The ideology of the First Person Shooter FPS

The ideology of the First Person Shooter • FPS: a new form within popular culture • Genre-specific negotiation of myth, ideology and identity • The digital computer as a medium of cultural expression - the re-interpretation of genre fiction - the re-interpretation of play and games

Main areas • Play form • The re-configuration of adventure stories • War and science (The adventure of civilization) • Gender and violence • Magic machinery - motion ride • Body, machine, illusion

FPS as play form • The politics of play: subversion and confirmation • Virtual play: detachment and seduction • Liminality: ritual performance and creativity

Politics II (Team 3) • • • Globalised popular culture (Post)modernity Work Convergence Resistance

Culture-blindness (? ) • Textual structures and game-play • Online play/LAN play/the mod-community • European/American industry

The mirror of work and consumption • • Mimesis and liminality The game is interface Industrial logic Allegory of consumption

(Post)modernity? • Scientific/industrial/militaristic Exotic/alien/temple. • Stylistic playfulness, techno-medievalism (doom, Quake, Unreal) • The mod-community: a post-industrial economy?

Convergence? • Simulation - game - genre fiction. • Industrial/consumer convergence (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings etc) • A game is a game (ludologism…) • Simulation: a new representational order.

Resistance? • • • Subversive illegitimate practice? The digital bottom-up? Enacting science, technology, war, work Power play and regression (Winnicott) Commodified liminality and non-networked spaces