First-Person Shooters, Tunnel Warfare, and the Racial Infrastructures of the US–Mexico Bordere

Lateral ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Llamas-Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
First Person ◽  
Modes Of Representation ◽  
Digital Aesthetics ◽  
The Us ◽  
First Person Shooter ◽  
Interactive Experience

Digital networked media actively participate in the nation-state’s and tech entrepreneurs’ efforts to imagine and manage the borderlands. These media facilitate virtual forms of thinking about the border both by offering popular reference points for the new technology being developed (e.g. Google Maps, Pokémon Go, Call of Duty) and by providing the actual tools through which these ideas can become actionable. This article analyzes one such reference point within the first-person shooter (FPS) console game Call of Juarez: The Cartel (Ubisoft, 2011). Like other border-themed video games, The Cartel borrows on colonial tropes and ideologies by creating playable narratives that invoke the untamable frontier and position racialized subjects as Other. Through its virtual modes of representation and interaction, the game encodes the racialization processes that continue to shape popular imaginings of the border. While its digital aesthetics animate a dynamic space of possibility, the logic of the first-person shooter reins in the expansiveness of animated space by restricting it to an interactive experience of tunnel warfare, an ideological orientation to the border underground that channels the players’ purposive motion into a space of direct confrontation and racial violence. Analyzing the narrative and procedural work of this ostensibly reactionary video game demonstrates how border infrastructures structure and shape specific forms of racial and colonial violence.

scholarly journals Harsh Words and Deeds: Systematic Content Analyses of Offensive* User Behavior in the Virtual Environments of Online First-Person Shooter Games

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne Holz Ivory ◽  
James D. Ivory ◽  
Winston Wu ◽  
Anthony M. Limperos ◽  
Nathaniel Andrew ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Online Games ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
First Person ◽  
Online Game ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Content Analyses ◽  
First Person Shooter

While the virtual environments of online games can foster healthy relationships and strong communities, some online games are also marred by antisocial and offensive behavior. Such behavior, even when relatively rare, influences the interactions and relationships of users in online communities. Thus, understanding the prevalence and nature of antisocial and offensive behaviors in online games is an important step toward understanding the full spectrum of healthy and unhealthy interactions and relationships in virtual environments. Extensive research has explored video game content produced by game developers, such as violence, profanity, and sexualized portrayals, but much less research has systematically examined potentially problematic content produced by players in online games. While potential effects of antisocial and offensive online game content are not well understood, a first step toward exploring this concern is systematic documentation of offensive user-generated content in online games. To that end, two large-scale content analyses measured a range of offensive user-generated content, including utterances, text, and images, from a total of more than 2,500 users in popular first-person shooter video games. Findings indicated that some content, such as profanity, was frequent among users who spoke during games. More offensive and potentially harmful content, such as racial slurs, was proportionally very rare, but frequent enough to be encountered often by regular players. Results of this initial investigation should be interpreted tentatively, do not suggest that relationships in online shooter games lack healthy elements, and should not be generalized to other online game communities until further research is conducted.* Note: This paper contains strong language which may be offensive to some readers.

scholarly journals Reward system and temporal pole contributions to affective evaluation during a first person shooter video game

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krystyna A Mathiak ◽  
Martin Klasen ◽  
René Weber ◽  
Hermann Ackermann ◽  
Sukhwinder S Shergill ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Reward System ◽  
First Person ◽  
Affective Evaluation ◽  
Temporal Pole ◽  
First Person Shooter

scholarly journals Always Already Monsters—BioShock’s (2007) ‘Splicers’ as Computational Others

Nordlit ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaroslav Švelch
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
Computational Algorithms ◽  
First Person ◽  
First Person Shooter ◽  
Game Representation ◽  
Embedded Narrative

The article explores the manufacturing of monsters in video games, using the case of the influential 2007 first-person shooter BioShock, and ‘splicers’—its most numerous, zombie-like enemies. I combine two methodological perspectives on the ‘manufacturing’ of splicers by analyzing [a] the title’s developer commentary and other official paratexts to trace the design of splicers, and [b] the game’s embedded narrative to reconstruct the diegetic backstory of splicers. I argue that video game enemies, including splicers, are ‘computational others’, who may appear human on the level of representation, but whose behavior is machinic, and driven by computational algorithms. To justify the paradoxical relationship between their human-like representation and machinic behavior, BioShock includes an elaborate narrative that explains how the citizens of the underwater city of Rapture were dehumanized and transformed into hostile splicers. The narrative of dehumanization, explored following Haslam’s dehumanization theory (2006), includes [a] transforming splicers into atomized creatures by depriving them of political power and social bonds, [b] creating fungible and interchangeable enemies through splicers’ masks and bodily disintegration, [c] justifying splicers’ blindness to context and their simplistic behavior by portraying them as mentally unstable addicts. The article concludes that all video game enemies are inherently monstrous, and that critique of video game representation should focus on how games fail to make monsters human, rather than how games render humans monstrous or dehumanized.

scholarly journals Games of Drones: The Uneasy Future of the Soldier-Hero in Call of Duty: Black Ops II

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 360-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie Elizabeth Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
First Person ◽  
Combat Experience ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
The Future ◽  
First Person Shooter ◽  
The U.S

In this article, I argue that the first-person shooter video game, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, reflects the U.S. military‟s transition as it reimagines the soldier‟s role in war. In the age of drone technology, this role shifts from a position of strength to one of relative weakness. Although video games that feature future combat often “function as virtual enactments and endorsements for developing military technologies,” Black Ops II offers a surprisingly complex vision of the future of drones and U.S. soldiers (Smicker 2009: 107). To explore how the game reflects a contemporary vision of the U.S. military, I weave together a close textual reading of two levels in Black Ops II with actual accounts from drone pilots and politicians that illuminate the nature of drone combat. Although there are moments in Black Ops II in which avatars combat enemies with first-hand firepower, the experience of heroic diegetic violence is superseded by a combat experience defined by powerlessness, boredom, and ambiguous pleasure. The shift of the soldier from imposing hero to a banal figure experiences its logical conclusion in Unmanned, an independent video game that foregrounds the mundane, nonviolent nature of drone piloting. Instead of training soldiers to withstand emotionally devastating experiences of death and violence first-hand (or to physically enact such violence), games like Black Ops II and Unmanned train actual and potential soldiers to tolerate monotony and disempowerment.

Playing a First-person Shooter Video Game Induces Neuroplastic Change

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 1286-1293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sijing Wu ◽  
Cho Kin Cheng ◽  
Jing Feng ◽  
Lisa D'Angelo ◽  
Claude Alain ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Field ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Video Game ◽  
First Person ◽  
Attentional Processes ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Attentional Visual Field ◽  
Neuroplastic Change ◽  
First Person Shooter

Playing a first-person shooter (FPS) video game alters the neural processes that support spatial selective attention. Our experiment establishes a causal relationship between playing an FPS game and neuroplastic change. Twenty-five participants completed an attentional visual field task while we measured ERPs before and after playing an FPS video game for a cumulative total of 10 hr. Early visual ERPs sensitive to bottom–up attentional processes were little affected by video game playing for only 10 hr. However, participants who played the FPS video game and also showed the greatest improvement on the attentional visual field task displayed increased amplitudes in the later visual ERPs. These potentials are thought to index top–down enhancement of spatial selective attention via increased inhibition of distractors. Individual variations in learning were observed, and these differences show that not all video game players benefit equally, either behaviorally or in terms of neural change.

Effect of Manipulated State Aggression on Pain Tolerance

2012 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 311-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Stephens ◽  
Claire Allsop
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Pain Perception ◽  
Cold Pressor ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
Pain Tolerance ◽  
First Person ◽  
Repeated Measures Design ◽  
First Person Shooter

Swearing produces a pain lessening (hypoalgesic) effect for many people; an emotional response may be the underlying mechanism. In this paper, the role of manipulated state aggression on pain tolerance and pain perception is assessed. In a repeated-measures design, pain outcomes were assessed in participants asked to play for 10 minutes a first-person shooter video game vs a golf video game. Sex differences were explored. After playing the first-person shooter video game, aggressive cognitions, aggressive affect, heart rate, and cold pressor latency were increased, and pain perception was decreased. These data indicate that people become more pain tolerant with raised state aggression and support our theory that raised pain tolerance from swearing occurs via an emotional response.

scholarly journals Effects of TeaCrine® (theacrine), Dynamine™ (methylliberine), and caffeine on gamer psychomotor performance in a first-person shooter video game scenario

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B. La Monica ◽  
Jennifer B. Listman ◽  
Ian Donovan ◽  
Taylor E. Johnson ◽  
David J. Heeger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
False Alarms ◽  
First Person ◽  
Caffeine Ingestion ◽  
Perceptual Skills ◽  
Normal Limits ◽  
Before And After ◽  
First Person Shooter

AbstractPurposeTo compare the effects of purported cognitive enhancing dietary bioactive ingredients on subjective and objective measures of cognitive and motor performance during a first-person shooter video game.MethodsUsing a placebo-controlled crossover design, nine healthy men (23.4±5.7 yr, 178.9±5.8cm, 86.0±17.1kg) completed four 20-minute gaming sessions designed to assess cognitive, motor, and perceptual skills via artificial intelligence-driven battery of tasks (Aim Lab). Participants ingested either a placebo (PL), caffeine (CAFF), or caffeine + methylliberine (Dynamine™) + theacrine (TeaCrine®) (CMT). Before and after each gaming session participants rated various feelings of affect. Data were analyzed using mixed factorial ANOVA, bootstrapping post-hoc tests with 95% confidence intervals, and effect sizes.ResultsCompared to PL, self-assessed performance was significantly increased in CMT vs. PL (p=0.035) and self-assessed jitteriness was increased by CAFF vs. PL (p=0.043). CMT was associated with a greater improvement of participants’ visuo-spatial working memory from baseline vs. PL (p=0.04) and CAFF (p=0.033). CAFF had a greater decrease in reaction time for false alarms (indicating diminished cognitive control) from baseline vs. PL (p=0.002) and CMT (p=0.001) and a greater increase for time on target tracking vs. PL (p=0.008) and CMT (p=0.047). Compared to PL, CMT was associated with a greater decrease in median kill time (indicating improved speed) (p=0.017). Compared to PL, systolic blood pressure was significantly increased by CAFF (p=0.025) and CMT (p=0.020) but remained within normal limits.ConclusionsAcute CMT supplementation improved cognitive and motor abilities in recreational gamers. The addition of theacrine and methylliberine to caffeine may lessen some undesirable effects of isolated caffeine ingestion on cognitive control and jitteriness.

Examination of the Relationship Between Gender, Performance, and Enjoyment of a First-Person Shooter Game

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby Hopp ◽  
Jolene Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Gender Gap ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
First Person ◽  
Partial Explanation ◽  
High Level ◽  
First Person Shooter ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Game Performance

Purpose. The purpose of this work was to explore the relationship between gender, game performance factors, and player enjoyment of a first-person shooter (FPS) video game. Drawing upon the notion that FPS games are gendered spaces in which men are both the intended and ideal participants, we predicted that women’s game enjoyment, in contrast to men’s, would rest on their ability to positively violate negative expectancies associated with FPS games by performing at a high level. Method. Two inter-related studies were employed. The first (preliminary) study used an online survey to assess gender-based expectancy differences. The second (main) study was lab-based. Here, participants played the FPS game COUNTER-STRIKE: GLOBAL OFFENSIVE and provided data on perceived game performance and session enjoyment. Results. The data indicated that men’s enjoyment of a FPS game was not influenced by game performance while women’s enjoyment was, in fact, significantly influenced by both subjective self-relative and objective performance dimensions. Conclusions. The present findings may provide a partial explanation for the persistence of the gender gap relative to FPS preference. Moreover, the current work extends the current scholarly understanding of expectancy value theory (EVT) by investigating the effect of expectancy violations associated with one’s own behavior.

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