Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game.

He and the co-founders at iD Software quickly realized that they had a hit on their hands. What they couldn’t have known then was how much B. J. Blazkowicz and his subjective POV would revolutionize video games.

It wasn't the first game to use a first-person perspective. In 1991, Softdisk released what has been called the original first-person shooter, a wizards-and-warlocks dungeon crawler called Catacombs 3-D. But the game didn't click with the public.

So the main people behind that game, and dozens of other Softdisk releases--John Carmack, John Romero, and Tom Hall-- reworked the formula. Instead of dark fantasy and spells, Wolfenstein 3D cast players as a beefy action hero racing through corridors with a deadly projectile weapon in hand, giving the Nazi's what-for.

A quarter-century later, the FPS is a cornerstone of the games industry. The genre is a foundation upon which developers create massive sales juggernauts like the Battlefield and Call of Duty and Overwatch franchises, horror games like FEAR, immersive experiences like the System Shock and Bioshock series, survival games like Metro 2033, and even quirky personal expressions like Andy Sum’s GAME OF THE YEAR 420BLAZEIT.

“Since we made games out of passion and were so geeky-early, that gave us a leg up, a rare opportunity to make a new genre come to life," says Hall. "That doesn't happen very often, and I'm honored to have come up with the fundamentals of what an FPS is with the team.”

Hall went on to co-found ION Storm and Monkeystone, and designed titles like DOOM, Rise of the Triad, Anachronox, and PlayFirst's DASH games. We asked him to tell us about some design lessons he learned while working on Wolfenstein 3D that he still uses today. He began his list, not surprisingly, with guns.

1. Stick to your guns

This seemingly simple shooter was full of hidden secrets.

“Design-wise, if something is critical, stick to your guns. I fought for pushwalls,” Hall says, referring to the secret parts of the corridors in the game that appear to be solid wall but can be opened, leading to new areas.

“In a game, you don't want activity fatigue, where you get bored doing the same thing all the time,” Hall says. He describes the main gameplay loop of Wolfenstein 3D as “shoot guards, loot, get key, open door, shoot guards, loot, get key, open door…” He says that programmer John Carmack questioned the need for fake doors, but he argued for it, and the end result made for a more surprising, compelling game.

The pushwalls added secrets to the environment, and added a twist to the propulsive combat. ”There needed to be that ‘10% thing’ that you can do for a variety of experience,” he adds. He describes the professions in World of Warcraft or cooking in Breath of the Wild as examples of side activities that help break up the sameyness of the main gameplay. 

“Adding pushwalls was a classic way to hide secrets, using the exact same controls as doors, so it made sense,” he says. “It gave you that rush of discovery that Bartle's Explorers crave. It made Carmack's engine slightly less elegant, but it made the game way more fun.”

"Carmack shines at optimizing and making things fast, and figuring out tricks to do more and do it faster than would be straightforwardly possible," explains Hall. "He had crafted an elegant and efficient renderer. This would make it less elegant, plopping what was essentially a special case kludge in the middle of all that nice, clean code.  But it was super-necessary for fun."

Wolfenstein 3D was a paradise of creative visual freedom compared to the old games, but it had its limitations.  Things on the ceiling were just hanging from a flat colored surface, same for the floor. But it was okay.  But since everything was on one level, it was rather difficult to surprise the player, so the design had to be tricksy.  Alcoves with walk-throughable or shoot-throughable objects, so enemies could surprise you, and from then on, make you paranoid, even if they weren't there!  

[FASCINATING SIDE NOTE FROM HALL: "Off-topic, one sad story was this -- Wolfenstein actually had animating wall textures. From early on. The scene is this: we were making a cool FPS in a crazy short time. We had an outside artist helping on art, and the art wasn't turning out very good. A flickering torch wasn't well done.  We parted ways.  And then, WE FORGOT TO USE ANIMATING WALLS. At all. They could have really added to the atmosphere and been used for interesting things.... but, well, we had so much to do and simply forgot."]

2. Embrace limitations

Map of Episode 1 Floor 5 of Wolfenstein 3D

Carmack, Hall, and John Romero would go on to build off of Wolfenstein 3D’s success with the spiritual successor DOOM. Though the fast action, over-the-top violence and pithy humor remained, advancing technology allowed for more open, flexible environments. With Wolf 3D, Hall had to focus on making simple locations feel more alive.

“Before DOOM, these 3D spaces were more primitive, as they were limited to a tile grid: a bunch of square walls or not-walls. So your creativity is trying to work within those constraints,” he says. Today a designer can effectively create an environment as abstract or realistic as they want; the choice is one of intent. But in 1992, you could only do so much. So what little you could achieve had to be effective in saying a lot. 

“In Hovertank One [their predecessor to Catacomb 3D], there were no textures, just solid-colored walls. So I placed a green one and thought, ‘Well, in this level, that's a tree,'" he says. "Working with constraints is amazing! But it can also get silly...”

3. Think cinematically

The advent of first-person games shifted not only the player’s perspective, but that of the creators as well.

“Our 3D shooters, starting with Hovertank, were the first I imagined as real three-dimensional active spaces, so a lot of things would come to me sort of cinematically," says Hall. "It was a new, different way of thinking about what you were making.”

“Before the games got textured 3D, you would make a clever maze, or do a layout similar to a familiar architecture shape," he adds. "But now that it was textured, and you could have detailed sprites to make rooms feel different. It became more of a true first-person experience, a visual and sonic experience that as both a designer and a player, you were the authoring protagonist of.”

The first-person games we play in 2017 have accumulated two de