Two largely forgotten 1970s computer games, Maze War (1973) and Spasim (1974), are generally considered the first first-person shooters. Developed on powerful minicomputers at NASA and the University of Illinois respectively, they pioneered 3D first-person perspective gameplay with networked multiplayer combat, paving the way for modern FPS games like Doom and Call of Duty.
A British startup called Worldmodeldata is collecting video game data to train AI world models, which researchers believe are needed to help AI systems understand and navigate the physical world. Unlike large language models trained on text, world models require visual and action data to learn real-world physics and precision tasks. The startup has licensed nearly 1 million hours of gaming data from studios to address the shortage of suitable training material for this emerging class of AI.