From GunPlay to GunPorn. A techno-visual history of the first-person shooter

What is a first-person shooter? It is a digital application, originally created for recreational purposes, resulting from the interaction of four major components: computer, film, television, and military technology, with the latter informing the previous three. The computer is both a production tool and a consumption space. Cinema and television provide the visual style and the narrative context of the FPS, whereas the military ethos supplies the ideological basis for the genre. Key to all components is the gun, as a notion, icon, tool, and narrative. As Rune Klevjer (2006) suggests, in this type of games, “’first-person’ means first-person gun, a unique and rather extreme perceptual articulation within a broader cultural category of violent gun-play. The genre holds up and celebrates the gun as the ultimate technology, a focus point for a wide range of modern technology. Captured by the First Person Shooter, technology is interpreted in the image of the gun” (2006, 120). In this paper, I intend to examine how a recent fist person shooter, Criterion’s BLACK (2006) articulates these different components. By juxtaposing the game within the broader range of cultural artifacts, the aesthetical and phenomenological implications of the first person shooter will be discussed. Specifically, I will argue that the first-person shooter represents the last step in a long history of mediated gunplay, a history that begins with the emergence of the photographic medium in the 19 century. At the same time, I will try to explain how and why the first-person shooter emerged as a key genre of digital gaming, and why it holds such a prominent place in the menu of leisure activities that we all choose from.