We've all seen them. From Doom to Goldeneye 007, Wolfenstein 3D to Halo, Duke Nukem to Half Life: the faceless protagonist, marching down corridors with weapons from the past, present and future, slaughtering hordes of aliens, demons, enemy soldiers, terrorists, murderers and zombies. Perhaps no other genre in video gaming has influenced the medium - technologically and artistically - more than the 'first person shooter'.

The evil masses began as simple flat sprites which could only walk and shoot in straight lines. They've evolved to some of the most graphically complex, artificially-intelligent creatures in the industry. Protagonists have been pushed into far more articulate and complex scenarios and stories than anything the industry considered standard at the time.

Innovation brought acclaim and massive sales. Some of the biggest-selling video games are first person shooters. Halo 3 holds the current record for the highest gross of any entertainment product within 24 hours of its release (a record once held by Halo 2). It had such a huge release that it dented box office receipts in cinemas: takings the week of release were down 27% on the previous year.

What is it that makes first person shooters the kings? What makes their sales, reputation and innovations so substantial, compared to all the other genres? Two reasons perhaps. There's the escapism that it allows the player. Being the character that you are playing, seeing the world through their eyes, is far more exciting and invigorating than viewing your avatar from a detached third-person perspective. It may seem just a detail, but it makes a huge difference to the way you experience the surrounding world. And those are the worlds that have turned video gaming into a multi-billion dollar industry.

The world is built up through language and artistic style even before you put the game in your Xbox or Playstation. It begins to form itself from the moment the game is announced, through its trailers, marketing campaigns, instruction booklets and - eventually - the start menu. Inhabiting the character from the inside of its head takes escapism that further step. It's you - the player and character combined - running down the dank corridor, heaving the rocket-launcher onto your shoulder, mowing down a hundred alien grunts with a plasma canon. There's an undeniable – OK it's nerdy - sense you get when you're really into a first-person game; when the epic action soundtrack kicks in; when you launch yourself over the burning shell of a tank you were taking cover behind; when you charge headlong into battle.

You're so enveloped in the world - painstakingly created by a developer - that you feel yourself (if only for a few moments) thinking, acting - and sometimes embarrassingly even speaking - and trash-talking your enemies as the character. You've taken this marine/secret agent/space-ranger/convict/superhero/renegade through the first steps of his/her initial training, become accustomed yourself with their sense (or lack) of humour, dialogue, movement. Their hands are yours, their enemies yours, their reactions, yours. And you have escaped - fully - into their virtual world. No other entertainment can allow you this. No type of videogame can give on such a personal level.

Perhaps the other reason for their success is storytelling. The first-person shooter has consistently been at the forefront of innovatative storytelling. While it's only in the last ten years or so that the genre has really moved into creating particularly deep and complex storylines - often spanning multiple games in vast sagas and trilogies - even the earliest and most technologically basic games gave the player just enough story and characterisation to push them deep into the head of the pixelated protagonist.

Wolfenstein 3D, the 1992 hit which first popularised the genre, kept things simple - escape from Castle Wolfenstein and overthrow the Nazis. A year later, Doom took things a bit further. Set years in the future, a gateway to hell has been opened in a military base on Mars. It's the player's job to close it. Doom moved things on, fleshing out the rather basic plot by screening text during loading sequences. These two illustrate how even the most elementary storytelling in first person shooters enhances enjoyment. You're not playing as a fat plumber from Brooklyn, or a wise-cracking blue hedgehog, you're an ass-kicking space-marine/secret agent with big balls and bigger guns, single-handedly charged with taking down the armies of darkness - physical and spiritual.

Such simple plots went on to become franchises as big in money as - in some cases bigger than - many Hollywood movies. Halo 3 made $300 million in its first week. The Incredible Hulk hasn't made that much yet. They injected personality. More importantly they injected drama - into what could be a fairly boring affair: get to new area, kill everything, move on, wash, rinse, repeat. But when the fate of mankind is resting on you killing everything in this area – you're reminded of this just before you make it there – you feel more compelled to assist. It's partly out of duty (if you’ve been sucked into the story properly), partly partly because it's you that the species is depending on to do it. You're the one who gets the glory - the coolest guns to do it with.

As things progressed, video games became increasingly photo-realistic. Plotlines became more complex. In 1998, with the release of Half Life on the PC, first person shooters took their biggest step into dramatic storytelling. Playing as Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist working at a secret research lab called Black Mesa, the gamer survives a cataclysmic experiment which unexpectedly rips the dimensional seams of reality apart. This allows hostile aliens from a world called Xen to cross over into the devastated lab. As Freeman struggles through the complex to try and help the injured, US Special Forces move in to cover up the incident - ie killing any surviving humans. Freeman eventually reaches the secret Lamba Complex, where he is transported to Xen to kill the alien overlord and stop the onslaught.

It's pure science fiction, and unlike other shooters, in Half Life there are no cut scenes. These are filmic sequences which usually precede and follow each level. The player stays in Freeman's head the whole time. The sci-fi plot twists and drama unfold before the player's eyes in real time. Lines between where player ends and character begins had never been so blurred. Other characters remark that Gordon never says anything, and seems fairly humourless. There are even moments in the game, certainly in the final boss battle, when characters seem to break the fourth wall and talk directly to the player. Lines such as 'The truth. You can never know the truth' suggest that the character of Freeman will never know he is being controlled by a player. (The story becomes far more intriguing and complex with the sequel Half Life 2, and its follow-on episodes).

Half Life is an exact example of why first person shooters work so well. It puts things into the hands of the player. It allows the player to explore - and define - the rules of the game as wished. Want to hang around and listen to injured scientists talk about what the facility was like before the cataclysmic accident? Go ahead. Motor onward into the throes of battle and skip all that? That’s fine too.

The hook is set with the initial premise. The world is deep and believable; so's the action. You can play cool: hang back, shoot from a distance, let zombies, aliens and enemy marines come to you (though the marines are devilishly good at flanking). Or charge into the fight with all guns (lots of guns) on fire. Story telling, and the personality of the character, are coloured more by your own thoughts, feelings, style and reactions. Half Life took an intelligent complex story, and instead of dumbing it, making it light, let each player own it.

Video games are increasingly considered works of art - with stories, performances and technological advancements increasingly spectacular - and budgets to match. They offer a unreplicatable experience. It's something deeper than a fixed camera following the action. Here it's all personal. Everything is down to the player - the first and only person who matters. This kind of immersion in a world and a series of events is something that can only be experienced in video gaming. Every audience member can't get on the stage and become Hamlet. But every player can be Gordon Freeman.

END

(c) Miles Weaver 28 October 08

Miles Weaver is a writer living in London

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