First Person Shooters

A First-Person Shooter (FPS) is a video game genre defined by playing in the first person perspective of the player’s main character and centers on using firearms as the primary way to engage in the gameplay. FPS games can take form as in single or co-operative story modes, or in multiplayer arenas that connect remote players together via an online network. After the introduction of FPS games with Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, first-person shooters have become risen to become the most popular video game genre. Along with a growing player base, ethical issues have risen. Mainly in regards to violence and gender discrimination in marketing.

History

Doom (1993)

While the earliest versions of first person shooting games can be accredited to the game Maze War and Spasim in the year 1974 , the main rise to popularity of the genre was coined with the games Wolfenstein and Doom . These games were the first to employ modern graphics and mechanics and were followed by numerous other successful first-person shooting games near the end of the 1990s like Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, and Counter-Strike.

While the earliest version of first-person shooters would be limited to PC, the expansion of the genre to console gaming opened an entirely new audience to first-person shooting games. Halo:Combat Evolved released in 2001, and displayed the powers of FPS games using the Xbox console. Halo’s success paved the groundwork for the development and focus of game companies of producing first-person shooters for console gaming, and the widespread success of the first-person shooting genre.

Online Multiplayer

The popularity of first-person shooting games saw a marked increase with the addition of online multiplayer modes. Services like Xbox Live expanded the market for simpler connections of players to an online service, as games before like Quake and Counter-Strike typically faced issues with slow connections and dial-up broadband services. Halo 3, a first-person shooter developed by Bungie, was able to use the online aspect of Xbox live to make their multiplayer mode be widely successful. The same year Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, released with similar success to its online mode. These games are coined with helping pioneer the online rise of first-person shooters and serving as a template for future first-person shooters with multiplayer options.

The addition and widespread use of multiplayer and online modes have also led to a rise in competitive gaming and E-sports, as players of first-person shooters became able to be played on a global scale.

Ethical Implications

Promotion of Violence

A screenshot from Doom (2016), labelled as "gloriously gory"

First-person shooters have faced criticism for their promotion of violence and other aggressive values. Critics of first-person shooters have cited that many mass shooters such as Adam Lanza, the Columbine shooters, and Cho Seung-Hui, were reported to have numerous hours spent playing violent first-person shooting games, often linking their behavior and these video games together. This link between video game play and violent behavioral patterns has brought into question whether the values promoted by First Person Shooters can influence our identities and the values that we hold. First-person shooters then must be examined by their embedded values, which is the concept that a computer or technology system can "promote or demote particular moral values and norms".

Embedded Values

When addressing embedded values within first-person shooters, the argument can be made that playing violent first-person shooters promote values like violence and aggression, or demote moral values pertaining to empathy. Evidence of these embedded values of first-person shooters are present in studies, which have indicated that video game players often idolize the aggressive and violent character traits of the protagonists in violent video games, or emotionally desensitize the players of violent video games. The act of shooting can also be seen as is a built-in consequence to first-person shooters and as a result can make them an aggressive genre of video games, as it is difficult to make the act of shooting with a weapon and rewarding "kills" or defeating enemies a non-violent or non-aggressive action.

Value Destruction

In Ron Eglash's piece, "A Generative Perspective on Engineering: Why the Destructive Force of Artifacts Is Immune to Politics: Interplay between Engineering, Social Sciences, and Innovation", he examines the many ways that current engineers are creating technologies that are destructive to the values of society. First-person shooters designed to represent highly violent scenarios impacting the values of its players to promote digital violence falls into Eglash's description of an artifact with a destructive force on society. However, the generative approach he describes towards engineering practices could be the solution to the current state of game design. A study on video games found that playing video games has "the potential to enhance life satisfaction and improve individual player’s mental well-being", which indicates first-person shooters and generative forces on society are not mutually exclusive. Proper and conscious game design then should be mitigated towards these game designs which pose ethical concerns to violence.

Bias towards Genders

Ratio of female players per video game genre

While first-person shooters may be the most popular video game genre, female players only make up 7% of the players of first-person shooters . Such a drastic disparity in demographics has sparked questions as to why the first person shooter genre is so one-sided towards male players. However, nearly double this amount of women, 17%, have been recorded playing the game Overwatch, which has been accredited with its more gender-balanced design in mind that appeals to both men and women (yet still faces challenges and bias in its design). This change in the number of women playing exemplifies that it is in the design of these specific games that cater more to males than females. This bias in first-person shooters can first be attributed to the values of those designing them. In the game industry, women only make up 22% of the workforce. As expressive values are defined as representing the values of the designers, then it follows that the male-dominated video game industry would create games that have drastic disparities in the representation of genders in their design compared to a more evenly distributed workforce. In one study of first-person shooters, for example, it was found that 19% of the games used a female avatar as the main playable character.

To find what the implications of what this bias creates, one can look at the final game designs and the values within them. Utilizing the concept of embedded values as a lens to view what these games are promoting, it is apparent that first-person shooters often promote things like male protagonists, overly sexualized female character models, and reinforce gender stereotypes . If these are the embedded values of the designs of first-person shooters then it should follow that the players of these games have their own values modified by playing them. Studies have revealed that playing violent shooting games decreases empathy of violence towards females and creates increased masculine beliefs in its players,. This evidence of first-person shooters impacting a player's value system indicates that if left unaltered, the current state of these games will promote values of sexism, stereotyping, and bias in its players. As there are millions of players for first-person shooters, these embedded values then pose a threat to maintaining negative cultural sex roles and stereotypes of genders across a huge scale of players.

See Also

• Women in Gaming
• Call of Duty
• Ethics in Computer & Video Games
• Overwatch