Doom kicked off the FPS genre in 1993. (I know it wasn’t the first, but it made them popular.) For the next 3-4 years, approximately one million Doom clones were produced. Quake came out in 1996, but by 1998 there were so many Doom clones on the market that you’d trip over one every time you walked out the door. I and every gamer I knew was thoroughly burned out on them. I even dismissed Half-life for several months after its release as just-another-shooter. I was playing Starcraft and Ocarina of Time. For first person games, I was looking for more interesting stuff like Thief: The Dark Project. FPS’s had used up their moment of glory. They were dead.