A Brief History of the FPS
Raising the bar
Unreal
In comparison to the next two titles, every other FPS released in 1998 was really just filler. Shareware stalwart Epic Games' Unreal and Valve Software's Half-Life were easily the two most anticipated PC games of the year. The hype machines had been cranked to maximum for both of these titles and for good reason. Epic's Tim Sweeney had been hard at work on a 3D engine for years, and even the game's software renderer was capable of many of the features normally associated with hardware-only rendering, such as colored lighting and texture filtering. As id Software had done in the past, Epic Games would go on to turn engine licensing into a lucrative source of additional income. A typical shooter in many respects, Unreal was known for its wide-open levels and creative weapon design; enemies were given life by with artificial intelligence routines from programmer Steve Polge, creator of the ReaperBot AI opponent for Quake. A decided improvement over the AI in other FPSs, Unreal's aliens were canny enough to make chase and to engage in exciting one-on-one firefights. Unreal was received well both critically and commercially, launching Epic Games' series into the same stratosphere as the Quake series. 
Half-Life
Valve co-founders Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, both of whom made their fortunes at Microsoft, had the kind of resources necessary to create a first-rate FPS. Half-Life used a heavily modified version of the Quake engine which introduced a skeletal animation system for character models, among other additions. While not graphically exceptional, Half-Life promised story-based gameplay, and to that end it didn't disappoint. Through in-game cutscenes and dialog with non-player characters, players felt as if they really were Gordon Freeman, the game's unlikely protagonist. The story wasn't Hollywood caliber, but Valve won points for drawing the player into an ongoing story and creating a sense of emotional attachment to characters. The gameplay was refreshing and fun and it won numerous "Game of the Year" awards. Valve took their success to the bank as well, with unit sales in the millions, and Half-Life is now an established FPS franchise. By the time Half-Life hit the shelves, the popularity of single-player FPSs was on the wane, losing ground to online multiplayer. The first professional gaming league came into existence, huge LAN parties were commonplace, and a new kind of celebrity was born: the professional gamer. The prospect of making a living through competitive FPS gaming was enough to prompt thousands of twitchy-fingered teens to line up for LAN events and sanctioned tournaments. Most important of all, companies were falling over themselves to sponsor such events and associate their brands with the multiplayer phenomenon. Toward the end of 1999, id Software and Epic Games released multiplayer-oriented iterations of their popular FPS franchises: Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, respectively.
These games offered single player in the form of deathmatch with AI bots, and players climbed a competitive ladder as they moved from level to level. Opponents were easy at first and got progressively more difficult in subsequent levels. Technically, the UT engine – a modified version of the Unreal engine - was inferior to the Q3A engine. The Q3A engine, an extension of the Quake II codebase, introduced several key features, such as stencil shading, an advanced dynamic lighting model and dynamically tessellated curved surfaces. Though the games had single-player components, id Software and Epic Games were staking their success on the popularity of online play. The gamble paid off for both companies, as both titles saw brisk sales and developed dedicated modding communities.
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