Most gamers, if you ask them what was the first FPS game, will say Doom. Some will say Wolfenstein 3D. Both are wrong, and both companies would probably admit it themselves. The real answer to what was the first FPS game takes you back two full decades before Doom, to a university computer lab, a NASA research center, and a group of programmers who weren’t even trying to make a “shooter” at all.
This article traces the honest, well-documented answer to what was the first FPS game, from its accidental birth in 1973 through the arcade era, and finally to the games that made the genre a household name. Along the way, you’ll see why the true story is more interesting and more surprising than the one most “top 10” lists tell you.
By the end, you’ll know exactly what was the first FPS game, why it doesn’t get the credit it deserves, and how a simple maze-navigation experiment turned into the biggest genre in gaming history.
What Was the First FPS Game?
Maze War (1973) is officially recognized by Guinness World Records as the first FPS game, because it had:
- A first-person camera view
- Real shooting mechanics
- Multiplayer gameplay
- Networked combat between players
- Maze-based exploration
Spasim (1974) is the closest runner-up, offering first-person space combat with up to 32 players a year later.
So when someone asks what was the first FPS game, Maze War is the strongest, most historically supported answer even though almost nobody has actually played it.
What Does “FPS” Actually Mean?
Before answering what was the first FPS game, it helps to define the term. FPS stands for First-Person Shooter, a video game genre where:
- You see the game world through the eyes of your character (a first-person camera view)
- The core gameplay revolves around shooting weapons at enemies or other players
- Movement and aiming happen in real time, from that same first-person perspective
Keep this definition in mind, because it’s the reason historians disagree slightly on what was the first FPS game. Some early titles had the first-person view but no shooting. Others had shooting but weren’t quite “first person” in the way we understand it today.
What Was the First FPS Game?
According to Guinness World Records, the first-ever first-person shooter videogame was Maze War, developed by Steve Colley, Greg Thompson, and Howard Palmer in 1973 on Imlac PDS-1 computers at the NASA Ames Research Center in California.
That’s the official record-holder. But the real story of what was the first FPS game is a little messier and a lot more fun than a single name and date.
Maze War (1973): The Accidental First FPS Game
Maze War didn’t start out as a shooter at all. It began as a simple technical demo.
The game was initially designed as a technical showcase in which the player explored a 3D maze, showing off the vector graphics capabilities of the Imlac PDS-1 minicomputer. According to co-creator Steve Colley, just wandering the maze alone got boring fast. So a teammate suggested adding other players into the same maze, and from there, the idea of shooting them somehow followed.
That single decision turned a maze-walking demo into what many historians now recognize as the answer to what was the first FPS game. A few details that make Maze War remarkable for 1973:
- Multiplayer before the internet existed: Players were connected through early networking, years before home internet was even a concept
- Avatars: Other players appeared as floating eyeballs moving through the maze
- It kept growing: An 8-player mode, AI-controlled opponents, and even a level editor were added over the following years
- It quietly took over ARPANET: At one point in the mid-1970s, around half of all data traffic on the ARPANET was reportedly related to Maze War matches between students at MIT and Stanford
Maze War was never sold commercially. It lived on university mainframes, played by students who had access to expensive, room-sized computers. That’s a big reason it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves when people casually ask what was the first FPS game, most players never even had the chance to touch it.
Spasim (1974): The Other Contender
If Maze War is the “official” answer to what was the first FPS game, Spasim is the game historians can’t leave out of the conversation.
Spasim has previously been considered, along with Maze War, to be one of the “joint ancestors” of the first-person shooter genre, due to earlier uncertainty over Maze War’s exact development timeline. Built by developer Jim Bowery at the University of Illinois, Spasim put players in the cockpit of a spaceship rather than the boots of a soldier, but the core idea was the same: a first-person view, other players sharing the same space, and combat between them.
A few things worth knowing about Spasim:
- It ran on the PLATO computer network, one of the first large-scale computer networks in education
- Up to 32 players could compete in the same space battle at once, a massive number for 1974
- It directly inspired other early multiplayer combat games on the PLATO system, including a tank game called Panther
Because Maze War’s exact development date was hard to pin down for years, some older sources actually credited Spasim as the answer to what was the first FPS game. Today, most historians lean toward Maze War, since it’s now accepted that Maze War can be dated to the summer of 1973, a year before Spasim.
Maze War vs. Spasim vs. Battlezone: Comparing the Earliest Contenders
Since more than one game has a claim to being the first FPS game, it helps to compare them side by side.
| Game | Strengths | Limitations |
| Maze War (1973) | First-person view, real shooting mechanics, multiplayer gameplay, networked play | Simple wireframe graphics and very limited movement |
| Spasim (1974) | First-person cockpit view with support for up to 32-player space combat | Space simulation rather than a traditional on-foot shooter |
| Battlezone (1980) | First commercially successful first-person action game, smooth vector graphics, widely accessible in arcades | Focuses on vehicle/tank combat instead of on-foot shooting |
This comparison is exactly why the debate over what was the first FPS game hasn’t fully settled; each title nails some parts of the modern FPS definition but not all of them.
The Arcade Era: Battlezone Brings FPS to the Public
Maze War and Spasim were groundbreaking, but almost nobody outside a handful of universities ever played them. Neither game was released commercially; they were more like experimental projects shown off to select university students.
That changed in 1980, when Atari released Battlezone, a first-person tank combat game in arcades across the world. Battlezone was the first successful mass-market arcade game to feature a first-person viewpoint and wireframe 3D graphics, selling around 15,000 arcade units.
Battlezone wasn’t the answer to what was the first FPS game; that title still belongs to Maze War, but it was the first time regular people, not just computer science students, could walk (or in this case, drive) into a first-person shooting experience. It proved the genre could be commercially successful, setting the stage for everything that came next.
Before Doom: id Software’s Early Experiments (1991)
This part of the story usually gets skipped, but it’s essential to understanding how the genre reached Doom. Two years before Doom’s release, id Software, the studio that would later define the genre, was already quietly building toward it.
- Hovertank 3D (April 1991): id Software’s first 3D game, a vehicular combat title programmed by future Doom creators John Carmack and John Romero, built on the same tank-combat idea Battlezone popularized.
- Catacomb 3-D (November 1991): A dark fantasy shooter that returned to a character-based (rather than vehicle-based) FPS concept, and added a major first: fully animated hands visible on screen, making combat feel personal for the first time.
- Ultima Underworld (1992): Released the same year as Wolfenstein 3D, this game introduced free-look mouse movement and fully textured 3D environments, features often wrongly credited to later shooters.
These three games are the missing link between Maze War’s 1973 experiment and Wolfenstein 3D’s 1992 breakthrough, proving that the road to the first FPS game most people know wasn’t a straight line.
The 1990s: Wolfenstein 3D and Doom Popularize the Genre
This is where most gaming discussions mistakenly begin and where the confusion about what was the first FPS game usually comes from.
In 1992, id Software released Wolfenstein 3D, widely considered the game that made the FPS genre mainstream on home computers. A year later, Doom (1993) took it even further, adding better graphics, multiplayer deathmatch, and mod support that let players build their own levels.
Doom was such a massive hit that, throughout the 1990s, first-person shooters weren’t even called “FPS games,” yet they were called Doom clones. That nickname is a big part of why so many people still assume Doom is the answer to what was the first FPS game. It wasn’t the first, but it was the game that turned a niche experiment into a global phenomenon.
The True History of What Was the First FPS Game
| Year | Game | Why It Matters |
| 1973 | Maze War | Widely credited as the first FPS game and the first to feature networked multiplayer shooting. |
| 1974 | Spasim | An early joint contender featuring first-person space combat for up to 32 players. |
| 1980 | Battlezone | The first FPS-style game to reach a mass arcade audience. |
| 1992 | Wolfenstein 3D | Introduced FPS gaming to home PCs and mainstream audiences. |
| 1993 | Doom | Popularized multiplayer deathmatch and modding; similar games became known as “Doom clones.” |
| 1996 | Quake | Introduced a fully 3D engine, replacing earlier 2D sprite techniques. |
| 1999 | Half-Life | Brought cinematic storytelling and immersive narratives to FPS games. |
| 2001 | Halo: Combat Evolved | Proved that FPS games could thrive on consoles as well as PCs. |
Why Does Everyone Get This Wrong?
If Maze War is the documented answer to what was the first FPS game, why does almost nobody know that? A few simple reasons:
- It never left university labs: Maze War ran on rare, expensive research computers, not something you could buy or rent
- It wasn’t marketed: There was no box art, no advertising, no public release
- Doom was simply louder: It arrived with magazine coverage, shareware distribution, and a cultural moment that Maze War never had
- The word “FPS” didn’t exist yet: Nobody in 1973 called their game a “first-person shooter”; the term was coined much later, after the genre already had a name to react to
This is a common pattern in tech and gaming history: the game that’s remembered as “the first” is often the one that was most visible, not the one that was actually first.
Key Milestones That Shaped the FPS Genre
Beyond the question of what was the first FPS game, several later innovations shaped the genre into what it is today:
- First-person camera viewpoint
- Networked multiplayer combat
- LAN gaming (Doom)
- Mouse-based free aiming (Ultima Underworld, Quake)
- True 3D polygonal environments (Quake)
- Online matchmaking
- Realistic physics engines
- Story-driven, cinematic campaigns (Half-Life)
- Console-friendly controls (Halo)
- Cross-platform multiplayer
- Ray-traced lighting
Why FPS Games Became So Popular
The genre that began with a bored programmer adding multiplayer to a maze demo now dominates the entire games industry. A few reasons FPS games stayed popular for over 50 years:
- Immersive, first-person immersion that puts players directly in the action
- Fast-paced, skill-based competitive gameplay
- Strong esports and streaming culture
- Regular content updates and seasonal live-service models
- High replay value through multiplayer modes
- A wide range of styles, from realistic military shooters to arcade-style hero shooters
Common Myths About What Was the First FPS Game
Myth: Doom was the first FPS game.
Reality: Doom (1993) came 20 years after Maze War (1973)
Myth: Wolfenstein 3D invented the genre.
Reality: Wolfenstein 3D popularized the genre on home PCs, but first-person shooting mechanics already existed
Myth: Battlezone was the first FPS game.
Reality: Battlezone (1980) was the first to reach arcades, not the first to exist
Myth: There’s one single, undisputed first FPS game.
Reality: Maze War is the official record holder, but Spasim is close enough in timing that some historians still debate it
Influence on Modern FPS Games
Every modern franchise you can think of owes something to these early experiments. Features first introduced by the pioneers of what was the first FPS game are still core to titles such as:
- Call of Duty
- Battlefield
- Counter-Strike
- Halo
- Valorant
- Rainbow Six Siege
- Apex Legends
- Overwatch
- Destiny
- Doom Eternal
First-person aiming, networked multiplayer, and competitive player-versus-player combat all traced directly back to Maze War’s accidental invention in a NASA computer lab.
Final Thoughts
So, what was the first FPS game? By the most credible historical record, it’s Maze War, a 1973 experiment that started as a simple maze-walking demo and accidentally became the ancestor of an entire genre. Spasim, Battlezone, Wolfenstein 3D, and Doom all played huge roles in shaping first-person shooters into what we know today, but none of them hold the true “first” title.
The next time someone asks what was the first FPS game and answers “Doom,” you’ll know the real story one that started two decades earlier, in a research lab most gamers have never even heard of.
What Was the First FPS Game FAQs
1. What was the first FPS game ever made?
According to Guinness World Records, Maze War (1973) is officially recognized as the first FPS game, created by Steve Colley, Greg Thompson, and Howard Palmer at NASA Ames Research Center.
2. Was Doom the first FPS game?
No. Doom was released in 1993, nearly 20 years after Maze War. Doom popularized the genre and gave it mainstream appeal, but it wasn’t the first FPS game.
3. What was the first FPS game you could actually buy?
Battlezone (1980) was the first FPS-style game widely available to the public, in arcades. Wolfenstein 3D (1992) was one of the first you could buy for a home computer.
4. Is Spasim or Maze War the true first FPS game?
Maze War is now generally credited first, since its development has been dated to 1973, a year before Spasim. For years, uncertainty over Maze War’s timeline meant both games were treated as joint “first” candidates.
5. Why is it hard to answer what was the first FPS game definitively?
Early games like Maze War were built as experiments on university and research computers, not commercial products, so exact dates and features weren’t always well documented at the time.
