The 21st century saw explosion in shooter games. Game consoles like Xbox and PS2 were starting to become more and more popular. Xbox’s success was due in part to the systems launch title release of Halo: Combat Evolved. This critically acclaimed, award winning game pushed the genre to new levels with its remarkable use of artificial intelligence to control the non-player characters, as well creating new standards of realism by limiting the player/character to two weapons at any given time. Halo is considered by many to be one of the greatest first-person shooters of all time. It was followed by the even more popular Halo 2 (2004), which out sold the original to become the most purchased game in Xbox history. Halo 2 is the most popular game in Xbox live history, with over 5 billion hours of play time recorded. The highly anticipated Halo 3 for Xbox 360 is on schedule to be released in the summer of 2007, and to date has already surpassed 4 million in pre-orders. The game is expected to generate hundred of millions of dollars for its parent company, Microsoft. Other notable first-person shooters from the early 2000’s include the massively played multiplayer shooter, World War II Online (2001). Also released in 2001 is the US Army’s America’s Army. This game in available for free online and was created to help with recruiting. 2004 to the present has seen the release of hundreds of first-person shooters, including many sequels like Doom 3, Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004, Quake 4 and Half-life 2. Currently, developers like Kuma Reality Games are making FPS available online for FREE. These episodic games are often reconstructions of current events, such as US Military incidents in Iraq.
First-person shooters have evolved into such eerily realistic games, that at times it is easy to get caught up and swept away into the story and/or world in which it takes place. The level of realistic violence has also grown, creating large concern for the desensitizing effect that it may have on the players, specifically the young. These concerns are discussed in further detail in our debate section.