SHOOTER

SHOOTER is an anthology of critical essays about first-person shooters. The 15 chapters explore the genre from a variety of cultural, social, political, and historical perspectives. Featuring chapters from some of the best minds in game criticism, custom hand-drawn illustrations, and a foreword by Clint Hocking, lead designer on Far Cry 2 and Splinter Cell.

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“When a piece of criticism grabs you by the collar and demands you take a second look at something, you know its doing it's job right.“ - Nic Rowen, Destructoid 

“This isn’t a technical book about the evolution of shooters or homages to particular games. Each essay is getting at something else, and together they become about something bigger than a genre: they’re about humanity.” - Riley MacLeod, Haywire Magazine

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SHOOTER will be available for purchase on June 2, 2015.

Hey, hey! We’re approaching the end of work on SHOOTER. There are too many moving parts to announce a release date that we’d be confident meeting, but the different aspects of the book’s design and editing process are quickly wrapping up across the board.   

In the meantime, we wanted to share one of the finished images from Paul Sousa, the illustrator drawing pretty pictures to accompany each of SHOOTER’s articles. The above sample is taken from Holly Green’s Fallout 3: If You Can’t Join ‘Em, ‘Beat Em. These look super cool alongside the text, thanks to Oscar Strik’s excellent design work. We’re very excited to show off the final product once everything is finished!

With work on the book coming to a close, we’re ready to show off SHOOTER’s final cover. 

If you have sharp eyeballs . . . a) consult an optometrist; and b) you may have noticed that the cover announces not just the final line-up of contributors, but that SHOOTER will have a foreword written by Clint Hocking, too. 

For those not in the know, Clint is an award-winning developer and writer who, at Ubisoft Montreal, worked on the design and script of games like Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and, Far Cry 2. He has also been a Creative Director for LucasArts, a designer and level designer at Valve, and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Montreal IGDA Chapter. He currently works at Seattle’s Amazon Game Studios and writes at http://www.clicknothing.typepad.com/

Here we are: the final SHOOTER Table of Contents announcement. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. They grow up so fast, these Table of Contents announcements.

We’ll have more information to share very soon!

13. The Lurking Fear: Firearms in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth By Robert Rath

Robert Rath examines the danger and unreliability of the guns featured in Headfirst Productions’ Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. In highlighting the risk, both physical and psychological, of using firearms as weapons, Rath reads Dark Corners of the Earth as a commentary on the real-world power of the gun, and paints an interesting contrast with a genre that takes the power and skill necessary to properly use a firearm for granted.

14. Kane & Lynch 2: Hell is Other People By Filipe Salgado

Filipe Salgado discusses the manner by which IO Interactive’s Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days supports its narrative themes through sloppy gameplay mechanics and a purposefully unpleasant audiovisual aesthetic. The ugliness of violent crime and the brutality of the shooter genre informs not just Dog Days’ storyline, but the entirety of its design.    

15. My Brother, Counter-Strike, and Me By Gita Jackson

Hey, it's Monday and my head hurts, but I've still got another three entries to the SHOOTER Table of Contents for you. If that's not kindness then I don't know what is.

10. Truth Versus Propaganda: Fighting Through the Haze By Ed Smith

Ed Smith interrogates the way in which developers sanitize the violence thrust upon players in shooters. Through a close reading of Free Radical's Haze, Smith draws comparison between the game's soldiers, who are literally drugged into committing acts of violence at the behest of their commanders, and its players, who are similarly beholden to the mass violence presented to them by developers.

11. The Joys of Projectiles: What We’ve Forgotten About DOOM By Steven Wright

Steven Wright discusses the design decisions that make id Software’s DOOM stand apart from modern shooters. Wright focuses on the manner by which DOOM’s projectile weapons and unreal setting foster the kind of creativity lost by modern titles more concerned with “realistic” gunplay and portrayals of combat. 

12. Perfect Dark: A Bundle of Bones By Kaitlin Tremblay

Here we are again. Getting to be a bit of a routine, isn't it? Another week begins and another three entries to the SHOOTER Table of Contents are rolled out. "Ho hum," you might think (if your internal monologue includes phrases like "ho hum). But wait, friends! This week is different! This week has a theme! It's a secret theme that may be hard to spot, but I'm going to take it on faith that you'll find it. Because you're smart, dear readers. Your teachers always said so and, to be honest, I agree with them.

By the way, knock off that "ho hum" stuff--the following weeks of SHOOTER-related info. sharing will be full of pleasant surprises.

7. The Disempowerment Fantasy of Red Orchestra 2: Rising Storm By Carli Velocci

Carli Velocci looks at how Tripwire Interactive’s Red Orchestra 2: Rising Storm depicts war not as a venue for enabling its player’s power fantasies, but as a more honest depiction of the helplessness and chaos that defines actual combat. Velocci contrasts Rising Storm with other shooters’ attempts at war realism by concentrating on how the game renders individual soldiers as relatively helpless, dependent on teamwork to survive.

     8. Gilded Splinters: BJ Blazkowicz and The New Order By Javy Gwaltney

Javy Gwaltney examines MachineGames’ Wolfenstein: The New Order as a modern take on ancient heroic cycles (like Beowulf). Gwaltney highlights the The New Order's mix of older design elements from classic shooters with more modern ideas to paint the game as a portrait of an aging, battle-weary protagonist. In focusing on the "good vs evil" battle between the protagonist and his archnemesis, Gwaltney presents The New Order as not just a sequel, but the logical culmination of a hero who is tired of battle.     

9. Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway and German Representation In World War II By Corey Milne

And the Oscar for Best Table of Contents Announcement of February 22nd, 2015 goes to . . . SHOOTER!

4. Fallout 3: If You Can’t Join ‘Em, Beat ‘Em By Holly Green

Holly Green tells a story of learning to feel comfortable playing first-person shooters by using her experience with Bethesda Game Studios’ Fallout 3 as a framework. The highly competitive nature of shooters—and the genre’s aggressive marketing toward male players—can form a high barrier of entry. Green details her own experience overcoming it.     

5. To Conquer Pripyat By Alex D. Jones

Alex D. Jones discusses the connection between gameplay, narrative, and post-Soviet Ukrainian history in GSC Game World’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. The game’s emphasis on environmental hostility isn’t established just through cutscenes and dialogue, but also in the way the player interacts with a game world actively set on subverting any attempt at “mastering” it.  

6. Paths of Contact: Narrative Friction in Gears of War By Ethan Gach

Here at the SHOOTER headquarters (a pile of empty refrigerator boxes at the base of a weaponized volcano) we're hard at work editing an awful lot of articles. While we sweat away in the word mines, edging ever closer to release, we wanted to share the book's Table of Contents in order to provide a better sense of the games and subject matter being covered by SHOOTER's authors.

Here are the first three. In the coming weeks, we'll continue posting details on the rest of the 15 articles.      

1. Shooting Things in Public: Battle Garegga and the Arc of a Genre

By David S. Heineman

David S. Heineman follows the rise and decline of the shooter as a form of public gameplay, tracking its growth as midway attraction to arcade mainstay and, finally, retreat into the private sphere of consoles and computers. Particular focus is paid to Raizing’s Battle Garegga and the popularity of “shoot ‘em up” games as emblematic of larger design trends. 

2. Action, Death, and Catharsis in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

By Reid McCarter

Reid McCarter looks at Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as a reflection of the Western world’s collective anxieties at the time of its 2007 release. Modern Warfare’s use of blank-slate player characters and fictionalized wars based on real conflicts functions as a form of cultural catharsis for a rapidly changing political landscape.  

3. Far Cry 2 and the Dirty Mirror

By Patrick Lindsey

After months of sorting through (largely excellent) submissions and dreaming up unbelievably exploitative contracts for our lovely contributors to sign, we're finally ready to announce SHOOTER.

SHOOTER is an ebook that digs into the wide array of meaning we find in first-person shooters, whether through gameplay construction, mechanical subtext, or the larger implications of a game's setting, characters, and themes. Rather than a history of the genre, SHOOTER is a collection of diverse criticism centred on various games where shooting is the primary gameplay mechanic.

The book's writers have offered unique viewpoints on the games they've chosen to analyze and discuss. Our hope is that, taken as a whole, SHOOTER will provide a broad picture of how different people react to an immensely popular and culturally influential style of play.

In the near future, we'll be posting a table of contents that provides a full list of the games discussed by SHOOTER's writers.