# Talk:First-person shooter

Article merged: See old talk-page here

I was somewhat surprised to find that this 'good' article does not discuss issues related to the cultural, gender and racial elements associated with FPS history. These are all essential dimensions that any remotely academic treatment of the subject should incorporate. See, for example, here. 
As it stands now, the piece seems to have been written (certainly in good faith) by players and fans, and is therefore overly abundant in technical, game-play and commercial-title-related information. It is also excessively descriptive and lacks interpretation and reflexivity.
In my opinion, a considerable editorial overhaul is needed. Sb2s3 (talk) 10:56, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

@Sb2s3: Is this still a concern? I can get the community reassessment process started for you (unless you want to go individual)? AIRcorn (talk) 23:46, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

quake was a defining game, and half-life even used it's engine; and, i know if this is the case, might have been the first 3d fps.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:40C:4302:2710:3424:E0AA:8356:D951 (talk) 05:16, 14 April 2020 (UTC) 

Quake is not the very first full real 3D FPS. "Terminator Future Shock" had full 3D maps, models and enemies a year before that. As much as I love Quake since its release and playing it to this day, the information provided here is just wrong.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Resonicde (talk • contribs) 13:15, 24 January 2022 (UTC) 

We'd need sources to make that assessment. --Masem (t) 13:23, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
I checked this out and some gameplay footage on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBNSThWSZu4) shows that, at a minimum, many of the powerups and environment objects (like barrels) are still bitmapped sprites. 73.70.13.107 (talk) 23:04, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

The "First Person Shooter" Stand For, ...  — Preceding unsigned comment added by WS2022isback (talk • contribs) 20:57, 25 December 2022 (UTC) 

At this moment the File:Halflife ingame.jpg image does not seem to have a correct rationale, because it's not tied to any place in the article and has a generic "A player engaging in combat during an above-ground section in Half-Life." text which doesn't give any reasoning for why it's the topmost picture. Older version had a different text, and the lead section was also quite different, which looks like a valid fair use usage.
But at this moment the fair use rationale is not acceptable, and the "Entire screenshot to show game graphics and low-resolution UI to showcase the evolution of FPS video games" on the file page does not match the usage. Purpose of use isn't correct either -- "The image is placed at the beginning of a section discussing the work, to help the user quickly identify the work and know they have found what they are looking for.", which does not match the current usage.
So for now, this image needs to be replaced with a screenshot of any free first-person game which illustrates the "First-person shooter" term. Sleeps-Darkly (talk) 19:13, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not a regular Wikipedia contributor, but I added a paragraph for Virtual Reality.  Perhaps it needs more links or whatever, but I think it's entirely necessary for this wiki page to highlight the VR impact on FPS games.  Rather than simply erasing the work, please share what needs to be improved to keep this paragraph.   173.25.18.35 (talk) 22:16, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

It was full of opinionated statements (see WP:NPOV) and was not based on reliable sources (see WP:RS). The whole thing would need to be rewritten based on other sourcing. MrOllie (talk) 22:36, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
I appreciate the feedback and your dedication to keeping the standard of quality in Wikipedia high.  I would not agree with "full of opinions", but there were a couple and I've adjusted the paragraph to remove subjective wording, made the paragraph more concise and consistent with the wiki page and provided even more citations and added a couple wikipedia links.  I value any additional feedback while keeping this paragraph in-tact as it's important to the FPS genre. 173.25.18.35 (talk) 08:08, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
One more note on sources:  I tried to find the most neutral sources with data (which some are), but some sources are opinioniated as they are the best sources I could find and still fit Wikipedia's Reliable Sources (see WP:RS) definition: "...reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject." 173.25.18.35 (talk) 08:16, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Dactyl Nightmare was the first full 3d FPS, if not the first true FPS. Look it up, it's a 1991 arcade VR game rendered in full 3d, predating Quake and even Wolfenstein 3D. It was a deathmatch multiplayer FPS, the gameplay was full 3d (3 axis), and players could fire in any direction, unlike in games like Wolfenstein 3D or Doom.
This should definitely be mentioned in the article. Anyone up for adding it, or should I do it? Endianer (talk) 03:10, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Do you have a source that specifically calls it the first true FPS? Masem (t) 03:41, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

There have been a number of studies and significant debate on the effects of violence in video games. First-person shooters are often cited as the source for desensitization of youth.  I linked a Wikipedia article on this topic in the "See Also" section.  Would it make sense to add a short note to the "research" section?  Something like:
"There have been a number of studies and significant debate on the effects of violence in video games. First-person shooters are often cited as the source for desensitization of youth.  See more at <link to violence in video games Wikipedia article>."
Or is it best to just leave it as is (in the "see also" section)? 173.25.18.35 (talk) 10:30, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I put the overly detailed tag on the history section is that, even before all the recent additions, it was getting too long, and the new stuff further worsened this.   We should be looking for sources that talk about the history of the genre overall, or if narrowed to a specific game, how the genre was influenced by that game or what significance that game meant for the genre (eg Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Marathon, Unreal, Half-Life all are such titles, but not such much games like Hexen or Heretic). Some of this stuff seems to be more about dev company history than the genre, too. Not that some of this is not bad info, but it might not belong on this page specifically. — Masem (t) 00:38, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Then may I suggest that if you don't care about such detailed history of FPS games to the point that you even found it already too long as it barely contained anything, then the solution might be that you stop watching this page which you ostensibly can't be bothered to care about if only to keep it at the maximum that you can bear which translates into the bare minimum for people who actually care about and that you focus your attention on other pages that you actually want details about and not want them to be the bare minimum that your limited interest can tolerate, how about it?
Look, you even wrote "Castle Wolfenstein", which is not even a FPS game, instead of "Wolfenstein 3D", you didn't even mention Duke Nukem 3D, and you don't understand the role that Raven Software has played into id Software's success since you pay attention only to the basic games that id Software made themselves only to show off their game engines, as demonstrated by the programmer John Carmack who has driven his co-founders out of id Software because he cared only about game engines and mocked the game-designers' ideas who wanted to innovate, which is why every other company who used id Software's game engines actually made more creative games than id Software themselves who cared only about game engines and not about games themselves, as demonstrated by every actual game-designer quitting id Software because a mere programmer dictated the games, you blatantly ignore all of that and you think you get to tell me how to talk about FPS games? Are you serious? 😏
Now, I am going to use an ammunition that someone else provided to me which is Wikipedia:Ownership of content and specifically this statement about it: "All Wikipedia pages and articles are edited collaboratively by the Wikipedian community of volunteer contributors. No one, no matter what, has the right to act as though they are the owner of a particular article (or any part of it). Even a subject of an article, be that a person or organization, does not own the article, nor has any right to dictate what the article may or may not say. No one whether a subject or an article creator has a responsibility to maintain an article or can normally be held responsible for its content.".
There you have it, this is Wikipedia's rule, "No one has any right to dictate what an article may or may not say.", which implies that by claiming that my contribution has been overly detailed and by dictating what length the history of FPS games should be and what it should or should not say as in which games it should present and which games it should ignore and that companies' history should be ignored, you blatantly violated Wikipedia's rules.
To sum it up, and it was not me who claimed it as I am merely quoting Wikipedia's rules themselves: "No one has any right to dictate what an article may or may not say.", there you have it, I have nothing to add to justify what my contributions may or may not say even though I do purposefully ignore many games and details which would definitely not add anything of importance into the history of FPS games as I focus on the main companies and main game engines and how their individual evolution influenced the overall evolution of the genre itself while including some individual games here and there which are not relevant nor for their companies nor for their game engine but which still brought something new into the genre and it is logical that the first games in history are overly detailed since they were basically all the sames at first and differentiated from themselves only for details that we find minor today but which really made all the differences when every game was the same and my presentations of the games will grow less and less detailed as the games themselves diversified more and more and didn't rely on details to differentiate themselves and you would have understood that was my point if you actually cared about the evolution of FPS games as I do. 😼
This is why I have been dividing the evolution of FPS games by the first game engine from 1992 to 1993 then by the Doom domination during which all games were pretty much the same and relied on details to make a difference and inspire innovations to each other, which is why every detail actually matters since you should have noticed that every game which added a little tiny something new, all games included this little tiny something new into them, because this was a time when every game was basically the same and only tiny differences actually made all the difference and influenced the following games from 1993 to 1997 ,then starting from 1998, which I specifically named the chapter "Innovations, new standards, democratization, and end of id Software monopoly", THEN, and only THEN, games actually started to diversify so much that I will NOT need to go into details to explain how they differentiated from each other and what new they brought to the genre, I have been merely writing the evolution as it actually happened, it started as "clones" of each other which relied only on details to make a difference, which is how I have been writing them, then they progressively grew so diverse than details didn't matter eventually, which is how I will progressively write them, you get it now?
However there is a specific point that we actually agree on that I have been pondering from the start actually which is that the history of FPS games should have its own dedicated page instead of merely being part of the general page about FPS games. 🤔 Maxime Martyr (talk) 01:44, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
You also don't have any right to edit war to remove a maintenance tag. Kindly stop doing so. MrOllie (talk) 01:52, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Keep sucking up to Masem and systematically approving everything he does and meddle in his business, I'm sure that will work and he will appreciate to have his own obedient dog and support your promotion in the hierarchy of such a pathetic website because you have no greater purpose in life than to be someone important within an unimportant community who does everything it can to prevent anyone joining and remaining a tight committee that barely anyone cares about. 😏
People like you who always interfere to suck up to hierarchy like dogs always made me laugh and you are no different, just as lame as any other boot-licker. 😁
Mutual good riddance! 😼 Maxime Martyr (talk) 03:55, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
You do not seem to have a good understanding of how editing works on WP, because what I've done is absolutely nothing close to ownership.Your first edit as a new editor (and apparently also as an IP editor) added a whole bunch of unsourced material to this article. That's highly questionable (it happens far too often) so I reverted it (but all recoverable later if needed). You followed that with adding most of that back with sources, which is good, and I didn't touch anything. I then checked what you added, and saw that there are a couple of other issues that you yourself are not solely reasonably for, such that the state of the article before those additions here was also long in the tooth and did not have focus in the history section. I am not saying all your additions have to go, but several of them continue the existing problems from the article in that the history is shown in a very disjoined manner and introduces games that aren't clearly shown as being major landmarks in the FPS genre development.  And that's an original research problem, in trying to assemble a history of the genre without using more comprehensive sources about the genre (which also was a problem before your additions). So I've tagged the issue as having too much detail, which is a completely fair thing, has nothing to do with ownership but only that we need to relook at how this article is structured to build it better.Is there enough material for a separate page? I don't know but you would have to show that the history of the FPS genre is notable as its own topic separate from the genre itself, and quick searching on this shows that it is really really hard to justify that. A wholly separate issue is that you've made the subheadings far too long. Headings follow the MOS for Wikipedia:Article titles, and conciseness is one of those factors. Your headings also give perhaps unhealth focus on specific players (appogee and raven) and not the history as it follows from the genre's development and technical achievement. But that's not the primary issue with the article, its just far too long without proper cohesive focus. — Masem (t) 02:03, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
To also add what problems I'm now seeing digging deeper: you have used an unreliable source (from WP's standpoint) Mobygames, to justify some additions. Mobygames is not a secondary source, much less unreliable due to being user-generated, and that leads to original research problems. For example you have introduced a huge amount of text about Ken's Labyrinth that is only sourced to MobyGames. Even our standalone article on that game doesn't have that much text. I am not going to immediately revert your additions but they have to be slimmed back down and original research and unreliable sources removed sooner than later. Masem (t) 02:38, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Ahahah, you know what? Go ahead, feel free to do whatever you feel like of my contributions, just as you have been doing already, because I am done with Wikipedia's pretenses to be a free open collective knowledge resource which forbids contributions of personal knowledge from personal experiences and is actually nothing more than a press vitrine since all that it contains is required to come from a professional press source as if people are more reliable just because they are paid to write about something which eventually makes Wikipedia rely on a few accepted sources rather than the collective knowledge of everyone, Wikipedia is a joke. 😏
You know, Wikipedia is not the only source of "knowledge" (I can't even use this word to talk about Wikipedia without laughing anymore 😁), Internet is full of specialized websites which talk in details about every topic you could imagine then what is the point of Wikipedia, do you know? 😏
It was to be the collective knowledge of everyone who would volunteer to share personal knowledge and experiences and everyone would contribute to it and improve collectively on each other, it was to be the collective pool of everyone's personal knowledge, the Myth of Alexandria's Great Library finally come true.
Then take a good look at what has actually become this dream, a close-minded rigid and restrictive bureaucracy which has accumulated so many rules to restrain people's contributions that less and less people can actually contribute to this "world resource", going to the point to forbid personal knowledge, which was the very point of Wikipedia to collect all personal knowledge into an infinite collective pool to begin with, demanding that "all contributions to be sourced with links to other websites", which implies that it cannot contain any knowledge which is not already available on other websites, making it nothing more than an index of links to other websites and this is what the original dream of "collecting everyone's knowledge into a common pool" has turned into, which is, in all honesty, pathetic.
Wikipedia is pathetic.
After all the trouble that you gave me to source my contributions to external websites and not merely to other Wikipedia's pages, I actually tried to reuse the same sources as every game's page and do you know what I found out then?
Most of Wikipedia's games pages are actually not sourced at all or are sources to other Wikipedia pages or are sources to their publishers themselves as if they were reliable sources to get neutral and objective information other than advertisements which claim what people want to hear to sell their games, which basically implies that barely any Wikipedia's game page actually applies the rule that you have been shoving down my throat and I actually had to search Internet to find reliable sources and when I say "reliable", any source, even professional ones, are merely people's personal experiences and impressions, which basically implies that Wikipedia forbids personal knowledge unless it is professional individuals' personal knowledge, which is hypocrite.
Anyway, before I attempted to contribute, Wikipedia was my main source of knowledge, however since you imposed on me to search sources other than Wikipedia, then I actually found out that you were right all along, "Wikipedia is not reliable", as any other sources proved to be more reliable than Wikipedia, which drove me to a logical conclusion which is: Wikipedia is useless.
Indeed, since Wikipedia requires every contribution to be sourced which implies that it can actually only provide data already available somewhere else since "it has to have a external source", then everything Wikipedia has to say has already been said somewhere else which makes Wikipedia useless, because the very point of Wikipedia was to be "a collective pool to which everyone can freely contribute their personal knowledge" without depending on other websites, which the rule of "no personal knowledge allowed" utterly destroyed the very purpose of Wikipedia which is now nothing more than a mere vitrine to other websites.
And since you enforced me to not rely on Wikipedia and to rely exclusively on other websites to source my contributions, then I learned to not rely on Wikipedia and more than that, I learned that Wikipedia is actually not reliable at all.
Therefore, not only did you disgust me from contributing to Wikipedia but you also taught me to not even rely on it as a user anymore and I will remember this lesson and not even bother to read any Wikipedia's page anymore since I learned how unreliable it actually is.
Then do whatever you feel like with my contributions, I am done with it, with you, and with the grotesque masquerade that Wikipedia actually is, you can even delete my account because I genuinely doubt that I will ever use it again now that I learned how pathetic Wikipedia's bureaucracy has become, I merely had to step behind the scenes to find out.
Enjoy undoing my contributions and be proud of the parody of "good article" that this page was before I tried to improve it since no one seemed to care about it.
Mutual good riddance. 🙋‍♂️ Maxime Martyr (talk) 03:44, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
you may never look at this again, but for the record, we do not build WP articles based on "personal knowledge and experience". We summarize what has been published in reliable sources, and while personal knowledge may help to guide us to find what information to include, we still need to back that up with sourcing. That's how we try to make sure WP is reliable. You can't source personal knowledge. Masem (t) 12:42, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm not an experienced WP editor, but I want to chime in that I agree with @Masem that the history section is way too detailed. Additionally it is borderline unreadable due to absurdly long run-on sentences and poor grammar. I was going to attempt to fix this, but because there is ongoing discussion about it I'll leave it be, I guess. Phoenix51291 (talk) 05:30, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
I saw the original changes to the article and the obvious issues they had, but didn't have the time to review. Some of it seemed usable and a lot of it typical newbie mistakes, especially above-mentioned (lack of) sourcing and minute details about individual games without any explanation on how they influence the actual history. They attached a bunch of sources, but with some random spot-checking, I couldn't confirm most of the additions, even if they seem true. Most of this should indeed be placed in individual articles about games and companies. Anyway, completely agree with Masem here. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 09:46, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

The redirect Second Person Shooter Zato has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 September 20 § Second Person Shooter Zato until a consensus is reached.  QuantumFoam66 (talk) 20:25, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

The redirect Ego shooter has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 8 § Ego shooter until a consensus is reached.  consarn (talck) (contirbuton s) 14:33, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

The redirect Video game/FPS has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 8 § Video game/FPS until a consensus is reached.  consarn (talck) (contirbuton s) 14:36, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

The redirect Military shooter has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 8 § Military shooter until a consensus is reached.  consarn (talck) (contirbuton s) 14:44, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

The redirect Real time strategy Shooter has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 8 § real time strategy shooter until a consensus is reached.  consarn (talck) (contirbuton s) 15:09, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

The redirect Corridor shooter has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 8 § Corridor shooter until a consensus is reached.  consarn (talck) (contirbuton s) 15:16, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

The redirect Space Seeker has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 8 § Space Seeker until a consensus is reached.  consarn (talck) (contirbuton s) 15:24, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

The redirect Draft:The Mark (video game) has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 8 § the mark until a consensus is reached.  consarn (talck) (contirbuton s) 15:31, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

It has been a while since this article has been reviewed, so I took a look and noticed the following:

There is uncited text, including entire paragraphs.
At over 10,000 words, the article is WP:TOOBIG. I suggest that information be spun out, summarised more effectively, or removed as being too detailed.
Some sections are quite large, making it hard to read (especially on mobile). I suggest that more headings are used to break up the text.
Should this article go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 02:56, 5 November 2025 (UTC)


### First-person shooter
Article (edit | visual edit | history) ·  Article talk (edit | history) ·  Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review
Result pending 
There is uncited text, including entire paragraphs. At over 10,000 words, the article is WP:TOOBIG. I suggest that information be spun out, summarised more effectively, or removed as being too detailed. Some sections are quite large, making it hard to read (especially on mobile). I suggest that more headings are used to break up the text. Z1720 (talk) 17:47, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Retain The upper limit of WP:TOOBIG is 15k words, so "over 10k words" does not seem to invalidate this page as a Good Article, and uncited information can simply be deleted by anyone, including the nominator. An intractable issue has not been demonstrated. A split can be proposed on the page itself, without undergoing GA reassessment. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 15:12, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
@Zxcvbnm: GA criteria #3b says the article "stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style)". I do not think an article with a yellow "overly detailed" banner fulfills this criteria. The uncited text will also need to be addressed before I can recommend that the article retain its GA status. Z1720 (talk) 15:50, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
After giving it a closer look, I will have to change to delist, but due to an issue that was not mentioned here, the proliferation of unreliable sources. Many are WP:USERG, like MobyGames or PCGamingWiki, or unsuitable for use as a source. This is a pretty big issue throughout the article, with a good chunk of the sources being unusable. So, even if we got rid of anything uncited, it would need a huge pruning of the cited stuff as well. This is massive enough that it should be delisted so that it can be re-reviewed. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 15:59, 23 November 2025 (UTC)