What's your favorite FPS?
As a genre of gaming, few are so ubiquitous nowadays as the first-person shooter, often shorted to FPS. These games have come a long way since their early years, but the format has always pushed the boundaries of technology. From the early entries such as Wolfenstein 3D and, my personal fave, System Shock, to the umpteenth entry in the Call of Duty series, these games are fun, challenging, and huge money makers. Mike Elfers sat down with David Craddock, one of the minds behind the 2023 FPS: First Person Shooter documentary for a round of Roll of the Dice. We rolled an 11.
Mike Elfers: Hello David Craddock! Author, gamer, and most recently the co-director and writer of the FPS: First Person Shooter documentary (available now)! It looks like our headitor rolled an eleven, so I hope you're ready to dig deep. Question one: I thoroughly enjoyed the FPS documentary, it was as captivating as it was detailed, I was truly surprised by the amount of content you were able to pack into the 4.5 hours. Can you give the readers a good summary of the release in your own words?
David Craddock: Hello, hello! First off, thanks so much for your interest in FPS, and for your compliments. My team and I are glad you enjoyed it! A good summary of FPS is an in-depth tour of the first-person shooters that defined the genre and expanded it into what it is today—from games most players have never heard of, such as Maze War; to games you might not have thought of as FPS, such as Battlezone; to games that form the bedrock of the genre, such as Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Unreal, Half-Life, and beyond.
Alright so we're amped up for your comprehensive look into the 40+ years of first-person gaming, now let's set the scene. It is 1997, you are at home, awaiting your first glimpse at Quake II… what are the specs on your PC?
Every PC gamer knows that special feeling after you've built a gaming PC: You know you've crafted a state-of-the-art juggernaut capable of playing the latest and greatest games at 1,000 frames per second! Then a few years pass and you realize your hardware is woefully out of date. That's how I'm feeling now.
I bought a gaming PC in February 2020 that served me well until recently. It sports 16 gigs of RAM, a 500 gig SSD for the OS and miscellaneous programs, a 1 terabyte hard drive just for games, and an Nvidia GeForce 2070 Super. It's time to upgrade!
A little was certainly a lot back then, but word-of-mouth also influenced gamers, everywhere from pre-LED tower lights in neon colors, to every attempt to cool your CPU, including my standby which was a box-fan by the side of an unscrewed station… What are the silliest machine mods you can remember from the pioneering days of PC gaming?
When I went to QuakeCon in 2017 to conduct interviews for Rocket Jump, my book (free to read on Shacknews.com!) about the making of id Software's Quake trilogy, I saw a gaming PC made out of a pizza box. There were flashier machines in the BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) area, but that was one of the most creative I'd seen in years.
Resting the doc subject for a minute, let's set it down by asking you for your all time favorite first person shooter game? Your absolute number one.
That's easy: Doom. It's in my top three games of all time, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a single FPS more influential on the genre, and on action games as a whole. From speed and level design to weapon balance and movement, Doom is the total package. It's still popular 30+ years after its release. Very few games can make that claim and back it up.
Aside from your many books, you have contributed to a series of video game strategy guides. I've always revered these tools as the Sherpas to our Mount Everest, really laying all of the groundwork so we can complete our journey without fucking totally dying. (eg. Earthbound waterfall password.) Can you touch on your strategy guide work, and your thoughts on their importance in gaming?
Oh, man, this is a great question. I love strategy guides. I've been collecting them since I was a kid. My policy was that I would try everything I could think of to get past a tricky boss or puzzle, and only then would I consult a guide. Beyond that, though, I read them like they were novels. I'd open one, start on the first page, and read through to the end. Before I wrote them, I admired the beauty that went into their writing and graphic design. I can name strategy guides that sold for 20 bucks or less that were more professional and eye-catching than art books that sold for $50 or more.
Since writing strategy guides, I've gained even more respect for what goes into making a resource that's as functional as it is comprehensive. Writing is only one part of the equation. You have to play a game top to bottom and become an expert so you can pass strategies, solutions, and tips to your readers or viewers. And then there's the writing. If you're a poor writer, how can you communicate to players what they need to do to progress? Anyone interested in writing guides, or in working in the game industry in any capacity, should prioritize learning the fundamentals of writing and developing a unique voice.
I never got the chance to write a guide for one of the big publishers like Prima or BradyGames. These days, Future Press makes strategy guides that are handy as resources, but are also gorgeous, collectible books. I have Future's entire run of Soulsborne books and am always looking to add more to my shelves.
On the subject of strategy guides… I wanted to take the time machine back to the very early 90's now, my memories are as vivid as ever of my brother and I rapidly skimming the current Nintendo Power in the checkout line, scribbling cheat codes onto our wrists as our father paid for our frozen pizzas… Can you talk about the evolution of the internet's role in gamer guidance, and the mystique of Easter-eggs, cheat-codes, and rumor mills in the gaming world prior to modernized internet access?
Another great question. The internet's ability to give us answers at any time is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, if you have a question, I can practically guarantee someone has answered it. On the other hand, print strategy guides had an air of professionalism and organization to them. The writing was (usually) clear and easy to follow. You felt like you got your money's worth. Many guide writers online have a loose grasp on how to communicate through writing.
Another issue is that gaming websites have to compete for traffic, so their editors prioritize publishing a guide even if it's incomplete. I remember getting stuck on a puzzle in 2019's Resident Evil 2 remake. You have to insert circuits into a circuit board and arrange them to route power from one end to the other. I was having trouble solving the puzzle, so I looked it up and found dozens of guides. Great, right? Nope. The guides were published before the editors could write out the steps needed to solve the puzzle, so every guide said, in short, “Solve the puzzle and then move on.”
What's the point in publishing a guide if it doesn't guide players?
I was stoked to read about Long Live Mortal Kombat: Round 1. Can you give us a quick rundown of the book?
Absolutely! Long Live Mortal Kombat: Round 1 chronicles the history of MK's arcade era. Every chapter opens your eyes to the work that went into making MK a success. You'll go behind the scenes to learn about how each arcade game was made (plus MK Trilogy, since it was part of the MK3 sub-series), discover how Acclaim created its multimillion-dollar “Mortal Monday” campaign, hear from pro players who have spent decades learning the ins and outs of each game, and get stories from fans who have made MK a part of their lives.
In short, Long Live MK is more than a making-of book. It's a story about fans like you and me, and the ways MK has changed our lives.
What do you think of the newest MK release “Mortal Kombat 1?”, what is your favorite of the entire franchise?
I love it! I think it's the freshest entry in the franchise since 2011's Mortal Kombat, aka Mortal Kombat 9. Your choice of playable character and Kameo fundamentally changes how you play a match. I did some research and discovered there are somewhere around 294 possible combinations of playable and Kameo characters. That's a lot of depth and a lot of replay value.
As for my favorite MK game, it depends on the day. I love them all, but my favorites are MK1 (2023) MK9, Ultimate MK3, MK4, and MK2.
I heard long-time Mortal Kombat programmer Ed Boon recently contrast the development of their games in the 90's with a handful of programmers in a small office, versus the much larger amount of employees and resources necessary to complete their modern releases. I found direct parallels of this throughout the “FPS” documentary, developers of either generation using both the old and the new approaches in some of the greatest video games in history. Can you reflect on how the two very different methods of game programming can work together to make something really special?
Developers on smaller teams have a better chance of making a big impact. If you're one of 15 developers, everyone must wear a lot of hats, so to speak. If you're on a team of hundreds of thousands of developers, your impact might seem smaller, but it's larger than you might think.
While I was writing Beneath a Starless Sky, my book (free to read on Shacknews.com!) that documents how Obsidian made its Pillars of Eternity games, I talked to an artist who was responsible for making chairs. That might not seem like a big deal, but think about how many chairs you see in an RPG. Tavern, inn, castle, house—name a location, and it probably has chairs. Imagine entering a cozy house in the country in Zelda. If you saw tables but no chairs, something would feel off.
Chairs are important, even the ones your character can't sit in, because they make environments feel more realistic.
10. You have another upcoming book entitled FIGHT! Can you give us some details on the book and subsequent release?
I'm excited about this one! FIGHT provides overviews of (almost) every fighting game ever made, and goes in-depth on the genre's biggest franchises to share insight into the experience of playing them in their day. My goal is to transport you to times and places such as arcades, early online games, and the pro scene to paint a picture of what it was like to make and play fighting games in those eras.
Sure, let's get to music. I'd like to hear an all time favorite video game score. Any console or genre. (Perhaps we can get the headitor to throw up a YouTube embed or something.)
This is the toughest question yet. I have to go with the first game that pops into my mind: Doom. The soundtrack ebbs and flows between high-intensity action and slow, eerie tracks that build a sense of dread. Bobby Prince is the composer, and he created a masterpiece.
Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.
Host of “Who's Zoomin' Who?,” punk rock dad, OILER from the future, oh and my biggest fears are cold poo on my face when I'm sleeping, and spiders that walk on water. Jacket enthusiast, astrological sign.