First Person Shooters
The first person shooter genre is host to some of the best selling game franchises of all time and also some of the most violent. Doom led the way in 1993 as the first game in the genre to achieve mainstream success, leading to similar games being referred to as ‘Doom clones.’ In 1996 the highly anticipated Quake was next for the genre as players were treated to gory, fast paced game play that centred around online multiplayer. James Bond game Goldeneye was released in 1999 and was one of the best games on the N64 console and one of the first fps game’s available on consoles. Counter Strike released in 1999 and became the most popular first person shooter allowing users to modify the game intensely and battle in online multiplayer.
The Halo series has been hugely influential in the genre as it sparked the arrival of online multiplayer on consoles with Xbox live. Halo 2 was the most popular online game for nearly two years on live and the series has been a huge part of the success of first person shooters on consoles, and the success of Xbox. Call of Duty and Battlefield are also hugely popular franchises with COD 4: Modern Warfare (2007) widely regarded as one of the best games in the genre and a massive influence on game graphics and level design. The violence in these games cannot be avoided, essentially you play as a soldier fighting other soldiers in wars so death and destruction is inevitable. The potential glorification of these wars could be problematic and criticisms over the level of violence are common.
Battlefield 4 enabled players to play in huge 64 player online games which allow players to fly jets and drive tanks. The game is very realistic and it feels like a war zone. Compare this to Halo or Titanfall which are set on dystopian planets and it is clear how different games in the genre can be. Even recently the new GTA allows players to toggle between the traditional third person view and a new first person mode. The success of the games in the FPS genre cannot be understated as these games often have blockbuster sales and thousands of players online at any given moment.
David Grossman suggested that first person shooters were ‘murder simulators’ and the game publishers had trained children in the use of weapons and emotionally desensitised them to the murder of hundreds of people in a game. Anders Breivik was said to practise ‘training simulation’ on Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 before the horrific mass murder in Norway in 2011. After looking through the selection of guns in the most recent Call of Duty and Battlefield games it is hard not to think of an interactive gun catalogue, the amount of real guns that are in the games is essentially product placement. Yet reality and fiction are easily distinguishable and the far majority of players will never touch a gun in real life, or ever have the motivation to do so.
Scientific American Mind actually reported that first person shooters improved cognitive abilities and learning skills as well as hand eye coordination. So are these games desensitising our children and emotionally hardening them to killing? Or encouraging development and rational thinking? Regardless there is no denying the immense popularity of the genre amongst a variety of age groups and based on past games, the first person shooter has an exciting future.