While Epic and Digital Extremes were working on the first Unreal Tournament, the id Software was considered the king of the first-person-shooters thanks to Doom, Doom II, Quake and Quake II. While all those games had single player campaigns, they also had multiplayer modes that had evolved over time from simple deathmatch to other modes like Capture The Flag and Arena. In 1998, id decided that the next Quake game should concentrate solely on competitive multiplayer, and thus Quake III Arena was born.

While on the surface Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament were very similar games, the truth is more complicated. While UT still used a software renderer like the original Unreal, Quake III Arena used an all new graphics engine (now known as id Tech 3) and was the first id game that would use hardware acceleration without a software mode. It was a risky move; that kind of technology was not a part of every gaming PC at the time. However, the game was a solid sales success and most likely helped to spur the adoption of graphics cards that supported hardware acceleration.

While Unreal Tournament impressed gamers with its huge levels and tons of content, Quake III Arena deliberately went for a minimalist approach. The levels were smaller, the gameplay modes were restricted to the basics, and weapons were cut down to fan favorites like the rocket launcher and the rail gun. Instead Quake III Arena concentrated on gameplay and balance, making sure that the levels, power ups, weapon placement, and player speed worked well. Like UT, Quake III Arena also had AI bots that could be played against if you could not find an online game.

That bare bones game design may explain why Quake III Arena become more popular in pro gaming tournaments than Unreal Tournament in the years following its initial release, especially in 1 vs 1 game matches. Gameplay in Q3A was fast and furious, and perhaps lent itself better to a pro gaming match environment than UT did. A year after its release, id came out with Quake III: Team Arena that put the emphasis on team play and larger levels. However, it wasn't as successful as the original game; Quake III players seemed to prefer the more compacted experience that the core game delivered. While you can purchase both Quake III Arena and Quake III: Team Arena together via Steam for $19.99, you can play the core game for free via your web browser at id's Quake Live web site.

Download the Quake 3 Arena Demo (PC)
Download the Quake 3 Arena Demo (Mac)
Download the Quake 4 Arena Demo (Linux)

Both Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena had a number of third-party modifications that extended each game's shelf life even more with additional levels, gameplay modes, characters, weapons and other content that could be downloaded from fan run web sites. In 2005, id released the source code for the engine used in Quake IIII Arena. That allowed some Q3A mods to be turned into free stand alone games. Other free first-person shooter games have been built from scratch using the engine with modifications to its source code. More recently, Epic Games did something similar by providing game developers with the free Unreal Development Kit, based on the Unreal Engine 3, that lets developers make stand alone game titles.

In the end, Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena broke barriers in the first person shooter genre and showed that if the game was good enough a multiplayer-oriented title could be successful. Today, there are a ton of multiplayer-only shooter game titles out there including some that are free-to-play like Quake Live, Combat Arms and others. They all owe a lot to Epic, Digital Extremes and id for clearing a path and making that kind of game title viable.