Nolan Ho Wung Murphy, BODYCAM, CLEAN HOUSE, BIRDSEYE, 2025. Images taken by artist.

FPS

Nolan Ho Wung Murphy

Content warning: This exhibition contains both real and realistic simulated depictions of military violence and war crimes.

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FPS is a peek behind a sheer curtain, gazing into the close relationships between the global military industry and the video games that work closely with them. First Person Shooters (FPS) is the genre of choice for military shooters, allowing one to play from the first-person POV of a soldier looking down the sights of a gun and pulling the trigger.

These video works engage with FPS games such as, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) which has the player roleplay as SAS soldiers storming a domestic home and killing its occupants. BODYCAM simulates the viscerality of Body-Worn Cameras used by law enforcement and military personnel. These two titles portray a close intimacy with violence, visually they mimic first-person POV battlefield videos filmed by real soldiers killing their targets.

In titles such as ARMA 3, players can pilot controversial military vehicles such as Lockheed AC-130 gunships and use artillery firepower on individuals in occupied lands. In 2015, these same gunships were used in an attack against a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan killing 42 people and destroying the hospital.

Furthermore, games are used not only for the training and recruitment of future soldiers, but also game technology such as Xbox controllers are used in the piloting of unmanned vehicles such as explosive drones and ground unit robot devices.

These same devices are being used in the present day, from Gaza to Somalia. The line between virtual gameplay and real world military violence at best is blurry but at worst directly collaborates to create interactive war propaganda and tools of warfare.