And, to end the night's updates, I'll link to you an editorial I did for
FileFront on "
What Makes a Successful FPS?" The article mainly covers the basic "traits" a first-person shooter has; but I focus mostly on mod'ing. Now, trademark snippet, and I'll return you to your regularly scheduled programming:
Take Half-Life for example: the game was praised for its incredibly immersive single-player campaign, which put a focus on experiencing all the events of the game through one man's eyes (this was really the first time that an FPS put a big focus on the story of a game). It was this aspect of the game that really grabbed people's attention when Half-Life was first released, as the multiplayer portion of the game was standard in every way… Hell, the multiplayer component of Half-Life only offered a deathmatch mode. However, it was with Half-Life that players got their hands on the various tools that came with the game, namely WorldCraft, which was the proprietary game editor for Half-Life. I remember finding it on the CD, and just playing around with it for months. I made some really, really bad little campaigns that looked like total ass, but it was cool for me, because it was my first time ever making anything on a computer.