The first-person shooter, or FPS (which also stands for frames-per-second but we’re not talking PC benchmarks or camera hardware here), has been a staple of gaming for decades. In fact, the genre has existed for fifty years now (in case you wanted to feel old). It’s about time for a decent documentary, no?
FPS: First Person Shooter aims to be that documentary when it launches online on 31 August. It’s got all of the biggest names from the biggest games in the genre’s history. Doom, Quake, GoldenEye, Halo, Deus Ex, System Shock, Duke Nukem, Half-Life, and many other titles are covered in this four-hour retrospective.
FPS: The Movie
Industry heavyweights like John Carmack and John Romero (iD Software), Warren Spector (Deus Ex, System Shock), Karl Hilton and Brett Jones (GoldenEye), various Halo creators like Marcus Lehto, Joseph Staten, and Jaime Griesemer are joined by Cliff Bleszinski (Unreal Tournament), Tim Willits (Quake III), and other creators to explore their own contributions to one of gaming’s most iconic game types.
There is, of course, a catch. If you want to watch four hours of history on launch day, you’ll have to pay for it. The digital release will cost you about a thousand bucks ($50) but there are also varying higher amounts you could pay if you wanted to. Want FSP: First Person Shooter on BluRay? That’ll cost two grand, plus shipping. But if you’ve always wanted to be a filmmaker, you can score an Associate Producer credit on IMDB for the low price of R28,800 ($1,500). Plus all the physical extras, of course.
And if you’re really loaded, you can opt for the Executive Producer tier. Just R115,000 will net you the BluRay, your name on the poster and IMBD, shirts, promotional posters, and all sorts of other goodies. Oh, and tickets to the premier, but you’ll have to fly there yourself. Oh, and you’re still paying for shipping. This isn’t Amazon. That stuff’s not free here.
Just don’t go laying hands on the wrong FPS: First Person Shooter. There’s a 2014 release by the same name that… you probably don’t want to experience. No matter how much the artwork looks like a Duke Nukem cover (which in turn owes something to Doom, which itself reaches back to Frank Frazetta. Kinda).