Top 10 Video Game Firsts
02. First Human Simulation Game
If you think that Maxis/EA's The Sims was the first video game to simulate human life, well, no, it was actually a game called Little Computer People, that was published by Activision and was popular on a wide array of computers and game systems, but most often was played on the Atari ST line and Commodore's C=64.
Little Computer People was not a video game, it was a simulation -- that is to say that it quite literally allows you to simulate the life of a little computer-generated person, right there on your computer, and that was very cool for a number of reasons, not the lease of which being that Maxis/EA would later use it as the basis for establishing the mainstream simulation genre with their Sims series.
If that was all that this first accomplished it would still be pretty cool, but the reason that it places so high on our list is because it had very broad impact on a lot of other video game genres as well.Up until LCP splashed onto the scene the characters in video games were heavily scripted and reactive, with very little in the way of free will present in their actions. Once LCP blazed the path though, game designers accepted that they could actually give limited autonomy to characters in their games with positive results, and an entirely new focus of game design came into being.
So thanks are owed to LCP and its creator, Rich Gold, without whom game character AI might have progressed at an altogether different (slower) pace!
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I was thrown off by the "First 3D shooter question, as it isn't necessarily accurate.
For one thing, it associates 3D to equate to FPS, which is incorrect. Considering the number of vector-based or even sprite-based flight games that started in the 80s, many of these had a step up on Wolfenstein as far as 3D engines go. I mean, Red Baron's vector graphics presented a much more real 3D "shooter" than Wolfenstein.
Secondly, if you ARE simply talking FPSes, while Wolfenstein 3D is the first widely honored game, the same engine was used for the older Catacombs 3D, featuring largely identical mechanics, minus the commercial success and recognize-ability.
Given your attention to detail in so much else on this article, this seems a rather strange area to veer away from the otherwise well-researched path.
turns out you can do good and still turn out evil. Just saying.
that descibes ea and activision