Glossary Entry: First Person Shooter

Quick Definition

A First Person Shooter (FPS for short) is a game where the player views the world through their character's eyes (ie, a first person viewpoint) and spends most of the game shooting something. Many FPS games revolve around a military setting, with the player being cast as another member of a squad or unit.

Unfortunately, the growing popularity of first person shooters also attracted a lot of negative attention during the 1990s, as people believed that immersing the player into a violent scenario like this would effectively be training someone to kill. This is still something of an ongoing debate.


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