Art Studies Publication

FIRST PERSON SHOOTER: THE SUBJECTIVE CYBERSPACE

Two decades ago videogames were just moving sprites flashing on arcade games’ screens. A decade later videogames became a common household appliance and families began playing with these electronic games. As the personal computer developed, the Internet came up. Gaming consoles turned out to be pretty much desired and affordable. Nowadays, multimedia language evolved and the mobile age of the Internet is upon us. There’s only one videogame genre enabling a new form of interaction. It’s the First Person Shooter, a videogame genre that has surpassed cyberspace visionaries’ theories and it is acclaimed worldwide due to its online gaming capabilities.
The future begins here, as the FPS becomes an interface model for new media products to come. No longer is enough to see things from the outside, the user-player wants to get inside cyberspace, to become the character. In this way we prefer playing to be “there”, on the virtual ground, left to fate. Either we’re armed or outgunned, outnumbered or betrayed, but in the end, as most of the researches point out: in FPS videogames, players actually become much more space-oriented and fit for survival. The Subjective Cyberspace provided by the FPS is our new media ground, and it will inevitably surpass the borders of gaming.

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AUTHORS / EDITORS

Herlander Elias

COLLECTION

Ars

EDITION YEAR

2009

ISBN

978-989-654-019-7

Index

FOREWORD

1

INTRODUCTION

3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: MIRROR’S EDGE

9

1 THE CONCEPT OF FPS

9

1.1 WHAT IS A FPS?

1.2 IN YOUR FACE

1.3 THE SCREEN AS MASK

1.4 SUBJECTIVE SHOOTER

1.5 GRAPHIC ENGINE

1.6 A REAL VIRTUALITY

1.7 THE TARGET-IMAGE

1.8 PERSPECTIVE DEVICE

1.9 TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

1.10 NEW CULTURE, NEW GAMING

2 INSIDE CYBERSPACE

53

2.1 SLICED REALITY

2.2 CYBERSPACE – A VEHICULATION SPACE

2.3 TRON: THE ELECTRONIC WORLD

2.4 UNCHARTED TERRITORY?

2.5 ART OF HUNTING

2.6 THE CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE

2.7 MEDIUM CONFIGURATIONS

2.8 TYPOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY: BEYOND CHAT

2.9 THE MATRIX – A SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE

3 MACHINE-SUBJECTIVITY

93

3.1 THE TRAJECTIVE SUBJECT

3.2 SYNTHESPIANS

3.3 SUBSTITUTE SUBJECTIVITY

3.4 SHARED IDENTITY

3.5 FELLOW PATRIOTS: CAPTURE THE FLAG!

3.6 ALTERNATIVE FIRST PERSON

3.7 MULTIPLAYER – MULTIPLE SUBJECTIVITY

3.8 NEW COMMUNITIES

3.9 DANGEROUS NETWORKS

4 CONCLUSION

127

GLOSSARY

131

AFTERWORD

141

BIBLIOGRAPHY

143

VIDEOGRAPHY

159

FILMOGRAPHY

163

CHRONOLOGICAL APPENDIX

165
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