Professor Peter Mantello

Presented by the University of Queensland
Brisbane, October 2009

No computer game has stirred as much public controversy, negative social criticism, and relentless media attention than the First Person Shooter game (FPSG). Infamously dubbed the bad boy genre of the video game industry, the FPSG has come to symbolize what many believe is the increasingly pervasive role the military entertainment industries now play in preparing youth to be what Ronald Regan prophetically coined, ‘the joystick soldiers of tomorrow’ by desensitizing them to the mediated nature of modern warfare and romanticizing the hi-tech yet septic skill of digitized killing.
While not concerned with an empirical debate over the effect of videogames on violent behavior, I do wish to focus on how the aesthetics, dynamics, and politics of FPSG game play, specifically, the ‘Special Ops’ tactical squad subgenre, transforms FPSGs into poignant and algorithmic cultural artifacts which both reflect and enact the way in which actual social and political doctrines are constructed in order to validate military force as a legitimate tool of foreign policy.