What is this Gaming Genre? | FPS, Within Gaming there are Genre’s much like films,TV, Books etc..and over the years they have grown as games themselves have grown and got better, these include FPS, RTS, RPG, MMO, Tactical shooter, Sim, Turn base Sim, among others. Let’s look at FPS, which is First Person Shooter and has arguably had some of the biggest games in the world ever.
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FPS and First Person Shooters
FPS has been around very early in gaming days, it may have looked completely different then to now, but games such as Doom, Quake etc really set the stage early, especially Doom which even now is used to test basic code or tech in silly unique ways. But if we are honest in the first few years in gaming, FPS wasn’t really one of those big sellers, the graphics and gameplay for many didn’t really speak to them and generally landed to a small following, it hadn’t found the mass market as we entered the 90’s.
As the console market grew in the early 90’s platform games, Adventures games, sports, etc were all doing well but with PC gaming now starting to grow in the later 90’s we saw other games like Unreal and Tournament come along. for this the turn of the 2000’s was crucial, at this point even with PS1 and dream cast coming along there was still the odd FPS game but it was still low down, arguably 3rd Person style shooters were in more demand in games like Resident Evil.
PC Gaming Evolves
However Shooters were about to take a twist, and the stage was set for PC gaming to evolve and Steam to come to the forefront, Valve launched a new platform for there games and combined Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Half-Life and Counter-Strike etc and among others in one place, as years went on ofcorse it became one of the big homes for all PC gaming, but in its infancy it was unknown.
But if you were a Pc gamer you knew a couple of games… Half-life and Counter-Strike were genre-defining, they both got newer versions in Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike Global Offensive, but all these games were the pinnacle of FPS and set a new standard.
With this, though it needed backup, and part of the problem was it was just really PC, which at the time was still behind other platforms for gaming, there were some games trying to make their way in the new millennium, Battlefield 1942 arrived, an only multiplayer game, but only on PC, which at the time was very different in gaming, let alone PC gaming.
But it was another building block on what was to come, Medal of Honour, Operation Flashpoint, Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament 2003, and Vietcong, were all games that were taking the genre forward, along with some others.
Consoles Turn to Level up
Even though PC gaming was getting better with FPS, it was time for consoles to start to catch up, at the back end of ’90s which essentially had Goldeneye, and Perfect Dark, these were great, and glimpses of what could be done but were on the Nintendo console, which now had moved more into Kids games etc, the PS2 had some FPS but it was widely known that the better versions of those games among some of the others I had mentioned were on PC.
But with a tad of irony with PC, it was Microsoft’s new console XBOX that helped change the game again, in the form of Halo, it was one of those console genre-defining games, and actually FPS-defining games in the same breath of Counter-Strike. The sequels would become even bigger, movie-level standard.
The Big Hitters
FPS Genre was now moving, Battlefield, Medal of Honour, and Halo were all games among others that were moving the genre, however, the next title was to help it become one of the most recognised Genre’s going forward, Call of Duty had started like some of the other on here, PC gaming was fine, it done ok, the console versions were weaker but fine, so much I so I wrote a post about the franchise so check it out to get the full picture.
But Call of Duty 4 was released, it instantly became in the same genre-defining as Counterstrike, Halo, and Halflife, it became the game to buy, so much so the franchise is one of the most known in the world, it had movie budgets, it broke records and has been one of the mainstays on consoles and PC going forward.
Now as the years have gone on there are so many games that have influenced gaming, Bioshock, Far Cry, Left for Dead, Half Life Alyx, Doom Eternal, Apex, Titan Fall, among so many to mention, most gamers will have a favourite, even modern days as the format has evolved from being the old school move shooter collect thing…get ammo…shoot…get ammo..shoot..game done…
Now you can have tactical ones like Rainbow Six Siege, combination style shooters like Overwatch, MMO style ones in Destiny 2. Shooters have to be different now, but with the graphics improvements and complexity of the Tech running the games, they have been able to do so much to them.
The Future of it?
Ultimately you are still just seeing the gun on the screen most of the time, a first-person view, and that is inherently what makes the game, of all the games the idea is to put the game in the view of it…it might not always be realistic but its one of the most closer to realism aspects of gaming, a VR style view is the only the step up from this and we will probably see that Ready Player One viewpoint in years to come as the tech gets cheaper and easier to have.
It will often be one of the most violent Genre, and will always have that tag to it, but for teenagers and adults alike it’s where most of us have played at least once.
Gaming defined
You can argue that of all of the gaming genres, it’s still the most known and arguably the jewel in the gaming crown, it may not be everyone’s favourite, but everyone has played it and with neutral hats on, it’s the most popular when its done right and all said and done with some of the big titles I mention like Battlefield, Destiny, Halo, Call of Duty etc, its king.
