Not Doom, as is popularly believed, but Maze War, a 1973 release with both a single player and multiplayer game, marks the beginning of the genre. Run on the computers of massive organizations like NASA and MIT, variations of the game required extremely high processing power and specialized imaging systems at the time.
In 1992, 19 years after Maze War, regular players could experience the first-person shooter genre. The id Software-produced Wolfenstein 3D offered an unmatched gaming experience and was destined to become known as the first first-person shooter game. The genre’s growth was facilitated by Doom, which was released a year after the production and features a corridor-based environment instead of the open worlds of modern first-person shooter games. Since 1992, hundreds of first-person shooter games have been produced; some of them have gone on to become classics, while others have vanished into the murky depths of the internet.