-fi shooter campaign that was praised for the feel of the weapons as well as the integration of vehicles and more advanced enemy AI. HALO  became a signature series for Microsoft, with HALO 3 (2007) holding the record of first first-person shooter (FPS) videogame to sell 10,000,000.
8. Far Cry (2004) - the 2000s brought the innovation of FPS’s set in larger open world maps, arguably the first and certainly the most famous of these being Far Cry. The first game in the series was the debut of developer Crytek’s brand new CryEngine development software.
9. Team Fortress 2 (2007) - while the popularity of hero shooters such as ActivisionBlizzard’s Overwatch (2016) is now inarguable, the first such of these is Team Fortress 2, a squad-based FPS where players pick characters with unique abilities and compete to win challenges as a team.
10. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (2017) - originally based on mods made by the developer Brendan Greene, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was inspired by the film Battle Royale, and as such is the first game battle royale shooter. This type of game was made extremely famous by the success of Fortnite Battle Royale (2018), which is more commonly played in third-person.
11. Half-Life: Alyx (2020) - though Valve’s effort wasn’t the first FPS in virtual reality (VR), it is probably the most accomplished to date, using detailed in-game physics. All guns in the game are one-handed, leaving the player free to interact with the virtual world using the other.
12. PowerWash Simulator (2022) - this relatively new game from FuturLab and SquareEnix rode a wave of popularity for job simulators and reimagined what people thought of as an FPS.  It found success by swapping a gun for a pressure washing nozzle.

It’s plain to see the genre has advanced a lot in the half century since the first first-person shooter Maze War was developed in 1973. Who knows what the future of the FPS will bring?