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Shooter video games, orshooters, are a subgenre ofaction video games where the focus is on the defeat of the character's enemies usingranged weapons given to the player. Usually these weapons arefirearms or some other long-range weapons, and can be used in combination with other tools such asgrenades for indirect offense,armor for additional defense, or accessories such astelescopic sights to modify the behavior of the weapons. A common resource found in many shooter games isammunition, armor or health, or upgrades which augment the player character's weapons.
Shooter games test the player's spatial awareness,reflexes, and speed in both isolated single player or networkedmultiplayer environments. Shooter games encompass many subgenres that have the commonality of focusing on the actions of theavatar engaging in combat with a weapon against both code-drivenNPC enemies or other avatars controlled by other players.
Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups) are a subgenre of shooters wherein the player may move, up, down, left or right around the screen, typically firing straight forward.
Shoot 'em ups share common gameplay, but are often categorized by viewpoint. This includesfixed shooters on fixed screens, such asSpace Invaders andGalaxian;scrolling shooters that mainlyscroll in a single direction, such asXevious andDarius;top-down shooters (sometimes referred to astwin-stick shooters) where the levels are controlled from anoverhead viewpoint, such asBosconian andTime Pilot;rail shooters where player movement is automatically guided down a fixedforward-scrolling "rail", such asBuck Rogers: Planet of Zoom andSpace Harrier; andisometric shooters which use anisometric perspective, such asZaxxon andViewpoint.
Run and gun video games are 2Dscrolling action games in which the protagonists fight on foot, oftenwith the ability to jump. Run and gun games may useside-scrolling,vertical scrolling orisometric viewpoints and may feature multidirectional movement.[1][2][3]
Top-down run and gun games use an overhead camera angle that shows players and the areas around them from above. Notable games in this category includeCommando,Ikari Warriors,Shock Troopers andShock Troopers: 2nd Squad.
Side-scrolling run and gun games combine elements of both shoot 'em up andplatform games, while theplayer characters move and jump around shooting with various guns and other long-range weapons. These games emphasize greater maneuvering or evenjumping, such asGreen Beret,Thexder,Contra andMetal Slug.[1][2][4][citation needed]
Shooting gallery games (also known as "target shooting" games) are a sub-genre of shooters where the player aims at moving targets on a stationary screen. They are distinguished from rail shooters, which move the player through levels on a fixed path, and first-person shooters, which allow player-guided navigation through a three-dimensional space.[5]
Shooting gallery games can belight gun games and rail-shooters, although many can also be played using a regularjoypad and an on-screen cursor to signify where the bullets are being aimed. When these debuted, they were typically played from afirst-person perspective, with enemy fire that occurred anywhere on the screen damaging or killing the player. As they evolved away from the use of light guns, the player came to be represented by an on-screen avatar, usually someone on the bottom of the screen, who could move and avoid enemy attacks while returning fire. These sorts of shooters almost always utilize horizontal scrolling to the right to indicate level progression, with enemies appearing in waves from predestined locations in the background or from the sides. One of the earliest examples is the 1985 arcade gameShootout produced by Data East.
As light gun games and rail shooters became more prevalent and started to make use of scrolling backgrounds, such asOperation Wolf, or fully 3D backgrounds, such as theTime Crisis orHouse of the Dead series, these sorts of games fell out of popular production, but many likeBlood Bros. still have their fanbase today. Other notable games of this category includeCabal andWild Guns.
Light gun shooters are shooters designed for use with a gun-shaped controller, typically alight gun inarcade games; similar control methods include a positional gun,motion controller,pointing device oranalog stick. The first light guns appeared in the 1930s, following the development of light-sensingvacuum tubes. It was not long before the technology began appearing in mechanical shootingarcade games, dating back to the Seeburg Ray-O-Lite in 1936. These early mechanical gun games evolved into shootingelectro-mechanical games around the mid-20th century, and in turn evolved into light gun shooter video games in the 1970s.
Early mechanical light gun games used small targets (usually moving) onto which a light-sensing tube was mounted; the player used a gun (usually a rifle) that emitted a beam of light when the trigger was pulled. If the beam struck the target, a "hit" was scored. Modern screen-based video game light guns work on the opposite principle—the sensor is built into the gun itself, and the on-screen target(s) emit light rather than the gun. The first light gun of this type was used on theMIT Whirlwind computer, which used a similarlight pen. Like rail shooters, movement is typically limited in light-gun games.
Notable games of this category include the 1974 and 1984 versions ofWild Gunman,Duck Hunt for theNES,Operation Wolf,Lethal Enforcers, theVirtua Cop series,Time Crisis series,The House of the Dead series, andResident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles &Darkside Chronicles.
First-person shooters are characterized by an on-screen representation of theplayer character's perspective within athree-dimensional space, with the player having control and agency over the character's movement and action within that space. While many rail shooters and light-gun shooters also use afirst-person perspective, they are generally not included in this category, as the player generally lacks agency to move their character within the game world.[5]
Notable examples of the genre includeDoom,Quake,Counter-Strike,GoldenEye 007,Battlefield,Medal of Honor,Unreal,Call of Duty,Killzone,TimeSplitters,Team Fortress 2 andHalo, while games such asHalf-Life,Deus Ex, andSystem Shock would combine shooter gameplay with narrative-focused orrole-playing game elements to instead branch off into theimmersive sim genre.
Boomer shooter is a term used to describe newer FPS games (2010s and later) that are purposely designed to emulate the style and design principles of 1990s FPS games likeDoom andQuake. The name "boomer shooter" is derived from thebaby boomer generation, where "boomer" has since become slang for anything old or antiquated.[6] According toNew Blood Interactive CEO Dave Oshry, the term originated following the release ofDusk (2018), with fans of that game quickly coining the term.[7] Newer triple-A games likeWolfenstein: The New Order (2014),Doom (2016), andDoom Eternal (2020) helped to repopularize these styles of shooters in the mid-2010s, andindie developers further contributed to the field with games likeAmid Evil,Ion Fury, andUltrakill.[7][8]
Third-person shooters are characterized by athird-person camera view that fully displays the player character in their surroundings.
Notable examples of the genre includeFortnite, theTomb Raider series, several entries in theResident Evil andMetal Gear Solid franchises,Syphon Filter,Max Payne,SOCOM,Star Wars: Battlefront,Gears of War, andSplatoon. Third person shooter mechanics are often incorporated into open-world adventure and sandbox games, including theElder Scrolls series and theGrand Theft Auto franchise.
Arena shooters are multiplayer games that feature fast paced gameplay that emphasize quick speed and agile movement, and played out on levels or maps of limited size (the "arena"). Many of these are presented as first-person shooters, and thus "arena FPS" may also be used to describe a subset of these games. Examples of these include theQuake andUnreal series, more specificallyQuake III Arena andUnreal Tournament which first pioneered the genre.[9] Arena shooters can also be played from other perspectives, such as via a top-down view in games likeRobotron 2084 andGeometry Wars.[10] Arena shooters frequently emphasize multiplayer modes with few or no single-player modes outside of practice matches with computer-controlled opponents. The genre hit its peak in popularity in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Hero shooters are a variation of multiplayer first- or third-person shooters, where players form into two or more teams and select from pre-designed "hero" characters, with each possessing distinctive abilities or weapons that are specific to them. Hero shooters strongly encourage teamwork between players on a team, guiding players to select effective combinations of hero characters and coordinate the use of hero abilities during a match. Outside of a match, players have the ability to customize the appearance of these characters, but these changes are usually cosmetic only and do not alter the game's balance or the behavior of the "hero". Hero shooters take many of their design elements from older class-based shooter,multiplayer online battle arena andfighting games. The class-based shooterTeam Fortress 2 is considered to be the codifier of the hero shooter genre. Popular hero shooters includeOverwatch,Paladins,Apex Legends, andValorant. Hero shooters have been considered to have strong potential asesports games as a large degree of skill and coordination arises from the importance of teamwork.[11][12][13]
Tactical shooters are shooters that generally simulate realisticsquad-based orman-to-man skirmishes. Notable examples of the genre include Ubisoft'sTom Clancy's Rainbow Six andGhost Recon series and Bohemia Software'sOperation Flashpoint. A common feature of tactical shooters that is not present in many other shooters is the ability for the player character to lean out of cover, increasing the granularity of a player's movement and stance options to enhance the realism of the game. Tactical shooters also commonly feature more extensive equipment management, more complex healing systems, and greater depth of simulation compared to other shooters. As a result of this, many tactical shooters are commonly played from the first person perspective. Tactical shooters may combine elements from other shooter genres, such asRainbow Six Siege,Valorant, andSquad, which combine the traditional tactical shooter style with the class-based gameplay of hero shooters.
A further variant of the tactical shooter is the extraction shooter, generally defined by the gameplay style ofEscape from Tarkov.[14][15]These games are often "player versus player versus environment" (PvPvE), where players are grouped into teams and placed on a map with the goal to reach an extraction point elsewhere on the map while avoiding the opposing team and non-player character enemies. During their attempt to reach the extraction point, the players may try to loot the opposing team or other features on the map for gear, which if they successfully reach the extraction point, they can keep and use to improve their character. Alternatively, they may have other assigned objectives to complete before extraction for better rewards. Gameplay is more slow and tactical for survival rather than straightforward run-and-gun. Other examples of extraction shooters includeHunt: Showdown,The Cycle: Frontier and theupcoming revival of theMarathon series.[14][16][17]
Looter shooters are shooter games where the player's overarching goal is the accumulation ofloot: weapons, equipment, armor, accessories and resources. To achieve this players complete tasks framed as quests, missions or campaigns and are rewarded with better weapons, gear and accessories as a result, with the qualities, attributes and perks of such gear generated randomly following certain rarity scales (also known as loot tables).[18] The better gear allows players to take on more difficult missions with potentially more powerful rewards, forming the game'scompulsion loop.[19] Loot shooters are inspired by similar loot-basedaction role-playing games likeDiablo. Examples of loot shooters include theBorderlands franchise,ARC Raiders,Warframe,Destiny and itssequel, andTom Clancy's The Division and itssequel.[20][21]
Artillery games have been described as a type of "shooting game",[22] though they are more frequently classified as a type ofstrategy game.[citation needed]
Battle royale games are a subgenre of action games that combinelast-man-standing gameplay with survival game elements, and frequently includes shooter elements. It is almost exclusively multiplayer in nature, and eschews the complex crafting and resource gathering mechanics of survival games for a faster-paced confrontation game more typical of shooters. The genre is named after theJapanese filmBattle Royale (2000) which itself was based on the1999 novel of the same name, and was popularized in video games withPUBG Battlegrounds andFortnite Battle Royale.
The concept of shooting games existed beforevideo games, dating back to shooting gallerycarnival games in the late 19th century,[5] as well astarget sports such asshooting sports,bowling,cue sports,archery anddarts. Mechanical gun games first appeared inEngland'samusement arcades around the turn of the 20th century,[23] before appearing in America by the 1920s.[24] The British cinematic shooting gallery gameLife Targets (1912) was a mechanicalinteractive film game where players shot at a cinema screen displaying film footage of targets.[25] The firstlight guns appeared in the 1930s, with the Seeburg Ray-O-Lite. Games using this toy rifle were mechanical and the rifle fired beams of light at targets wired with sensors.[24]
Shooting gallery games eventually evolved into more sophisticated shootingelectro-mechanical games (EM games) such asSega's influentialPeriscope (1965). Contemporary shooting video games have roots in older EM shooting games.[5] Another influential Sega EM shooting game wasGun Fight (1969), where two players controlcowboy figurines on opposing sides of a playfield full of obstacles, with each player attempting to shoot the opponent's cowboy.[26][27] It had aWestern theme and was one of the first games to feature competitive head-to-head shooting between two players, inspiring several early Western-themed shooter video games.[28]
Spacewar! (1962), recognized as one of the first video games, was also the first shooter video game; it featured two players controlling spacecraft trying to fire onto the other player.[29]Spacewar! was the basis for the firstarcade video games,Computer Space andGalaxy Game, in 1971.[5] In the 1970s, EMgun games evolved intolight gun shooter video games.[30] The firsthome video game console, theMagnavox Odyssey, shipped with a light gun for a shooting gallery game in 1972.[5] In 1974,Tank byKee Games adapted the concept ofComputer Space into a more grounded tank combat game with simplified physics andmaze game elements, becoming a hit in arcades.[26]Spasim andMaze War (1974) were effectivelyfirst-person shooter (FPS) games, but had wireframe graphics and lacked the free-roaming character movement of later FPS titles.
In 1975,Taito'sTomohiro Nishikado adapted the concept of Sega's EM gameGun Fight into a video game,Western Gun (1975), with the cowboys represented as charactersprites and both players able to maneuver across a landscape while shooting each other, making it a milestone for depicting human shooting targets.Western Gun became an arcade hit, which, along withTank, popularized a subgenre of one-on-one dueling video games.[26] Midway's North American localization ofWestern Gun, calledGun Fight, also introduced the use of amicroprocessor.[31] In 1976, Midway had another hit shooting video game,Sea Wolf (1976), which was adapted from another Sega EM game,Periscope.[32]
The genre gained major attraction in popular culture with the release ofTaito'sSpace Invaders arcade video game in 1978. It established the basis of theshoot 'em up subgenre, and became a cultural phenomenon that led into agolden age of arcade video games that lasted until around 1983.[29] In contrast to earlier shooting games,Space Invaders has targets that fire back at the player, who in turn has multiplelives.[33] Designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, who combined elements from his earlierWestern Gun (such asdestructible environmental objects) with elements ofAtari'sBreakout (1976) andscience fiction media,Space Invaders established a formula of "shoot or be shot" against numerous enemies.[31] Space shooters subsequently became the dominant genre in arcades from the late 1970s up until the early 1980s.[34] Most of these shooting games were presented from a 2D top-down-style perspective, with either a fixed orscrolling field. Games likeSpace Wars (1977) byCinematronics andTempest (1981) by Atari usedvector graphics displays rather thanraster graphics, while Sega'sZaxxon (1981) was the first video game to use anisometric playfield.[5]
In the early 1980s, Japanese arcade developers began moving away from space shooters towards characteraction games. On the other hand, American arcade developers continued to focus on space shooters during the early 1980s. According toEugene Jarvis, American arcade developers were greatly influenced by Japanese space shooters but took the genre in a different direction from the "more deterministic, scripted, pattern-type" gameplay of Japanese games, towards a more "programmer-centric design culture, emphasizing algorithmic generation of backgrounds and enemy dispatch" and "an emphasis on random-event generation, particle-effect explosions and physics" as seen in arcade games such as his ownDefender (1981) andRobotron: 2084 (1982) as well asAtari'sAsteroids (1979).[34] Nevertheless, Japanese developers occasionally released defining space shooters in the early 1980s, such as Sega'sisometric shooterZaxxon[34] andpseudo-3Drail shooterBuck Rogers: Planet of Zoom (1982) demonstrating the potential of3D shoot 'em up gameplay.[35]
Shooter games diversified by the mid-1980s, with first-person light gun shooting gallery games such asNintendo'sDuck Hunt (1984), pseudo-3D third-person rail shooters such as Sega'sSpace Harrier (1985) andAfter Burner (1987), and military-themed scrollingrun and gun video games such asCapcom'sCommando (1985),Konami'sGreen Beret (1985) andSNK'sIkari Warriors (1986). In the late 1980s, Taito'sOperation Wolf (1987) popularized military-themed first-person light gun rail shooters.[36][30]
Doom (1993) byid Software is considered the first major popularfirst-person shooter (FPS), and it was a major leap forward for three-dimensional environments in shooter games as well as action games in general. While first-person perspectives had been used by rail shooter and shooting gallery games, they lacked player-guided navigation through a three-dimensional space, a defining feature of FPS games.[5]
The use oftexture-mapped3D polygon graphics in shooter games dates back toSega AM2's light gun rail shooterVirtua Cop (1994),[37][38] followed by Sega'smech simulation shooterMetal Head (1995)[39] andParallax Software's FPS gameDescent (1995).[40]GoldenEye 007 (1997) for theNintendo 64 later combined the FPS sub-genre with light gun rail shooter elements fromVirtua Cop, popularizing FPS games on consoles.[41] In the late 1990s, FPS games became increasingly popular while rail shooters declined in popularity, as FPS games were generally able to offer more variety, depth and sophistication than rail shooters.[36] One of the last mainstream light gun rail shooter franchises wasThe House of the Deadhorror game series in the late 1990s, which along withResident Evil had a significant cultural impact onzombie media includingzombie films by the 2000s.[42][43][44]
Due to its violent nature, some[vague] consider the shooter game genre to be a representation of real world violence. Debates regardingvideo games causing violence were exacerbated by the 1999Columbine High School massacre, whose perpetrators,Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were fans of the gameDoom.[45][46] Similarly, in Germany,school shootings such as those atErfurt,Emsdetten andWinnenden, resulted in conservative politicians accusing violent shooter games, most notablyCounter Strike, of inciting young gamers to run amok.[47] Several attempts were made to ban the "Killerspiele" (killing games) in Germany and the European Union.[48][49] Shooter games were further criticized whenAnders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the2011 Norway attacks, claimed that he developed target acquisition skills by playingCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.[50] This has led to a plethora of experimental research to determine the true effects. Experimental Research, focusing on the short term effects, found that playing violent games can increase the player's aggression.[46] In a2011 Supreme Court case involving a California law, Justice Antonio Scalia stated that there was some correlation between violent video games and increased aggression, but very little real-world effects.[51] An experiment by C.A. Anderson and K.E. Dill, in which they had undergraduates randomly play either a violent or non-violent game, determined that the students who played the violent game were more susceptible to primed aggressive thoughts.[46] Further studies have shown that there are some limitations with the research.[46] Many[vague] research studies have not taken into account that violent video games tend to be more competitive, have a higher playing difficulty, and are more fast paced than non-violent games.[46] Past research also shows that the way aggression was measured in the studies could be compared to the way competitiveness is measured, leaving open the question of whether or not the effects of violent video games are forms of aggression or competitiveness.[46]
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