First person shooters have been a staple of gaming since Wolfenstein 3D hit the stage and continue strong with blockbuster series like Half-Life and Halo. In the late 90s avant-garde European game developers eager to put their own mark and rewrite the rules of gaming created the little-known and short-lived second person shooter (SPS) movement.

The first SPS title was 1997’s Sie Verursachen Ein Beben (You Are Causing A Quake) from Bavarian developers Meister des Pixels. In Sie Verursachen Ein Beben the player controlled Edgar — a brash young man cast to the margins of society by an indifferent world — as he played Quake.

While Sie Verursachen Ein Beben was not a commercial success it inspired dozens of developers to throw their hats into the SPS ring in 1997, 1998 and 1999. Among the stand-outs were This Is You Fighting Demons, Doomed By Proxy, Duke Nuk’them and critical darling Tell Them To Give Them Hell.

Saturated, the bottom fell out of the second person shooter market in 1999 and the movement all but died. Rumours persist that a Half-Life mod called Gordon Freeman Goes Left When You Say He Does was completed but never released.