A Brief History of the FPS
Where there's money, there's competition
Duke Nukem 3D
The success of the FPS didn't go unnoticed, particularly by Wolfenstein 3D publisher Apogee Software. Rise of the Triad (affectionately known as ROTT) was Apogee Software's answer to Doom. Using a modified Wolfenstein 3D engine licensed from id Software, ROTT was popular for its tongue-in-cheek humor, excessive gore (giblets galore!) and creative weapons. For a 1994 release, it sold moderately well but it was Apogee's (now publishing under the name 3D Realms) second FPS which would catapult the company to notoriety. In 1996, gamers were treated to Duke Nukem 3D, which brought the game's namesake character out of the side-scrolling 2D doldrums and into alien-infested Los Angeles. Ken Silverman's Build engine was competent but not ground-breaking; the real treat was the in-your-face gameplay. 3D Realms stacked Duke Nukem 3D chock full of attitude and pop-culture references. Duke's one-liners – many of them shamelessly picked from popular but campy B-movies – fit with the game's over-the-top action-movie feel. Duke garnered universal appeal, and gamers are still waiting for the highly anticipated sequel, now a decade in the making. Duke's moment in the sun was short-lived. A month after Duke Nukem 3D hit store shelves, id Software released QTest, a small multiplayer-only demo of their next FPS, their first release since Doom. With QTest, the seed of want was planted among fans, and anticipation grew to a feverish level over the following months. In the summer of 1996, id Software released the finished game, Quake. Where Doom was a success, Quake was a phenomenon. Light on story and heavy on action, Quake stuck to the gameplay formula which made Doom a success. This time, though, id Software brought an entirely new game engine to the table: fully 3D with true six degrees of freedom making navigation in the environment natural. In the world of Quake, the keyboard was a crippling input device and the preferred control scheme was the mouse for changing viewpoint ("mouselook") in conjunction with the W, A, S and D keys for movement. Pre-calculated lightmaps, coupled with selected dynamic lighting effects, made the static lighting models of past games seem amateur. And gone were the sprite-based weapons and enemies; Quake used textured, polygonal models to represent items and bad guys. Technologically, Quake ushered in a new era of 3D engines and soon after its release, lead programmer John Carmack spent a weekend porting the engine to one of the first consumer-level hardware accelerators, the Rendition Verite. While not spectacular, the resulting VQuake paved the way for the OpenGL-accelerated and graphically superior GLQuake. By using an open 3D library for rendering, GLQuake could run on a variety of 3D accelerators. The release of GLQuake is credited with quickening the acceptance of consumer 3D hardware - a ubiquitous commodity in modern PCs. 
Quake
Quake's gameplay was a mixed bag though. The single-player campaign was composed of four episodes, each with a distinct styling and cadre of combatants. As per the standard, weapons were deadly and physics were exaggerated and the premise consisted of plowing through enemy after enemy, collecting keys and flipping switches to open doors, and grabbing ammo, weapons, health and power-ups. After the game's release, it was revealed that the gameplay and level design in Quake came together rather haphazardly in the final months of development. Turmoil within id Software at the time added to the mish-mash of styles and would eventually lead to the departure of designer John Romero, a key figure at the company since its inception. Fortuitously, the release of Quake coincided with an Internet boom. Households were being connected to the Internet at an ever-increasing rate. Quake's multiplayer deathmatch was as fast-paced as it comes, and the exhilarating thrill of fragging opponents drew hordes to the thousands of Quake servers on the Internet. It was at this point that online gaming earned a reputation as a legitimate sporting activity, solidified by Dennis "Thresh" Fong's Ferrari-winning deathmatch at the Red Annihilation tournament in 1997 - the era of professional gaming was born. In typical id Software fashion, making modifications to the game was thoroughly encouraged. To foster "modding", the level editor was released along with documentation for QuakeC, the game's C-like interpreted scripting language. The very active modding community gave the game life long after players tired of the single-player campaign and many professional game developers and designers got their start by modding Quake. In the same way thousands of designers and developers indirectly owe their careers to id Software, many early Internet entrepreneurs owe their livelihood the community id Software's games fostered. Commercial ventures were varied, from Quake-centric gaming portals to matchmaking software which made it easier for online gamers to host and join servers. But the real treat was the availability of thousands of free, community-developed modifications and add-ons available for download. It was id Software that marked the beginning of a FPS renaissance with Quake. The 3D engine welcomed in a new era and it's impossible to overstate the game's importance to not just the FPS genre but to gaming as a whole. But other developers were hard at work on their own FPS masterpieces; it seemed like every developer had a "Quake-killer" in the pipeline. In fact, Quake would mark the last time an id product would completely define an era. With millions of dollars at stake through game sales and engine licensing, publishers were throwing piles of money at FPS development. Independent developers and well-heeled publishers alike were fighting for a piece of every FPS gamer's heart, and a glut of titles hit the market. As with the initial boom following the success of Doom, many of these games were forgettable. On the flip side, those that excelled launched careers and added to the growing aura of excitement surrounding the FPS.
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