First Person Shooter (FPS) is a highly anticipated genre of gaming that makes many schools question if this should be allowed to be played at a competitive level of competition. As FPS games are becoming popular among high school ESport teams it becomes a controversial topic on if it should be allowed, and how it will affect the young minds of developing teens.  

FPS has been a long-debated topic to be added in high schools. This is due to the fact that FPS has a level of violence that can be viewed as gory, violent, and too realistic. “I find that FPS shooters especially ones like Call of Duty… basically simulators of real guns and real combat situations, I think that there is a lined that is crossed,” said Anthony Wasley, a coach for Hall E-Sports. Though we also have to note that first-person shooters may have an impact on students who are interested in or have been playing since they were teenagers. This could be seen as either a positive or negative impact.

There are some schools that allow students to play first-person shooters. This is because schools believe that first-person shooter isn’t just about the violence, instead many schools believe that “if approached correctly, FPS Esports might be an overwhelming success and play an instrumental role in bolstering student engagement, and promote the soft skills of teamwork, communication, and strategic thinking, and hard skills like hand-eye coordination, reaction, and spatial awareness.” It goes as far as even a university stating that it should be added due to its level of brainstorming. Jody Farmer an assistant director for intercollegiate Esports for the University of Oklahoma, as well as a veteran, stated, “FPS games help teach tactics and are played a lot like Chess… All this to say that FPS is a great way to become quicker in critical thinking skills, something needed in Higher Education… But you need the right programs and curriculum to go with them”. 

94% of girls and boys under 18 play video games, so the question of why it isn’t available to play in high schools lingers. With everything going on in the world, especially in the United States, there is a similarity in responses to whether or not games that involve shooting others should be viable in high schools all over America. Throughout the interviews, real-world problems were brought up frequently. It just wasn’t seen as justified at least in this time that we are currently in, with recent tragedies involving gun violence such as the Nashville school shooting. The main reason these games aren’t included in high school Esports is because of the popular belief that shooter games lead to desensitization and aggression. However, The American Psychological Association reaffirmed their results from 2015 that strongly assured video games are not the cause of violent behavior. Others argue that first-person shooters have benefits with improving hand-eye coordination and problem-solving skills. 

There is a continuing debate between parents, students, and school districts on if FPS games should be allowed on high school E-Sport teams.  The main concern of parents and facilities is the safety of the community and if FPS games have affected young minds mentally but, data showed exposure to violent video games dealing with gun violence shows no correlation to real-life violence.  The National Federation of State Highschools (HFHS) writes the rules for the seventeen sports that are allowed in over 19,500 schools and played by 7.9 billion students in the nation. The HFHS officially added E-Sports as an official sport in 2018 planning to add games in the genre of the multiplayer online battle area (Moba),  sports such as 2k or Madden, and, fighting games but expect to exclude games such as Counter-Strike. 

There are many games that have the potential to be in the first-person shooter genre. These games are known for their level of violence and realisticness. Games like CSGO (Counter-Strike Global Offensive), Valorant, and Call of Duty all share the same aspect though there is one game in particular that has a different aspect compared to all these games. This game is known as Overwatch. A Google slide show that was shared by Sebastian Fortuna, an E-Sports Coach at Hall High School, shows us that Overwatch has its reasons for why it should be added. Hence were talking that if we had installed it from a PC perspective, it would usually be downloaded in an app called Blizzard. Blizzard then classifies the game into a general idea of what its genre is going to be about. Overwatch was classified as, a “Team-Based Action Game”, meanwhile other games like Call of Duty are known as “Action Shooter”. “In reality, it’s no different than a lot of the games we currently play like League Of Legends, and I even would even argue Super Smash Brothers, stated Sebastian Fortuna. There are also many colleges and universities opportunities that offer students to “win awards, money, and even scholarships” giving students more opportunities to show off skills of their own.

Overall, the debate is still ongoing with many districts and not just Hall High School. Everyone will have their own opinions in the end, and eventually, who knows if FPS will be considered to be chosen to be in one of the E-Sports games. It’s just a matter of time into what will be concluded.